By Henry Aloysius Barry
Pausing again in our ascent to the mountain of knowledge we might rest the heart for a little while and minister to it some food and drink or perhaps give it a little tonic. Let us, for the present, supply such practical thought as is ready to hand. Love, respect and obedience to lawful ecclesiastical authority is essential to a vigorous and healthy religious constitution. The blood channels of the human body are frail, delicate organisms and, yet, they are ordained to contain the very life-principle — the blood. The vesture of authority may be gauze-like in its human aspect. One chosen to control may have defects and yet at the same time one cannot have too much faith in the Holy Ghost Who is concerned in the matter. Lawful superiors are His appointed channels and the oracles of God's will. "Let every soul be subject to higher powers, for there is no power but from God: and those that are, are ordained of God. Therefore he that resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God. And they that resist, purchase to themselves damnation." (Rom. xiii, 1, 2.)
The Bishopric, especially in its sovereign head, is the more direct work of the Holy Ghost; at the same time the clergy stand to God if not in the closer relation of the jugular vein at least in the relationship of a remote and tiny artery. The Holy Ghost certainly exhorts rulers, "not to be lifted up," but "to be among them as one of them." (Ec. xxxiii 1.) St. Peter enjoins humility of sway upon the ghostly sires of souls, and, the Fathers of the Church, for example St. Ambrose, St. Gregory, St. Bernard and St. Jerome inveigh against the spirit of "titled churchmen," (In. cap, 18. Ezech.) all of which is testimony that official arrogance and a service jarred, aye paralyzed, by the motive of lucre may be a trial for our obedience, respect and love. God permits these things, however, and, whilst the Lord censures such distortion of power and such deflection from pure motives in His minister, we are not justified in a course of disobedience, insubordination or censoriousness. The Holy Ghost is, none the less, resident in the Church and in authority, , so to speak. It is most sadly illogical for one to try to separate the Church in the abstract from the visible, human-clad, divine authority. Such discrimination seems to be the logic of the so-called reformers.
