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| True and Legitimate Authority: Who Has the Right to Give the Orders, and Who Has the Duty to Obey Them |
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| People seldom think about where our actual source for authority is today. In the United States, and now much of the rest of the world, our official stance is that sovereignty resides in the people. Mind you, we have not always lived up to this doctrine, but it is a lofty-sounding phrase that people like to hear. It is at the core of democracy: "we the people" are the boss, and being the boss is better than being the servant, right? Not many people like to follow orders. Everyone wants to be their own boss. However, democracy, by its very nature, is nothing more than making popular opinion the ultimate authority of what is right and wrong. That may not be what was originally intended, but that is exactly how the concept has developed. And as a result, we have so deified the "will of the people" that we have built up a contempt for all reverence, respect and sanctity. |
| H.H. Pope Innocent III |
| Such was not always the case. During the High Middle Ages there was a very clear picture of where true authority came from. HH Pope Innocent III, as Vicar of Christ, acted as the "fount of honors" for all of Europe. He was regent of Sicily, crowned and later deposed the Holy Roman Emperor depending on his behavior and excommunicated the inept King John of England. The only true authority was Godly authority and was dispensed by the Church. This reality goes all the way back to the begining of time itself when God gave Adam dominion over the earth. Later, at the coronation of kings Saul, David, Solomon etc, it was made abundantly clear that the crown came from God and no one else. The pontiff Samuel anointed the monarch and established a tradition, from the very begining, of authority being invested in a monarch through a religious ceremony which included anointing with holy oil and the coronation of the new sovereign. In the book "Patriarcha", Sir Robert Filmer talks about how even constitutional monarchies are improper sources of authority, since the admission of this democracy takes away from the king his total sovereignty and makes him a mere figurehead. Certainly even this is favorable |
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| over a republic (half a victory is better than none at all) but nevertheless, it reveals a major weakness with many modern monarchies: which is, that by submitting to this system, the monarch is forced to admit that (in fact if not in name) they have retained their position only through popular favor and their throne may be maintained or cast down at the public's whim. Monarchs stop having any role in government, as Bossuet said, they can do little good and little to stop evil, and becoming more concerned with just trying to stay out of the way and make nice with Jo Blow. This is a severe cripple on the good which monarchs could accomplish, and modern European society is a clear illustration. Moral decay is rampant in Europe. There is rampant drug use, prostitution, homosexuality, divorce and what children are allowed a chance at life most often have only a single parent. Monarchs do the best they can with charity, but they have one hand tied behind their back because of a lack of real authority. Worse still, their own |
| morals are suffering because they have been raised in this society which says, there is no absolute right or wrong, there is only the standard of popular opinion: if the majority says it is not wrong any more, then it's okay (think about the heirs of Norway and Italy). We don't see this, even most people in the "religious" community, because we have been raised to believe that values like popularity and tolerance are superior to traditional values like loyalty, piety and respect for traditional authority. The Catholic community is a good example: a large majority of Catholics love and respect the Pope, but only a small minority actually obey his teachings when it comes to things they enjoy but are asked to give up for the sake of their soul. Where monarchs still reign in Europe they are, by and large, hugely popular, yet every one of them knows that if they ever dared to oppose a government policy, or if the Queen of England decided to veto an act of Parliament, the monarchy would be abolished almost instantly. |
| H.H. Pope Pius XI |
| Ultimately, assuming the planet survives that long, I am sure people will be forced to see the error of their ways. When we all become drones of the governmental machine, when society is nothing but helpless welfare addicts and there are no more children to support the huge number of 90-year-olds who have no savings at all and when moral decay has turned the population into a bunch of disease-ridden, depressed and depraved lunatics we will at last see the light and understand that 'not everything baby wants, baby should have'. However, we who recognize this can at least do what we can to put off such a catastrophe by doing everything in our power to encourage respect for legitimate rulers, reverence for holy things (and holy people) and above all for a renewed committment of obedience to Christ the King. Devotion to the Sacred Heart should be in the vanguard of such an effort, and we must not hesitate to go into verbal battle for true principles. Christendom is gone, but I must believe that we can get it back if we are each prepared to be a modern-day Charlemagne. |
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| Non-Christians too |