“My Son now I will show you the way of peace and true liberty: always seek to do the will of another and not thine own” (Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ).
The Way of Obedience
Continuing our survey of the Wellsprings of Grace, from which an evangelical Catholic drinks, we now come to one that fundamentally distinguishes an evangelical Catholic spirituality from that of the evangelical Protestant — the way each views and responds to authority in the Church. The various evangelical movements of the Church’s history share many things in common, such as a desire for renewal in the Church, emphasis upon the importance of personal conversion and devotion to Scripture, concern for lay holiness and ministry, the occurrence of fervent preaching, and, finally, most pertinent to our present topic of obedience, a shared experience of testing and trial at the hands of Church authorities. In these experiences of testing and trial, the evangelical Catholic finds the guiding hand of God and endeavors to live with a humble deference to the Church.
Peter Waldo and St. Francis of Assisi
Two evangelical Catholic movements of the high middle ages, the Waldensians and Franciscans, illustrate well, contrasting responses to obedience. When the Archbishop of Lyons forbade Peter Waldo and his followers to preach, Peter appealed to the Pope, who gave him and his followers permission to preach, but only in the dioceses where they had the permission of the local bishop. When this restriction appeared too hampering, the Waldensians, in their zeal, disregarded it, believing they ought to obey God rather than man, and were eventually excommunicated. St. Francis, likewise, went to Rome and humbly submitted himself to the Pope, who had a dream the very night before St. Francis’ arrival, in which Christ told him that it was through St. Francis that He was going to rebuild the Church. The Pope gave him permission but with the same caveat that he and his followers could only preach in dioceses where they had the permission of the local bishop. St. Francis obeyed the injunction, trusting that God would guide him and his brothers through this directive. He went on to renew the medieval church, and his influence is still strong today. For him, obeying legitimately exercised God-ordained authority was obeying God.
St. Teresa of Avila and Martin Luther
Martin Luther and Teresa of Avila also had to respond to apparent hierarchical obstacles in the fulfillment of their mission and calling. Though the evangelical Catholic finds the courage of Martin Luther both admirable and inspiring; he will, in the final analysis, find the self-effacing and humble obedience of Teresa of Avila to be a safer road to hearing and following the voice of God. While Protestants, following Luther, have tended to defend the supremacy of the individual conscience over the authority of the Church, the evangelical Catholic wisely harbors a certain distrust for his or her personal opinions, placing a high premium on obedience to Church authority, for he heeds the words of the Scriptures: “Likewise you younger members be subject to the presbyters. And all of you, clothe yourselves with humility in your dealings with one another, or ‘God opposes the proud, but bestows favor on the humble. So humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God that He may exalt you in due time’” (1 Peter 5:5-6). He knows the beauty and believes the truth of words such as those from St. Thomas à Kempis in The Imitation of Christ: “My son, now I will show you the way of peace and true liberty: always seek to another’s will rather than thine own.”