Catholic Tradition: Preserved by “Disobedience” Whether You Like It or Not

Over the years, I have thought a lot about obedience, as I am sure you have, and something about how the topic is considered has always seemed “off” to me. Eventually, I realized that the major issue with how Catholics tend to talk about obedience is that they talk about it in abstract terms rather than concrete terms.

Obedience as such is a morally neutral or indifferent abstract concept. For obedience to mean something and be either virtuous or vicious, it must have a concrete human act as its object. The abstract concept of obedience does not exist in reality. One cannot be “obedient” in the sense of living in a general state of obedience. For one to be obedient, one has to obey a particular order or command to concretize the concept of obedience and actuate it as an action in the concrete.

And the object of obedience makes the act of obeying either good or bad. One can obey a command, but the obedience itself is not a virtuous or vicious thing; rather, what command is being obeyed and to what end is what makes it virtuous or vicious.

Furthermore, circumstances can change whether an actuation of the abstract concept of obedience is good or bad, even when the actions themselves are the same, to the point where there is a qualitative change in what is happening — meaning that the good or bad action becomes a different kind of thing.

We can break this down into three parts to help us understand:

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1. You obey real actions, not hypothetical ones.

When someone tells you to obey, they’re not asking you to obey some vague category of action floating in your head — they’re asking you to do (or not do) one specific thing, right now, in this exact situation. “Don’t kill” isn’t really the command; “don’t kill this person, in these circumstances” is. So when we ask whether obedience was owed, we can’t just ask “was the bare action bad?” We have to ask “was this actual act, with everything surrounding it, bad?”

2. Whether something is right or wrong depends on more than just the action itself.

Take walking. Walking, by itself, isn’t good or bad — it’s neutral. But walking to rob someone’s house is bad, and walking to clear your head is fine. Same action, different outcome, because the circumstances — especially why you’re doing it — change everything. Same with giving money to the poor — good in itself, but if you’re only doing it to be seen and praised, it curdles into something selfish. One bad ingredient can spoil the whole thing, even if the core action was fine on its own.

3. Sometimes the “circumstance” isn’t just a detail — it becomes the whole point.

Usually we think of circumstances as minor add-ons: where, when, small details around the main action. But sometimes a circumstance is so significant that it actually changes what the action is, not just how good or bad it is. Stealing is bad. But stealing from a church isn’t just “extra bad theft” — it’s a different kind of offence (sacrilege), because the location isn’t incidental; it’s central to what makes the act wrong. In cases like that, the “detail” stops being a detail and becomes part of the core action itself.

Saint Thomas Aquinas explains this third concept in detail:

“The process of reason is not limited to a single term; from any point, it can always go further. This is why what, in an act, is considered as a circumstance added to the object which determines the species of the act can then be considered by reason, when it orders, as a principal condition of the object which determines that species.”

“Thus, appropriating another’s property derives its nature from the fact that this property belongs to another: this is what constitutes the nature of theft. If we then consider place or time, these are merely circumstances. But since reason can also order according to place, time, and other similar conditions, it can happen that the condition of place, in relation to the object, is considered contrary to the order of reason. For example, reason dictates that one must not commit an offence in a sacred place.”

“Therefore, stealing someone else’s property from a sacred place adds a particular opposition to the order of reason. Thus, the place, which was previously only a circumstance, is now considered a principal condition of the object, insofar as it is contrary to reason.”

“In this way, whenever a circumstance relates to a particular order of reason, favourably or unfavourably, it is necessary that this circumstance confer upon the moral act its kind, making it specifically good or specifically bad.” (Summa Theologica, I-II, q. 18, a. 10.)

A circumstance can affect an act’s morality in two very different ways.

Sometimes the circumstance is what defines the act — it’s the reason a neutral or good act becomes evil in the first place. When that happens, the circumstance stops being a side detail and becomes part of the act’s essential moral character.

Other times, the act’s moral character is already fixed by its object alone — good or bad — and the circumstance just makes it more or less so. Here the circumstance is incidental; it adjusts the degree, not the kind.

The difference: does the circumstance determine what kind of act this is, or just how much good or evil is already there? Only the first kind can turn a neutral act into something evil or good in itself.

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The SSPX and Obedience

Applied to the SSPX situation: staying quiet and not consecrating bishops is, by itself, a neutral act — neither good nor bad. I imagine some readers will take offence to this statement, because we associate sacramental acts with something good. Yes, of course the acts in general are good, but the context changes things. For example, a valid priest could confect the Holy Eucharist in a satanic ceremony, and it would be evil to do so — the object of the act (a satanic ceremony and the desecration of the Eucharist) is vile, even though the Eucharist is, of course, good.

Similarly, the consecration of a bishop as an action is morally neutral, and why it is being done makes all the difference, even though the conferral of the sacramental character, in its own proper existence, is always good. These distinctions make it possible for morally evil sacramental actions to exist, while the nature of the sacramental character remains not evil in itself.

But in the case of the Society, to decide to postpone the consecrations indefinitely would not be a morally neutral act, given the circumstances. For the sake of this essay, we will assume that the reader is aware of the proper arguments for the State of Necessity, and of the intentions of the Society which pertain to their circumstances. Keeping these realities in mind, we understand that there is a state of public and grave necessity for many souls, and it is the opinion of the leadership of the Society that the two remaining living bishops consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre are insufficient to keep up with the rapidly growing demand for Traditional sacraments worldwide, which include Confirmation and priestly ordination.

So the Society was faced with a decision: obey a command from the Pope to forgo the consecrations, or disobey the command in order to move forward with the consecrations, for the sake of the continued existence of the Society and for the faithful who depend on it for the sacraments. Again, I am assuming the reader is at least familiar with the arguments regarding this topic.

Now, even if you disagree with the Society’s reasoning, please try to understand the question of obedience under these circumstances. Again, obedience as an abstract concept is morally neutral and does not produce virtue in and of itself; therefore, what is being obeyed — the object — must be considered. As hard as it is for modern Catholics to understand, the Pope does not have magical powers to make good evil and evil good. A command from the Pope can have as its object a good or an evil outcome, depending on what is commanded, and the fact that the Pope commands it does not magically make it good.

I imagine any reasonable person could picture a scenario in which a pope ordered Catholics living in adultery to receive Communion anyway. This is easily imagined because of the legacy of Pope Francis. Of course, he did not order Catholics to do so, but he clearly believed it was good for Catholics living in such a state to do so; therefore, it is conceivable that, if the situation arose, a command of that sort could be given. Obviously, one would have to disobey that command if they knew the teachings of the Church.

The present circumstances are not so obvious or clear to many, which is understandable; nonetheless, the logic still stands. I hope that even the most ardent defenders of the recent popes would agree that disobeying the command of a pope is morally required under certain circumstances. You may draw your own line in a different place, but hopefully we can agree that not all disobedience of a papal command would be sinful.

In any event, the concrete decision before the Society was not an abstract case study from a university philosophy class. It was decided that to obey in that circumstance would produce an evil, which would include a general acceptance of all the post-conciliar reforms, magisterial texts, etc. — including, of course, the more ludicrous documents of recent years, of which I am sure you are all aware.

The reader must remember that the conditions for mere dialogue to begin — dialogue that could eventually result in a hypothetical permission to consecrate — were set by Cardinal Fernández, and those conditions were, in the opinion of the Society, evil. In addition, the language surrounding the conditions was that “full communion” would only be possible if those conditions were met.

Again, while the reader may disagree, I hope the reader can understand the circumstances. And I imagine many readers, even if they disagree with the action, would find it morally repugnant to have conditions imposed on them by a Church official demanding wholehearted acceptance — hook, line, and sinker — of the entire post–Vatican II corpus. In fact, the very persistence of the so-called Traditional Movement is an active rejection of that corpus, even if that rejection is not spoken aloud by some groups.

So the Society was faced with a situation which, in their opinion, required disobedience of a command, because the object of that command would produce an evil. And the disobedience of that command produced a great good: the continued preservation of Tradition.

I understand that some readers will object and say that the preservation of Tradition does not require such an act. That argument is not the point of this essay — it has been discussed a million times elsewhere — and I only ask that the reader attempt to understand the circumstances and the distinction between abstract obedience, which is morally neutral, and concrete obedience, which is either good or bad.

However, I would also like to add that the continuation of Tradition in the Church is, quite literally, the fruit of such material disobedience. The historical record cannot be changed: if it were not for Archbishop Lefebvre, primarily, Catholics the world over would not benefit from the continuation of Tradition, especially liturgically.

Neither the Fraternity of Saint Peter nor any other Traditional group can claim that they are the result of a general obedience to the Roman authorities. One may draw the line at episcopal consecrations without mandate, but if we are speaking of obedience as such, the Traditional Mass and all that comes with it were commanded to cease in the 1970s, and this was quite public and unambiguous.

And I would ask the reader not to bring up inapplicable examples like the so-called Agatha Christie indult, which was a regional concession and not applicable to the vast majority of Catholics on Earth.

It is without question that Pope Paul VI, and later Pope John Paul II, were adamant in their disapproval of the continuation of the SSPX — which did, whether you like it or not, preserve the flame of Tradition that so many Catholics now benefit from, while simultaneously scorning the standard-bearers who took the abuse necessary to preserve the Pearl of Great Price. The Fraternity of Saint Peter is no more “obedient” in its origins than the SSPX, and this must be acknowledged, because the hypocrisy is irritating.

I have written a parable that I believe will help illustrate this concept of obedience, in the present circumstances, in a relatable way.

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The Parable of the Two Sons

Imagine you have two sons, and their father had always been a good father. In fact, he had been a really good father. He ensured the kids’ education. He made sure they went to the best schools. He always made sure that they had enough to eat, and he always made sure that they had the best religious formation they could get.

At some point, however, the father decided that he was going to change his mind. He believed that his family had to get with the times — something about the spirit of the ‘60s and the post-World War II false optimism. He had affection for the old ways in a nostalgic kind of sense, but because of the spirit of the world and the increasing pressure from popular culture and the global political media, he had been convinced that it was time to change.

So one day he came to his sons and said, “Sons, no longer are we going to send you to that good school. No longer are we going to send you to that traditional religious formation. In fact, I think I’ve been too strict, and I think that what you need to do is embrace the times.”

Now, initially, the sons were a little perplexed, because it was a shock to them, as you can imagine. They had always listened to their father because he had always been a good father, and their natural reaction was conflicted. On the one hand, they wanted to be good sons, and being good sons means, among other things, obeying the will of your father. But on the other hand, what their father was asking them to do was against what he had always willed.

So in the early stages, they did what they could to obey. They thought to themselves, “Okay, well, Dad knows best, and although I don’t understand at this present moment, he must have a good reason for it.” They also started to notice that it wasn’t just Dad who had changed his mind — it was Dad’s brothers, it was Dad’s cousins. In general, most of the people in the neighbourhood and in the surrounding towns were also adopting similar philosophies, and it seemed they had all changed their minds together. The brothers noticed that the customs began to change. They noticed that the schools changed, and the parents were taking their children out of the seemingly outdated schools and putting them in the new schools with the new curricula, the new psychological methods, and the new approaches to community.

Admittedly, the brothers did feel, even if conflicted, a sense of optimism at the beginning. However, after a short while — let’s say a matter of months or years — it was obvious that this new direction just didn’t seem to be working, and it wasn’t because the brothers were obstinate against what they believed to be the goodwill of their father. They simply noticed that things weren’t working. You see, these young men had been raised to believe in traditional moral standards. They had been raised with traditional piety. They had been raised in a classical education model, and it was becoming very evident that the new directions were, quite frankly, ineffective at best, and morally and spiritually repugnant at worst.

The friends they had grown up with had embraced the new ways, and their friends and even cousins went on and on about how the new ways were so good. When the brothers asked why the new ways were so good, the answers they got were truisms and platitudes without substance. They would receive answers along the lines of, “These new ways are great because we don’t have to do all that old stuff anymore,” or “The new ways are great because we used to be so isolated from all these other types of people, and now we can do everything in common.”

The brothers also noticed that the moral behaviour of their cousins, their friends, and the neighbourhood kids began to change. Before the changes, courtship had been much more chaste and traditional. But now all the families had adopted the new ways of dating. The advent of the automobile meant that a young lady could be picked up by a young man, and they could drive off to who knows where and do God knows what, and no one seemed to care. The movies they were watching started to change, and so forth.

Well, eventually, the two brothers were convinced that the will of their father — and the will of their associates, the neighbourhood people, the townspeople, and their extended family — was simply wrong, because the results showed that everything they had been taught growing up, for so many years and decades, must be their father’s true will, since they could not imagine that he would ever will their moral and spiritual death. They realized that there must be not only a correlation but a causal link between the new orientations and the denigration of morals, education, and piety.

So the older of the two brothers confronted his father about it. He said, “Father, I simply cannot do these things anymore, because not only am I suffering, but my younger brother is suffering.” Furthermore, some of the cousins had come to the older brother — although not many — and expressed similar sentiments. They were weary of the direction of their households. They were weary of the new educational orientations and the new piety, and it made them very sad. All were told simply, “These are the ways, and we have to get with the times.”

So the older brother, being a courageous man, decided that something was wrong with what his father was asking him to do, and what everyone else was asking their own children to do. He then confronted his father again and said, “Father, I simply will not do what you ask, because what you’re asking me to do is against what I thought was your will for so many decades — and if I’m being honest, it’s against everything that your father taught you, and his father taught him, until time immemorial.”

Well, the father didn’t like this. He threatened to disinherit the son from the will. He threatened to kick him out of the house. He threatened to not allow him to come to family vacations and family holidays. Quite frankly, the father began to blame the son for all the problems. You see, the father was a conflicted man, but he wasn’t stupid. He had convinced himself that the new ways were the best ways, but he also saw that the destruction of their way of life was ongoing, and it did cause him sadness. But for some reason, he took to blaming the older son rather than looking in the mirror and admitting it was his own fault. So the relationship between the older son and the father became very tense and very strained, and they had very little communication.

Now, the younger son had grown accustomed to sheltering himself under the courage and the broad shoulders of his older brother, and he found much peace in doing so. But eventually, things came to a head. The older son said to the father, “I don’t care what you say. It doesn’t mean that I don’t believe that you’re my father. It doesn’t mean that I don’t believe that, objectively speaking, you have authority. But in this current situation, I refuse to do what you ask, and I will continue in the old ways, because the new ways bring death to both my soul and the souls of those I love.”

The younger brother had supported the older brother the whole way, because he knew he was right. But the father became even angrier, and he promised that he would follow through on his threats. He promised that if the older brother did not stop immediately, he would do everything in his power to separate him from the family once and for all. Of course, this caused much distress in the older brother, but he simply could not give in to ways that were destructive — ways that were hurting his brother, his cousins, and his friends and family whom he had known his whole life.

After receiving this extraordinary threat from his father — a threat that seemed so absurd — the older brother said, “Father, I must reiterate: I know that you’re my father, but I hereby make it very clear that I don’t care what you do to me. I will not be following in your ways, and I will continue in the ways that you taught me before. I reject the new ways, and in the future I will raise my family in the old ways, which bring life, because these new ways bring death.”

The father followed through on his promises. He took out an ad in the local newspaper announcing that he had disinherited his son. He went to the lawyer and made sure that his son would never receive a penny. He forced the son to leave the home, threatening to call the police if he didn’t leave immediately. He did everything possible to ensure a complete separation between himself and his son. This was not his son’s will, but there was nothing the son could do about it.

Throughout this whole ordeal, the younger brother had stood with the older brother and supported him. But when the day came that the father followed through on his threats, the younger brother, without telling the older brother, simply stopped supporting him. In fact, it became apparent that while the whole saga was unfolding, the younger brother had been talking with the father and speaking with the uncles, and they had decided that — while the father would not abandon his new orientations — he would tolerate the younger brother continuing in the old ways, so long as he did it far from the family home and without making too much fuss. So the father took the wealth he had saved all those years for the older brother and used it to build the younger brother a small property a couple of towns over, where he could continue in the old ways quietly.

When this happened, the older brother felt deeply betrayed. He said to the younger brother, “I’m sorry, but why did you do this? I thought you agreed with me. I thought you understood that we had to do this because, of course, we respect our father — but in the eyes of God, we cannot obey if it means doing evil.”

And the younger brother said, “I hear what you’re saying, but you’ve gone too far, and I’m going to stay obedient to our dad.”

It was quite a shock. You see, the sons had been trained how to think. They knew that the act of obedience, in the abstract, was indifferent — that in order for obedience to be a virtue, the object of obedience had to be good. Nevertheless, the younger brother not only distanced himself from the older brother, but began to speak against him. In private, he acted exactly as the older brother had acted; but in public, he said the older brother was wrong for disobeying their father — all the while continuing down the very path his older brother had preserved for him.

From that day, the father continued to tolerate the actions of the younger brother, but only if he stayed away from the older brother. And if he started to seem too much like his older brother, he would get a stern talking-to and be threatened with harsh punishments. Whenever the older brother came up, the younger brother made sure to tell everyone he knew that they should have nothing to do with him, because, after all, the older brother wasn’t as obedient as the younger.

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The Padre Pio Red Herring

Before we end, we should quickly address the common appeal to saints like Padre Pio as examples of how one should obey under all circumstances. Of course, the reader should understand by now that it is morally incoherent to obey under all circumstances. Nevertheless, modern man thinks with a modern mind, and that thinking isn’t always coherent.

At one point Padre Pio was ordered to stop hearing confessions and cut off contact with the people he’d been guiding spiritually. On the surface, that looks similar — a superior restricting something good. But here the circumstances didn’t poison the command: the people he’d been guiding could easily go to another faithful, orthodox priest instead. Nothing was actually lost or endangered. So the order, even if the superior’s motives were questionable, didn’t become “evil in itself” — and Padre Pio was right to obey it. This case matters because it shows the principle isn’t a blank cheque to disobey anything you dislike; it only applies when the circumstances genuinely change what you’d actually be doing.

Furthermore, people often leave out that Padre Pio had ongoing preternatural encounters for decades, and the Church’s practice has always been very cautious in situations like these, because extreme care is needed to ensure that preternatural phenomena are not demonic. Of course, we all know Padre Pio was a great saint, but we have the luxury of hindsight and history.

Also, Padre Pio took vows, which are required in orders such as the one he joined. Those vows are for the good of the order and of the monk or friar. Normally speaking, there is no issue obeying blindly in one of these orders, and that is sort of the point. If one thinks of a cloistered nun or a monk, we must remember that the majority of their tasks are morally neutral and usually pertain to things like chores and the discipline of the religious house.

While it may seem unfair, for example, that a superior of a group of nuns could be hard on one particular nun, always telling her to clean the toilets or peel potatoes, there is no evil in cleaning toilets or peeling potatoes. The whole point of joining a monastic order with vows is that you agree to submit yourself to the will of the superior for the sanctification of your soul, and that is the context.

It is different when souls are under your care, or when you have a public ministry, which is why the secular clergy do not take such vows.

True obedience is demonstrated in the case of Saint Jean de Brébeuf as well. He was the superior of the Huron Mission in New France for a decade, and, despite the fact that he was a great saint, there was little success. So he was replaced, and he wholeheartedly embraced the fact that he was replaced, without any conflict. But he was replaced with another great priest, Father Jérôme Lalemant, who came with the same zeal, orthodoxy, and expertise for the role, and he didn’t come to preach the New Springtime or Synodality, or to tell the natives that they didn’t need to convert.

Chesterton once said, in so many words, that when you enter the Catholic Church you are required to remove your hat, and not your head. Catholics, especially those who call themselves Traditional, must be precise and logically coherent. Throwing around platitudes about abstract obedience, or out-of-context historical examples that do not apply, is offensive and, quite frankly, unintelligent.

Obedience in the Church is not some ethereal Platonic form that can be invoked as the end to all arguments. It is one of the virtues, and it cannot be heralded at the expense of all the rest, or of sound thinking.

Kyrie eleison

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