HIGHER AUTHORITY ^_[1]

CHURCH AS HIERARCHY

1.  The word hierarchy means sacred order. "Order" in this sense refers to the institution of ministries in the Body of Christ, the Church:

NOW YOU are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, then healers, helpers, administrators, speakers in various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret?  [1Cor 12:27-30] 

2.  Seen in this light, we may refer to the apostolic leadership of the Church as a hierarchy in its own right situated within the harmonious arrangement that constitutes Christ's Church. The hierarchy cannot be considered apart from its holy origin, that is to say, its institution by Christ in perpetuity until his return in glory.^[2]  It cannot be considered an abstracted mechanism of force or coercion.

WHAT WE SHOULD DEFEND

3.  More often than not, the secular media use the word hierarchy in a derogatory, stereotypical context when referring to the Roman Catholic Church. The spirit of this age possesses, at gut level, an insatiable appetite for easy sensationalism and smarmy earnestness. That which media-driven pop-culture finds threatening invariably affirms what Catholic clergy and families should be defending: the primacy of the family, the respect of all human life, the papacy, the mother of God, the norms of liturgy, the creeds, the meaning of Holy Eucharist and, as we shall contemplate today, the hierarchy of the Church.

4.  Catholics dissenting within the Church demand recognition as contemporary prophets whose mission is to expose what they perceive as class warfare by the powerful against the disenfranchised. Claiming the right to speak on behalf of all Catholics, they appeal to "rights talk" and "self-empowerment". They attack the Church's apostolic leadership as an exploitative power-driven men's club. They attack the dogmatic and doctrinal beliefs of the Church as anachronistic and without meaning in the modern world.

VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATION

5. In reality the vocabulary of power properly does not apply to the Church, a voluntary religious association founded upon an apostolic authority which originated in Jesus Christ, or as one may properly say, was instituted by him^[3]: 

AND I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.  [Mt 16:18-19]  

6.  This, perhaps, is what most frightens secular humanists inside and outside of the Church: that a multitude men and women of goodwill can and will submit to an authority higher than that of government officials and secular institutions. Consequently, it is not only supremely ignorant but a provocation against religion for a professed Christian to demand from within the Church that the Bride of Christ conform to prevailing cultural fashion and the spirit of the age.

DISSENTERS CANNOT BUILD 

7.  Ultimately, God's sacred order is much more than the Church's governance, for it encompasses the whole of the spiritual and temporal worlds, divine truth and salvation history. To cleave the Church's governance from God's sacred order would be to repudiate:  a.)  the founding events of Christianity,^[4]  b.)  the Holy Spirit's guiding providence through human time, and  c.)  divine revelation itself.

8.  The dissolution of the hierarchical Church would signify Christianity's collective separation from its true home (Lat. a mensa et thoro),^[5]  an abandonment of such magnitude as to overwhelm the sorrow of Eden. As in the test of temptation, however, dissenters afford the faithful a clear opportunity to prove the truth. It is no small irony that dissenters who demand the deconstruction of the temporal Church—its governing authority, teachings, sacraments—cannot themselves build. Far from being creative, endless negotiation and experimentation is actually a form of decay.

SPIRITUAL THINGS

9.  If the new covenant of Christ was stripped of its binding authority, the Church would cease to exist. No longer bearing the image and likeness of heaven, Christ would not recognize her as his bride. To the wealthy young man who knelt before him, Jesus said, "You know the commandments."  [Mk 10:19]  In the young man's reply--"Teacher, all these I have observed from my youth"  [Mk 10:20]--the Church explicitly recognizes a hierarchy of spiritual things.

10.  If the Decalogue forms a foundation, what sort of spiritual edifice should one build on it? How does one advance upward in the spiritual life? Paraphrasing the young man's words, what must we do to inherit eternal life? Jesus first advises the young man to divest himself of wealth—giving his material goods to the poor in exchange for treasure in heaven—and then calls the man to follow him as Lord.

FORSAKING TREASURE IN HEAVEN

11.  The young fellow, sincerely attracted to the spiritual order, opts to obey his own inclinations rather than the authority of Christ. He determines to cling ever more tightly to the rung of the ladder on which his self-indulgent life is lived. Many persons today are like the well-intentioned young man; their impetuous and conditional attraction to Christ blisters in the noonday sun.

12.  Nevertheless Jesus loved the wealthy young man for his intention, grieving for his failure to value treasure in heaven:  "How hard it will be for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!"  [Mk 10:23]  The hierarchical imperative of God's kingdom is addressed in St. Paul's Epistle to the Church at Ephesus:  Strangers and sojourners are to forsake their isolation and become fellow citizens in God's household, that is to say, conscientious and steadfast laity in the Church.

GARMENT OF SALVATION

13.  Apostles and prophets form the foundation of the magisterium of which Christ is the cornerstone. The temporal and spiritual hierarchy, fitted together into a pleasing edifice, reveals itself as the Lord's temple.^[6]  [cf. Eph 2:19-21]  Jesus rejects the young man's unctuous compliment.  "Why do you call me good?" he asks.  [Mk 10:18] 

14.  Good-ness, far from being a possession, is acquired by conforming oneself to the necessities of God's sacred order. One cannot throw open a door and swagger into God's sacred order. Rather the faithful disciple of Jesus is given the garment of salvation to put on and wear: the new nature  [cf. Col 3:10, Eph 4:24], the whole armor of God  [cf. Eph 6:11], the imperishable and immortality  [cf. 1Cor 15:53], and the love which "binds everything together in perfect harmony".  [Col 3:14] 

MATTER OF REVOLUTION

 15.  God's sacred order finds its perfection and fulfillment in Christ. Hence, all believers are commanded to put on Christ.  [cf. Gal 3:27]  The radical call of submission to Christ was for the Trappist Thomas Merton a matter of revolution:  

THIS IS the most complete revolution that has ever been preached. In fact, it is the only true revolution, because all the others demand the extermination of somebody else. But this one means the death of the man who, for all practical purposes, you have come to think of as  your own self.^[7]  

16.  Christ mandated for his body a hierarchical order as the temporal manifestation of the divine hierarchy and entrusted to it his mission on behalf of the Father:

THAT DIVINE mission, which was committed by Christ to the apostles, is destined to last until the end of the world  [cf. Mt 20:28], since the Gospel, which they were charged to hand on, is, for the Church, the principle of all its life for all time. For that very reason, the apostles were careful to appoint successors in this hierarchically constituted society.^[8] 

FOUNDING EVENTS

17.  Christ, through whom all things were created, and through whom all things are to be renewed, founded the Church according to his explicit and unequivocal plan.  The founding events of the Church are:  the revelation and authority of Jesus’ Gospel, his pastoral precedents, the institution of the apostolic Church, Jesus Christ’s covenant with the Church in his name, and Our Lord's passion, death and resurrection.

18.  The viability of these events to live, grow and develop over time is safeguarded by the charism of the Church’s divine authority to gather all her members into one body:   

FOR AS in one body we have many members, and all the members do not have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.  [Rom 12:4-5] 

APPALLING HUMAN SLAUGHTER

19.  One has only to look at the appalling record of human slaughter in the twentieth century--the rotten harvest of squalid disunity among men and their secular institutions--to return to his senses regarding human-driven interpretations of power and its absolute arrogation of human lives. The carnage in human lives must include the tens of millions of aborted children: herein is an object model of dissent against God's authority and law.

20.  One cannot advocate abortion without first consciously transmogrifying an innocent and helpless unborn child into an invasive agent. Only then is it possible to distort the abortion as a therapeutic intervention necessary to save the lifestyle of the mother and by implication the freedom of the father. Permeating this dark and ominous celebration of betrayal and death is the chant, my right to choose...my right to choose...my right...my right. Underneath this superficial but powerful self-delusion, however, other things have occurred which denial cannot erase.

INTOXICATED AGE

21.  To take the life of an unborn child requires that his mother and father repudiate God's sovereignty over human life. The denial of God's relevance leads a person to think he or she can omit the next step--a personal, definitive submission to God's will. Time heals all. Or does it? Of what medicinal use is time when a man or woman violate God's sacred order--the hierarchical wholeness of a healthy and fully integrated human being, the hierarchical community of family, the hierarchical exigencies of the greater society, and the sacred order God appointed that love may be guarded always by trust and justice?

22.  Power is not a spontaneous coefficient of shared behavior enjoyed by freely consenting privileged persons. Rather, power attempts to overwhelm or monopolize any reality it confronts.^[9]  If its hegemony is threatened, power inevitably seeks to destroy whatever opposes it. This present age is intoxicated with the secular brew of empowerment. Its overt insertion by dissenters into God’s Kingdom is an attempt to demand equality with God. The human temptation to oppose God is the forbidden fruit which Jesus Christ--the new Adam and founder of the Church--would not grasp.  [cf. Lk 4:1-13; Phil 2:6-11]  Moreover, it seeks to countenance suzerainty over one’s peers, a thing which the old Adam appropriated to the world’s everlasting sorrow.

APOSTLES AND SUCCESSORS

23.  That the Church's authority derives its meaning from a reality other and higher than itself cannot be overemphasized.^[10]  Christ has entrusted his authority to the apostolic Church which He alone called into existence established according to his precise principles.^[11]  The Holy Spirit is the guarantor of the Church's truth and legitimacy in every generation. The Church's charism of authority flows from the covenant relationship between Christ the groom and His Church the bride.^[12] 

24.  The human governance of this covenant relationship was entrusted to the unbroken line of Peter and the Apostles precisely to safeguard the deposit of faith.^[13]  Christ instituted the Church and to it he entrusted his gospel mission which is, ...for the Church, the principle of all its life for all time^[14]  and ...to which all are bound to adhere and...obliged to submit.^[15]  The founding events of our faith are to be "...scrupulously preserved in the Church and unerringly explained".^[16] 

BOUNDARIES OF SACRAMENTALITY

25.  The supreme pontiff, on behalf of Christ, exercises the unique charism of infallibility in pronouncements on faith and morals. This charism ...is co-extensive with the deposit of revelation, which must be carefully guarded and loyally and courageously expounded.^[17]  Hence, it is inconceivable that God's sacred order is extrinsic to the Church's governance, a mere appendage, a matter to be bolshevized, for as Scripture eloquently proclaims:  Whoever despises the apostolic hierarchy despises the Father and the Son who sent forth their Spirit.^[18] 

26.  The Vatican Council II fathers prudently fixed the limits of the hierarchy's powers within the boundaries of sacramentality, that is to say, the ...authority and sacred power which indeed they exercise exclusively for the spiritual development of their flock in truth and holiness, keeping in mind that he who is greater should become as the lesser, and he who is the leader as the servant.^[19] 

ECCLESIAL ATTRIBUTES

27.  The Church is authoritative—governing in the “mind of Christ”  [1Cor 2:16]  and in fidelity to the will of the Father who sent him. The Church is voluntary—she seeks the free will assent of her members (and all who hear her proclamation) in the knowledge that every member has joined in freedom and hence can depart in freedom. The Church is sacramental—she is representational of her founder Jesus Christ and what he said and did.

28.  The Church is disciplinary—her precepts and laws are to be obeyed by the faithful and, as well, by the hierarchy which exercises authority in the name of Jesus. Finally, the Church is in continuity. Her enduring legitimacy depends on her members’ unswerving faithfulness to the founding event of the new covenant Christ established in his name.^[20]  Of his "obedience unto death, even death on a cross"  [Phi 2:8], Christ prophesied:  "When you have lifted up the Son of man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own authority but speak thus as the Father taught me."  [Jn 8:28] 

EXAMPLE OF OBEDIENCE

29.  St. Paul wisely counseled the Churches to follow his example of obedience: "For by the grace given to me I bid every one among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith which God has assigned him."  [Rom 12:3]  The rich young man of Mark's gospel pondered his future with Christ and believed it possible only if Our Lord conformed to his own expectations. Our Lord, in whom all things indeed are possible, permitted him to go his own way but not in the company of the Twelve.

^[1]  Cycle B   /Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time   /Wis 7:7-11   /Heb 4:12-13   /Mk 10:17-30.  

^[2]  Cf  Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, qtd. in Joyce Little,  THE CHURCH AND THE CULTURE WAR, Secular Anarchy or Sacred Order  (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995)  30.

^[3]  Cf  ibid.,  26.  

^[4]  Cf  ibid.,  25, 29.   

^[5]  Lat. "from table and bed".  Unprecedented apostasy and faithlessness is a sign of the inauguration of the events of the apocalypse.  [cf. Rev. 9:20-21]  

^[6]  "For God has put all things in subjection under his feet. But when it says, 'All things are put in subjection under him', it is plain that he is excepted who put all things under him. When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things under him, that God may be everything to every one."  [1Cor 15:27-28] 

^[7]  Thomas Merton, NEW SEEDS OF CONTEMPLATION  (New Directions: New York, 1961)  144.  

^[8]  VATICAN COUNCIL  II,  Lumen Gentium,  20  (1964).   

^[9]  Cf  THE CHURCH AND THE CULTURE WAR,  29. 

^[10]  Cf Ibid. 

^[11]  Cf  Lumen Gentium,  18, 20. 

^[12]  Cf  THE CHURCH AND THE CULTURE WAR,  25.  

^[13]  Cf  Lumen Gentium,  18, 20. 

^[14]  Ibid.,  20. 

^[15]  Ibid.,  25.  

^[16]  Ibid.  

^[17]  Ibid. 

^[18]  Lk 10:16; Ibid.,  20.  

^[19]  Ibid.,  27 

^[20]  Cf  THE CHURCH AND THE CULTURE WAR,  26-27.