Authority and such

There are a number of Italian stories, quite hilarious, which feature a clever and quite irreverent fellow named Bartoldo. Highlights of one of the stories should capture the flavour. The king and queen were quite insulted that, when Bartoldo was at Court, he would never bow to them. Their Majesties therefore had the doorway lowered, so that Bartoldo could not enter the room without bowing from the waist. And so Bartoldo did... but he came in backwards...

I am not anywhere near as clever or devilish as our Bartoldo, yet I have a rather light attitude towards authority. Yes, I'll be irritated if people do not conduct themselves properly in court, for example, but, though I may respect traditions, and indeed I often fear those in authority, I do not have a high regard for those who hold this unless they have demonstrated reasons for such respect. I have no regard, nor even understanding of, such currently popular treasures as 'family values' (...though I came from a tradition of responsible commitment to extended family, and cared for both my parents when they were old and sick), patriotism (please! trust in politicians has been seen as foolish at least since Julius Caesar), and the like. In fact, I dislike when the faith is too centred on the family - because one may need to mature and think one has lost one's faith in the process of growing away from family as one's centre.

My orthodoxy could not be questioned - and my manner of life, basically centred on prayer, is after a fashion which goes to the third and fourth centuries of Christianity. I can see, looking over the history of the Church and the writings of the great saints, that certain matters are essential - and that deviation from them in the past proved that ignoring the essential could turn people into nut cases. Yet I think it regrettable, in recent centuries (when faith hardly burnt white hot), that too much emphasis was placed on duty and obligations - and little on holiness. It is ironic that the idea of 'duties towards God and neighbour' did not kindle a fire of asceticism. (In the true sense - I am not talking hair shirts here.)

I believe it was Marcel Metzger who wrote of how worship and sacrament as a 'duty towards God' distorted concepts of both. The 'rules' about attendance at the Eucharist and recitation of the Offices certainly have an important foundation - yet, as Metzger described, the emphasis on obligation led to canons of cathedrals reciting the appointed offices during the time of hearing a Mass, and how those who made sacramental confession feared actions of amendment (and some priests to remind them of that obligation) because 'secrecy' would mean that one must not betray anything that one had confessed. (Of course, in 'my day,' being inclusive became the eleventh commandment. I would have thought the Church already was universal... yet the fear of anyone's feeling left out led to actions which have left many of those who are a generation younger than I with a sense of no moral integrity in Church teachings.)

If I may be permitted another loose association, I am thinking of an apt observation by Dominican theologian Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, whom I often find to have a rare degree of common sense. Though he was writing specifically of Paul's attitudes towards the Law, Murphy-O'Connors insights on that topic are worth consideration in any century.

Murphy-O'Connor argues cleverly, regarding Jewish attitudes towards the Law, that ‘the human mind instinctively simplifies.’ Lip service was paid to the fundamental concept of gratuitous grace in election, but, in practise, attention was concentrated on observance of the commandments. Membership in the covenant was necessary to salvation, and God’s giving of the law had established the covenant. Obedience to the Law did not earn salvation, a gift of grace, but was required to remain within the covenant. Not obeying would damn.

If disobedience meant damnation, it seems logical (given the tendency to simplify!) that obedience wins salvation. A religion of grace expressed in covenant form (in the popular imagination, if not in theological dissertations) becomes one of meritorious achievement. Paul’s concerns were less about the idea that there could be an approach to the law of effectively ‘buying salvation’ than the inversion of values consequent on the importance attached to obedience and law.

Murphy-O'Connor illustrates, from rabbinical stories, how God ‘failed to realise that, once He’d given the Law, it was out of his hands. Only the voice of rabbis counted.’ He adds that, “Jewish theological thought debated points of law, not mysteries of grace.”

Murphy-O'Connor comments that the Law, “Left no real space for God, grace, or faith – only for obedience.”

Of course, if the root of the word for obedience means to listen... well, that is not such a bad idea at all. :)