Obedience was always taught in the Christian churches to be a great virtue. In fact, it was often presented as the essence of being a Christian. It certainly has its place in the way St Paul understands it as conforming to the mind of Christ. I never believed in blind obedience. I agree with the German theologian, Dorothee Soelle, (whom I had the privilege of meeting on a number of occasions), that the culture of obedience which existed in Germany ended up with Hitler’s concentration camps. Thousands of soldiers, mostly Christian, obeyed orders and millions of human beings were slaughtered in the Concentration camps. Throughout history great crimes against humanity have been committed in the name of obedience –obedience to the monarch, to the government and to the law of the land. But there is another Law –a higher law and we ignore it at our peril.
I did not really understand the notion of civil disobedience until I went to America and met up with several practitioners and advocates of this kind of disobedience. People like Fr Daniel Berrigan and his brother Phillip, Sr Ann Montgomery and Liz McAllister, Fr Michael Doyle and many others who were not prepared to be obedient. They were prepared to break the law in protest at what the government was doing. I joined them on a few occasions. For them it was the only way to live their Christianity and object to a government in Washington intent on building more nuclear weapons and preparing for World War III.
Before the British reign of terror in the six counties I lived like most other Catholics in this culture of domination and obedience. My father usually shrugged and said they had no choice. That culture of obedience or acceptance was reinforced by Catholic teaching and bad Catholic theology. The only saving grace was the kindness shown by most priests and their total involvement in the social life of the parish. Some people, were critical of the church’s official position and just gave up the Church for a political position of resistance. But they were a small minority. Most people conformed.
With the civil rights movement in late 1960s things began to change. Along came a few people who challenged everything that the Church and State assumed to be sacrosanct and ordained by God. A few priests like Des Wilson and others said NO! No more untruths! No more injustice! No more hypocrisy and corruption! They said: ‘Let us tell you how the people feel and how they see it!’ Everything was changed…changed utterly.
Eventually, I threw my lot in with those who said ‘no’ to the state repression, those who challenged everything the Church and the State and establishment parties said and did. It was not a popular place to be but it was the only place to be if you wanted to have a clear conscience. Of course it meant being accused and denounced by all the right-thinking people.
Looking back at the last century, Mr Hitler changed everything about the Church’s attitude to the state. The consequences of blind obedience were shocking and disgusting. During his reign of terror a few courageous souls in the Churches like Bonhoeffer and Jaggerstater stood up to the fascists. These conscientious people kept the Christian spirit of civil disobedience alive. The vast majority conformed and obeyed an evil dictatorship.
It was that spirit of disobedience that I experienced in the USA. These are the real heroes of our age. In Ireland there is not a great tradition of civil disobedience except for the republican prisoners who have refused to cooperate in order to maintain their dignity and the integrity of their cause. There have been a few brave people who objected to the use of Shannon for re-fuelling by the US military. Was it because obedience was preached as the ultimate Christian virtue? Disobedience and non-conformity was frowned upon in the Catholic Church and resistance was regarded as wrong. Civil disobedience should always be offered as an option and as an honourable way of following one’s conscience in the pursuit of justice in all our Christian churches. The other approach is cowardice.
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