I style myself the "anarcho-traditionalist" - which probably seems absurd to most people (the three or four of you) who have thought about it..
Here's what I mean by it:
Anarchism is not, in my usage, about desiring anarchy as defined as utter freedom or chaos. It's about asserting and accepting the authority and weight of conscience.
In our culture too many people seem to think that conscience is somehow completely malleable, something that each of us creates for ourselves.
But that's not at all what conscience is. Conscience is moral knowledge. It is that knowledge by which we act, that informs our choices in the moral sense.
There is, in other words, nothing "relativistic" in the absolute and eternal sense about it.
In other words, conscience is what gives each of us individual moral authority.
And because conscience is shared, not merely arbitrary or individual, it is of profound political and social importance.
It is the hallmark and proof of our freedom. It is, in other words, a gift from God. It is that knowledge that we receive as a birthright, as descendants of Adam and Eve, who in their fall also received moral agency, "the knowledge of good and evil."
Their wills, and so our wills, have been separated from the divine will. "We are become like gods" in this very sense: free to choose between good and evil, heaven and hell, love and sin, the worship of God or self.
I was going to keep this pithy and short.. I could go on and on about this, making elaboration upon elaboration.
I'll merely leave it at this:
Being a Catholic and a traditionalist is all about living in accordance with authority, in obedience.
But it is never about authoritarianism, which is to say the worship of power for its own sake, or undue deference to those who possess it.
When I call myself an anarchist, I am asserting the primacy of conscience in the political realm. It's a two edged sword though: it is not an assertion of absolute freedom. It's closer to the opposite: it means that I believe (my conscience asserts) that we each have the responsibility, the cross, to act according to what we know is right.
We must act according to what we know is true.
No matter what. No matter what any intermediate authority says, each of us will be finally judged and so is ultimately answerable only to God.
Usually - almost always - this means obeying human authority. Occasionally, however, when human authority clearly errs on a matter of importance, we must dissent.
Even if the consequence is suffering or (in extremis) martyrdom.
I give you the witness of all the Jewish prophets up to and including John the Baptist, as well as all Christian martyrs, as well as modern examples such as the abolitionist and civil rights movements, and groups like the Mennonites..
To include Christ himself. When he said "render unto Cesar what is Cesar's and unto God what is God's" he wasn't letting us off any hooks. He proved it by himself accepting Herod and Pilate's judgments.
The series of readings read today at mass are very interesting in this regard (for February 27, 2011: Sunday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time, you can read them here)..
The second reading (the epistle) was one of Paul's very interesting statements on conscience. He writes this (cf. 1 Cor 4):
"It does not concern me in the least that I be judged by you or any human tribunal; I do not even pass judgment on myself; I am not conscious of anything against me, but I do not thereby stand acquitted; the one who judges me is the Lord."
He expands on this in his letter to the Church in Rome, the very place Paul was later decapitated by order of the court of the Emperor Nero:
You are without excuse, every one of you who passes judgment.
For by the standard by which you judge another you condemn yourself, since you, the judge, do the very same things.. There is no partiality with God. All who sin outside the law will also perish without reference to it, and all who sin under the law will be judged in accordance with it. For it is not those who hear the law who are just in the sight of God; rather, those who observe the law will be justified. For when the Gentiles who do not have the law by nature observe the prescriptions of the law, they are a law for themselves even though they do not have the law. They show that the demands of the law are written in their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even defend them on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge people's hidden works through Christ Jesus.
Romans 2, redacted
Like Tupac said. That's not a cop out, and it's no joke.
In the end, the knowledge on our heart, our conscience, will be the only thing we have left to defend or condemn us.
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