Friday, July 01, 2022

On Civil Disobedience

 Abp. Vigano, interviewed by Steve Bannon, reminds us of moral principles.

...Respect for authority is connatural to civilized man, but it is necessary to distinguish between obedience and servility. You see, every virtue consists of the just mean between two opposite vices, without being a compromise, but also as the peak between two valleys, so to speak. Disobedience sins by falling short, not wanting to submit to a good order of a legitimate authority; servility on the other hand sins by excess, submitting to unfair orders or orders given by an illegitimate authority. The good citizen should know how to disobey civil authority, and the good Catholic how to do the same with ecclesiastical authority, disobeying whenever the authority demands obedience to an iniquitous order.

Doesn’t such talk seem to be a bit revolutionary, Your Excellency?

Far from it. The anarchists and courtiers both have a distorted concept of authority: the former deny it while the latter idolize it. The just mean is the only morally viable way, because it responds to the order that the Lord has imprinted on the world and that respect the celestial hierarchy. We owe obedience to legitimate authority in the measure in which its power is exercised for the purposes for which authority has been established by God: the temporal good of citizens in the case of the State and the spiritual good of the faithful in the case of the Church. An authority that imposes evil on its subjects is for that very reason illegitimate and its orders are null. Let’s not forget that the true Lord from whom all authority comes is God, and that the earthly authority – civil as well as spiritual – is always vicarious, that is, it is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ, King and High Priest. Setting up the vicarious authority of rulers in the place of the royal authority of the Lord is a mad gesture and – yes – revolutionary and rebellious....

Frankly, we have always found +Vigano's statements to be just a bit 'edgy,' but never 'way out there.'  When you read the entire interview, you'll see why the Archbishop takes pains to describe the limits of authority and the limits of obedience.

Oh yah:  also remember to pray.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This part is really good:

......We must understand that our rulers are traitors of our Nation who are devoted to the elimination of populations, and that all of their actions are carried out in order to cause the greatest amount of harm to citizens. It is not a problem of inexperience or inability but rather of an intentio nocendi – a deliberate intention to harm. Honest citizens find it inconceivable that those who govern them could do it with the perverse intention of undermining and destroying them, so much so that they find it very hard to believe.......

When I point out to people that the government is trying to kill them and show proof I am dismissed as a nut bar. They do not see how evil these folks are

This is why I really liked vigano so much, he Hits the bull’s-eye far too often