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And
now, from the Most Reverend Raphael J.
Adams,
The
Last Word
I am about to
drag you through a semantic exercise. Please
forgive me. But I do believe that words have
meanings, and that the only way we can avoid fuzzy
thinking, vague conclusions, hazy strategies and
tenuous plans is to clarify the meaning of the
words we use. When our definitions are equivocal
and our perceptions muddled and confused, we cannot
reason together (or alone, for that matter). I
contend that, to some extent, the Church is
experiencing a crisis of authority because of a
great equivocation: we have all forgotten what
authority is!
Decades ago,
someone defined authority for me in terms that I
had not previously associated with it: creativity,
generativeness, and action. In retrospect, although
his explanation was simple and obvious, I somehow
missed it. It was contrary to the rigid,
cadaverous, Ignatian idea of the nature of
obedience in relation to "lawful" authority and the
nature of "legitimacy" as an assumed characteristic
of all persons in positions of authority. According
to Cassell's, the words which parented
"authority"æauctoritas,
auctor, augeo -- have to do with the
capacity to enlarge or increaseæin
a sense, to improve, to make bigger and better. In
primitive usage, there is no such thing as "an
authority". Instead, one is an "author", someone
who initiates, creates, originates, causes to
happen. One undertakes. One begins. One leads. One
does not merely appear to lead. One comes up
with something new in response to new challenges
and opportunities. Something
substantive.
To obey, on the
other hand, is literally to listen, to attend to
what is happening, to be open, to have a responsive
attitude. The relationship between authority and
obedience is not one of giving orders and having
them carried out. Rather, the relationship between
authority and obedience is one of creating,
inspiring, and then evoking a positive response in
the listener. Since obedience is as much a matter
of responsiveness as compliance, is it possible
that in many cases an apparent crisis of obedience
is in reality a crisis of true authority? Further,
is it also possible that crises of authority may
not result from a failure to command or even to
lead, but from a failure to be creative, proactive,
original, initiatory, and productive? A failure to
begin something new, something which engages,
moves, and inspires those who are eager to
participate in making it all bigger and
better?
I am compelled
to obsess about an obvious point: making things
bigger and better while keeping them just the way
they are is inherently contradictory. The fact
remains that, while stagnation, fixation, or any
other type of "stuckness" are not exemplifiers of
true authority, neither are frenzied action and
directionless, ill-planned change. Having said that
and in the interest of bringing reality to bear on
this discussion, when dealing with ecclesiastical
authority, I have rarely observed any danger of the
latter occurring. "Not rocking the boatism," on the
other hand . . .
Ultimately,
in all matters that concern us as Christians (I am
reclaiming the word), we must defer to the One who
has the last word, the One who is the Last
Word by virtue of His authority. The people whom
Jesus taught responded to Him because He spoke "as
one who had authority, and not as their scribes."
(Matt. 7:29 RSV.) Supremely aware of the difference
between authority and authoritarianism, Jesus
warned his apostles against confusing the two. In
that Word which still has the power to save and
transform us, Jesus gathers us around Him now, in
this present day "crisis of authority," and says to
us, without equivocation, what He said to His first
apostles:
You
know that in the world, rulers lord it over
their subjects, and their great men feel the
weight of authority; but it shall not be so with
you. Among you, whoever wants to be great must
be your servant, and whoever would be first must
be the willing slave of all, like the Son of
Man; he did not come to be served, but to serve,
and to surrender his life as a ransom for many.
(Matt. 20: 25-28
NEB)
And that
is the last word. !
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