Chancellor Bismarck remarked, Nach Canossa gehen wir nicht. “We are not going to Canossa.” His meaning is available here.
Orthodox Christians never had and do not now have this difficulty. The point has not had to be made to them because their bishops never claimed and do not claim civil authority, much less to be The Chief Pastor of The Church. Orthodox bishops have maintained the punctiliousness of Jesus Himself and Saint Paul in this matter.
The most significant act of St. Francis of Assisi was his request to The Bishop of Rome, The Pope, to accept his sketch of the architecture he and his brothers developed for a mendicant Order. In this way, St. Francis and his brothers put themselves inside the spiritual order of authority, the shelter, the sanctuary, the refuge, available to them in their day. Their point was, they desired to live inside a spiritual order of authority greater than themselves. About that they were right.
Franco Zeffirelli’s forced, vividly disdainful caricature of ecclesials notwithstanding, his Brother Sun, Sister Moon makes my point:
It is said that St. Francis, a literal, uncomplicated man, when he heard instruction by The Holy Spirit to Rebuild My Church, set out single-handedly to rebuild a semi-abandoned sanctuary, San Damiano, in Assisi, Italy. The inner meaning is, Francis set out to restore the order of authority The Church is in Her spiritual and Her mundane reality. His visit with The Pope, sometime later, had the same inner meaning.
When its order of authority disbands or is disbanded, when the internal connections of something are undone, that something is paralyzed. It cannot do its work. The thing has entered upon paralysis because, for one reason and another, its order of authority is come unstuck, been disconnected as between its elements. This makes the something, whatever it is, confused and unable to execute, to work. The whatever-it-is is in a condition of dis-ease. It is sick.
The purpose of health is to enable work. To remedy lack of which, to restore a thing to health, one rebuilds its order of authority. Now it can get back to work. Productive labor is the purpose-in-life of everything and everyone.
During WWII, The USA had many millions of men and women under arms. At the peak of that labor, The USA had exactly seven four-star Officers. Four were Army: MacArthur, Arnold, Eisenhower, and Marshall. Three were Navy: Nimitz, King, Leahy. Today, with slightly over a million men and women under arms — who together comprise less than one percent of their country’s population — The USA have forty three (at least) four-star Officers. This is a picture of paralysis due to a missing order of authority.
Americans say to their cadre military officers, Rebuild Our Army,
and for contemporary and anticipated conditions, not yesteryear’s.
An organization does not do its job when its order of authority is unconnected internally, not self-integrated, not net-centric. The proper course in such a case is to restore and invent the organization’s order of authority with a view to its being able to accomplish its job in contemporary circumstances.
Now, as between authority, legality, rules, and titles, authority stands as the prius and wellspring of the rest, as well as of their legitimacy. The only real power in this world is that inhering in authority. The only real authority in this world is that embodying divine qualities. In an absence of authority, laws, rules, and titles are as nothing, scraps of emptiness, power-less ciphers.
Authority is such by virtue of its embodiment of divine qualities such as generosity, kindness, skills, equanimity, cheerfulness, factuality, mental strength, and general attractiveness. Someone with authority is instantly recognizable by practically everyone, every creature even. In the presence of authority one feels safe. Where there is no authority, or too little, one cannot relax.
Godly qualities, not a confirmation of position and responsibility, confer authority. Certification and confirmation to positions and responsibilities of persons lacking Godly qualities guarantee an organization ceases to do its work. Such an organization attracts odium and hostile acts.
West Point, for example, has always said that their goal is to graduate leaders of high character grounded in the spirituality of selfless service. These qualities are the likeness of God. They conduce to winning the nation’s wars with the least cost to the nation and the nation’s enemy, both. Fill The USA Army with leaders of low character and a propensity for self-aggrandizement and The USA experiences chaos in foreign and domestic affairs because the work of the nation cannot get done.
All this hinges on the presence of authority among the nation’s leaders, their saturation in divine qualities. To restore a nation to health is to rebuild and invent connections inside her order of authority. This restores faith in the nation, which restores the nation’s safety and prestige.
Note that The USA Founders produced an order of authorities, not a legal system, much less a set of laws, rules, or titles. Legal systems and rules are made and disposed of according to the needs of times. Laws and rules are guidelines, like traffic lights, that do not compel events. They too are fleeting, as are titles. But authority abides as power in and of itself. Authority is what gets work done. It can take many forms — in fact, every form is an embodiment of authority in its abyssal reality — but authority, by its nature, does not change because God does not change.
Authority is one and continuous through all history everywhere, as only God is. Our Founders were at pains to construct an order of authority that would serve as our country’s ground of being, Godlike.
Treating our US Constitution as a legal document, legal system, rules, or titles is a grave mistake. Much less is it a moral or political document, system, rules, etc. Our US Constitution is a formulation of authority for a national order. A legal system, law, rule, or title lacking authority — that is, Godliness — as Aquinas and others observe, is no legal system, law, rule, or title at all but rather an engine of violence. Disregard or otherwise take apart The US Constitution and you essay to undo, you seek to paralyze, the nation, her prestige, and her safety. In such a case, the nation herself will strike you down.
An order of authority is a force of Godliness. A legal system, a list of rules, a title or rank, these are not orders of authority. Only that which is Godly is an order of authority. Outside an order of authority is only chaos.
The US Constitution is the order of authority of The USA. The US Army — meaning The US Joint Force: Space, Air, Cyber, Sea, Land — is the order of authority who protect The US Constitution.
Outside The US Constitution there are no USA. Outside The US Army’s ability to protect The US Constitution there are no USA.
The USA are not an order of authority. Their Constitution and Army are an order of authority, essentially and existentially the same order of authority. The USA are operators living and laboring inside the order of authority provided by The US Constitution and The US Army.
Democrats have taken American cities, counties, and states outside the order of authority provided by The US Constitution and The US Army. Members of the Democratic-Republican UniParty have taken Washington, D.C. outside the order of authority provided by The US Constitution and The US Army.
When Americans say, Our schools and churches are in ruins, they mean that people they had considered fellow Americans took American cities, neighborhoods, schools, industries, and religious and charitable institutions outside the order of authority, and therefore outside the protection, provided by The US Constitution and The US Army. They took American people and property forcibly into chaos.
When Americans say, We’ve become a banana republic, they mean nominal Americans took sectors of American life and labor outside the order of authority, and therefore outside the protection, provided by The US Constitution and The US Army.
When Americans say such things, they imply that removal of things American from their natural order of authority and protection — The US Constitution and Army — was done without their consent and without US Constitution-Army authority to do that. As The USA’s order of authority, The US Constitution and Army neither cause scission to themselves nor permit it to be done to them.
Portions of The USA are become not The USA.
They are in rebellion against their natural order of authority.
When, in thought, word, and deed, Americans of cities, counties, and states renounce or denounce allegiance to the order of authority provided by The US Constitution and The US Army, they take themselves outside Godly protection provided by these instruments. They throw themselves into the abyss of darkness, as did Sicarii at Masada.
Principle I
Principle II
Principle III
By Artists M and F Graham
At Puttaparthi, Andhra Pradesh, India
