Blind obedience is a tough sell these days.
In our culture, the concept of obedience has fallen out of favor. We are hesitant to encourage blind obedience in our children. We want to reason with them, to value their input, to give them choices. We want them to do as we ask because they wish to do so, not because they were MADE to obey without question.
How much less do we hope to cultivate blind obedience in ourselves? Our culture champions choice above almost all other things. Many of us struggle to ask for or follow the advice of our husbands or parents or pastors or spiritual directors. Many of us struggle to follow the Tradition and Magisterium of our Catholic Church, especially when its teaching on important and personal social issues sounds so far removed from what our secular culture believes.
The world out there (and the occasional priest in here) tells us we need to listen to our own consciences alone, not just mindlessly follow the oppressive rules of a dusty old church run by a bunch of old men who don’t really understand what these policies MEAN for us, for our bodies, for our lives.
But that’s not what the Mother of God tells us. Mary was blindly obedient. Gloriously, blindly obedient. Obedient even to things that sounded crazy. That sounded wrong. That sounded like they would cause her to face ridicule and scandal and unimaginable heartbreak.
Her obedience set her free and sanctified her.
And mine, when I can manage it, does the same thing.
Deciding not to use artificial contraception as a newlywed felt like the craziest decision I had ever made. I made it without wisdom or understanding, without much trust or much hope. All I had to give was blind obedience.
The only reason I’m where I am today is that even though what the Church said sounded completely insane, I just couldn’t quite justify thinking I knew better than thousands of years of Church teaching.
And I didn’t know better. The Church was right, she was right about it all. I am deeply grateful that God gave me the grace to make that decision in that moment, and that I was somehow able to correspond to it.
I was able to come to understand the teachings of the Church, because I was willing to be obedient BEFORE I understood.
The beautifully counterintuitive thing about blind obedience is how liberating it is.
We don’t make decisions in a vacuum. We make them in the world, and often in crisis. It’s nearly impossible to make a detached decision on an issue related to sex or marriage or fertility or infertility or life or death, because the moral aspect of these issues is inextricably tangled with our own fears and desires.
In times of difficultly and confusion, we can fall back on blind obedience.
We have a responsibility to form our own consciences, of course, but obedience covers a multitude of sins. If I’ve chosen wrongly, but in obedience to a person or entity in whom it was reasonable to place my trust, I’m very confident trusting in God’s mercy.
But how to find someone to give me good counsel?
1. My husband.
Husbands are mostly better for this than we give them credit for. We’re quick to run to our girlfriends or moms or the world wide web when we need advice, but I know that my husband is my greatest source of drama-free advice. And if I can make myself be obedient to it, I’m always better off.
2. My gals.
I also happen to have girlfriends and a mom and bloggy friends who have the same life and afterlife goals as I do. If they didn’t, I just wouldn’t ever, ever ask them what they thought I should do.
3. My spiritual director.
I am in spiritual direction. When my husband or friends are stumped or not available, or when the situation is too close to them, I take it to spiritual direction. A spiritual director can be anyone you’d trust to advise you well. I’ve met with both priests and laywomen as spiritual directors over the years. Both have been great. I’m seeing a priest now, and we meet once a month. I believe some priests and nuns take a vow of obedience to their spiritual directors. My situation isn’t so formal. I just get good advice. I could choose not to take it, but that would kind of defeat the purpose.
Confidence is not at odds with obedience. Both are virtuous. Being obedient doesn’t mean being cowed. It means knowing when to say:
How shall this be done, because I know not man?
Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word.
Ah this is beautiful, yet again, again! Probably prego hormones, but I teared up at the re-epiphany of understanding blind obedience– it's easy to say "I BELIEVE!" not so easy to do it, especially when I'm always going "but what if…? Why not something different? Why me? What about?" Liberating, it is. And I'd say a healthier choice, as opposed to worry-warting my life away.
"If I've chosen wrongly, but in obedience to a person or entity in whom it was reasonable to place my trust, I'm very confident trusting in God's mercy."
YES. It is very frequently better to err on the side of obedience … not that obedience is a virtue I'm particularly good at yet. 🙂
I love this bit… it was good food for thought:
"We don't make decisions in a vacuum. We make them in the world, and often in crisis. It's nearly impossible to make a detached decision on an issue related to sex or marriage or fertility or infertility or life or death, because the moral aspect of these issues is inextricably tangled with our own fears and desires."
In the beginning it seemed like you were setting up "blind obedience" to be in conflict with "choice." But obedience is only liberating if it is "chosen." It is free will that makes obedience a virtue in the first place 🙂
This is a new thought for me, Kendra. Blind obedience. Not something I would have categorized as a virtue. At all. This is tugging at my heart though, and I think it's timely. Thank you so much for this.
As a blogger at "Here I Am, the Handmaid of the Lord." I pretty much love this post, especially the second half.
Obeying before understanding – tough stuff, but so good. Thank you for this.
This line especially resonated with me: "The beautifully counterintuitive thing about blind obedience is how liberating it is."
I've recently come across several people mentioning a spiritual director, and I am intrigued. How do you go about finding someone to fill this role? Is it an informal mentorship, where you simply ask someone you respect to do this for you? Or is there a list somewhere of spiritual directors in your area, and you make an appointment with one, almost therapist style? I've tried researching this but am stumped. Any advice or thoughts you could share on establishing a spiritual director relationship would be much appreciated!!
I think you are confusing "blind obedience" with "faith".
Blind obedience can also be categorized as obeying error. When a wicked pope (yes, there have been some!) or prelate encourages sin or heresy we do NOT NOT NOT follow that error blindly! We are bound by Catholic duty to resist ALL error and will be judged by God accordingly.
No, faith and obedience are quite different. Perhaps the confusion comes because we often talk about having "faith" in a particular person or organization. But when we are talking about virtue, "faith" can be only in God.
From the Catechism: (1814) Faith is the theological virtue by which we believe in God and believe all that he has said and revealed to us, and that Holy Church proposes for our belief, because he is truth itself. By faith "man freely commits his entire self to God."
So FAITH is how we are able to believe in God, as he is revealed to us by his word (the Bible) and sacred tradition. And we OBEY the Holy Church, because the Holy Church is how God has chosen to reveal himself to us.
There certainly have been some wicked Popes. But we don't have a wicked Pope now. And in any case, Pope Francis hardly ever calls me up and tells me to do stuff. I think we could all stand to work to cultivate the virtue of obedience in ourselves in our daily lives and in our habits, as Our Lady did.
I would argue that, as a rule, obedience is the more virtuous path than resistance.
There are so, so many amazing quotes from the saints about obedience.
Without a doubt, obedience is more meritorious than any other penance. And what greater penance can there be than keeping one's will continually submissive and obedient?
–St. Catherine of Bologna
“Obedience, is rightly placed before all other sacrifices, for in offering a victim as sacrifice, one offers a life that is not one’s own; but when one obeys one is immolating one’s own will.”
–St. Gregory the Great
“The Devil doesn’t fear austerity but holy obedience.”
– St. Francis de Sales
“Obedience unites us so closely to God that in a way transforms us into Him, so that we have no other will but His. If obedience is lacking, even prayer cannot be pleasing to God.”
– St. Thomas Aquinas
'A Christian faithful to obedience, knows not delays, but prepares his ears for hearing, and his hands and his feet for labor.'
–St. Bernard of Clairvaux
“He who is his own master is a scholar under a fool.”
–-St. Bernard
No man commands safely unless he has learned well how to obey.
–Imitation of Christ
”It is better to cherish the humble desire of living according to the rule of the community, and to be diligent in its observance, than to entertain exalted desires of performing imaginary wonders, for such imaginations only tend to swell our hearts with pride, lead us to undervalue our brethren, from an impression that we are better than they.”
–Saint Pacomius
My daughter, know that you give Me greater glory by a single act of obedience than by long prayers and mortifications. (894)
–St Faustina, Divine Mercy in my Soul
See more here.
I repeat my conviction that, even if I err, if it was done in obedience to someone I could reasonably trust, God will extend his loving mercy to me. Clearly, it worked for all of these holy souls.
"I was able to come to understand the teachings of the Church, because I was willing to be obedient BEFORE I understood."
Yes, a Lively Faith allows us to be blindly (to our eyes) obedient.
I am discovering this helps me in my conversion process. I don't understand Mary, but I can respect her and learn about her role as the Theotokos. I trust following her example in these ten virtues will help me to be the woman (in all my roles) that God wants me to be.
I began praying The Rosary, even though I didn't understand it and now it is a true blessing to me–and DH. I am learning how to use it to ponder the events of Christ's life and what God wants me to learn from that particular rosary prayer.
I look forward to the rest of this series and understanding more of how Our Blessed Mother helps us.
I think a lot of us well-intentioned people with some theological or scriptural study under our belt get confused about how to make virtues understandable and end up being using terminology that may not best define what we are trying to talk about. One such phrase is "blind obedience." Obedience is a virtue only when it is rightly ordered to the will of God. Any virtue can be practiced in such a way that disordered use could cause vice, sin, and real harms. Take for instance the virtue of temperance to combat gluttony. It is possible to convince ourselves or let those of spiritual aurhority over us (who are supposed to be prudent in their direction) convince that fasting ALL THE TIME is necessary spiritual combat against whatever demon pushing us towards gluttony. However, that extreme is against actual recommendations of the Church and may turn into true anorexia. There are many good saints (St. Catherine of Siena) who God graced with holiness DESPITE such an error and not as a result of it. God is certainly merciful if this is the sort of error that we make but if we then convince ourselves that our children need to follow the same extreme practice, then our "obedience" turns into evil, no matter the initial good intention (IE: warding off a demon).
Anyway, despite saints and spiritual masters using the phrase "blind obedience," I consider it very deficient in what Christ teaches: Be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect. We are called to perfect obedience, not blind obedience. And the perfect are not blind. Mary did ask questions and pondered the meaning of things and did things that make Protestants misintetpret her intentions as indication of sinfulness or at least selfishness (telling servants to get ready to do whatever Jesus tells them for the miracle of wine despite Jesus warning that His hour had not yet come). We know better, of course. Hers was the perfect obedience of following God's will without dissent and prudently doing things that actually further God's glory rather doing what we humans EXPECT holy people to do.
I came across this because I am struggling with the Vatican’s attempts to squash the Traditional Latin Mass. I’m a convert of a few years and part of the reason for my converting was my belief that the Catholic Church is the one that Jesus founded, and therefore in general has a valid authority structure. But the TLM was good enough for, oh I don’t know, most Catholics ever, and has been a source of great spiritual fruits for me. Should I resist or obey?
This is so hard, I’m sorry you’re going through it. I don’t attend a TLM so I can’t sympathize, exactly, but to my mind, yes, this would fall under obedience. He doesn’t have to be my favorite pope, I don’t even have to think he’s correct, or doing a good job, or that he has his priorities right, but I do believe that he is a valid pope and as such I should be respectful and obedient.
On a practical level, my family has sought out and attended a reverent Novus Ordo Mass. They don’t all have to be guitars and banners and heretical homilies. I know it’s not the same as the 1962 Missal form, but our Novus Ordo Mass has Latin and incense and kneeling at the rail to receive the Eucharist.
I think there’s a temptation among some to view that 1962 Missal the way some Protestants view the King James Bible, that it’s the only valid translation and those folks somehow got it exactly right in 1611 (or 1962) and no one could have anything to add. But the Mass has always evolved a bit throughout history. Just because there are some NO Masses filled with heresy and nonsense doesn’t mean they have to be. The NO can be really beautiful and reverent. I’d urge you to seek out a good one before you turn to schism.
Thanks for your thoughts on this. To be honest, I’m still kinda mad about it. Being part of the universal “all times, all people, all places” church is a huge deal for me, and this doesn’t feel like an evolution so much as a liturgical tantrum kowtowing to secular worldliness. But I guess the right response is not for me to have my own liturgical tantrum in return 🙂
Our regular Sunday mass is a very reverent Novus Ordo one with all the twiddly bits (and we travel out of our way to go there), so we’re covered on that front. I’m grateful to be able to go to a mass that the Doctors of the Church would have recognised. But sometimes we have gone to a TLM one and I still feel it should have a place in the church. But the word “schism” really made me jump and look at the issue from a new perspective – so thank you.