Synodal Obedience

Abstract

This article examines the role of obedience in Roman Catholic clerical culture in light of the ongoing sexual abuse crisis and the pervasive influence of clericalism. Analyzed through a virtue ethics framework, obedience is presented as a mean between two vicious extremes—excess and deficiency—embodied by both subordinates and superiors. Subordinates risk self-idolatry (rejecting legitimate authority) or cadaveric obedience (self-negating, unquestioning compliance), while superiors risk hierarchicalist control or neglectful disengagement. The article argues these vicious forms of obedience have directly fostered and concealed clerical abuse. In contrast, virtuous obedience is reframed not as unilateral submission but as a communal, dialogical process of mutual encounter of consciences in which superior and subordinate jointly discern God’s will through trust, vulnerability, and accountability. Drawing on magisterial documents, Thomistic virtue theory, and servant leadership scholarship, the authors contend superiors must relinquish the posture of the all-knowing answer-giver in favor of humble companionship, while subordinates must cultivate honest engagement rather than passive compliance. The article concludes that this relational model of “synodal obedience” offers a pathway for the Church to dismantle clericalist structures and restore accountability and mutual discernment amid the abuse crisis.

1. Introduction

This article begins with the assumption that awareness of clericalism and the enormity of the ongoing sexual abuse crisis requires renewed examination of the role of obedience in Roman Catholic clerical culture. The goal of this article is to examine how vicious obedience can be born out of a clericalist culture by analyzing the relationship between the subordinate and superior.1 Through this analysis, our article will offer a framework for obedience that subverts clericalism and the abuses it fosters. Our ultimate goal is to show that obedience, when properly understood, is a communal and mutually informative decision-making process—one which becomes a practice of synodality that shifts clerical culture to one of mutual and informative discernment.2 In recent years, the term “synodality” has largely been used to refer to institutional processes whereby Roman Catholic bishops are attempting to better listen to the voice of the lay faithful. Yet, this emphasis on synodality requires more than holding listening sessions with the laity. Ecclesiologist Richard Gaillardetz argues that one of the main features of Pope Francis’ commitment to synodality is the need for “transformation of ecclesial relations.” (Gaillardetz 2023, p. 44). In other words, the relationships between ordained ministers is also in need of conversion. According to Jesuit theologian, Jos Moons, embracing synodality “requires a culture change in the church in relation to obedience and ‘following the party line.’ Without a more positive approach to criticism, dialogue and questions, synodality simply cannot exist.” (Moons 2022, p. 80). For example, Pope Francis regularly used the Greek term parrhesia (often translated as frankness, courage, or boldness) to describe what was needed in Catholic culture. Holman has argued that Francis’s vision of synodality demands that clerical culture shift toward an openness to the experiences and insights of subordinates and laity alike (Holman 2025, p. 556). Hence, this article will provide a vision of virtuous obedience that aligns with the Church’s search for synodality.

Much has been written about how clericalism continues to influence the Roman Catholic Church (Cf. Rubio and Schutz (2022); Wilson (2008); M. Keenan (2013); J. F. Keenan (2022); Frawley-O’Dea (2007)). While descriptions of clericalism tend to vary, common to most diagnoses is an acute awareness of the way power is used to control people who are perceived to be inferior and passive. According to Pope Francis, clericalism creates ministers who feel no need to listen to those they are called to serve. He writes:

Clericalism arises from an elitist and exclusivist vision of vocation, that interprets the ministry received as a power to be exercised rather than as a free and generous service to be given. This leads us to believe that we belong to a group that has all the answers and no longer needs to listen or learn anything, or that pretends to listen. Clericalism is a perversion and is the root of many evils in the Church: we must humbly ask forgiveness for this and above all create the conditions so that it is not repeated.

(Francis 2018)

When ministry is perverted into a power that is used on others, clerics become closed off to encountering God’s will in those “beneath” them. As Francis points out, the insidious nature of clericalism is that it creates a culture where there is little desire to listen and almost no desire to be taught. Our answer to the malaise of clerical culture is in part illuminated by the 16th Ordinary Synod of Bishops, which identified that “(w)hile accountability to one’s superiors has been practiced over the centuries, the dimension of authority’s being accountable to the community is in need of restoration.” (XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops 2024, #99). A shift to a synodal approach to obedience gives Roman Catholic clerical culture the needed breathing room for individual clergy, and the community at large, to discern the necessary uses of authority.

To locate the damning roots of vicious obedience we will examine it within a virtue ethics framework.3 We will argue that abusive forms of obedience can be mitigated if obedience is seen as a virtue that can only be realized within the context of a mutually informative and dynamic relationship. In essence, virtuous obedience ought to be understood as a communal pilgrimage toward deeper participation in an always transcendent divine will. Manifestations of virtuous obedience serve as provocative sacraments of God’s will, inviting the obedient community more deeply into an active life of grace that sanctifies the world by its witness.

We will first offer an analysis of obedience as a spiritual practice, so that we can parse it from the idea that it is merely a principle of organization. By focusing on the spiritual practice of obedience, we are able to offer a case for why it is able to arise within the context of clerical culture in both vicious and virtuous forms. Since obedience is a virtue itself, it is a mean between two vices, that of excess and deficiency; as such, we provide descriptions that highlight how both the superior and subordinate can fall into vicious obedience. Virtuous obedience on the other hand is not a fixed behavior, but a discerned mean that changes with the context of the times and culture we are in. Because of this changing mean, we offer our case for a synodal approach to obedience that is found in the discernment between the virtuous superior and subordinate.

2. Obedience: Spiritual Practice and Principle of Organization

Broadly speaking, obedience is most often described as a relationship in which the power between individuals is negotiated (Ent and Baumeister 2017, p. 551). Specifically, acts of obedience usually require someone to submit themselves to the will of another. For example, children are often expected to obey their parents/guardians; drivers are required to follow traffic laws; nurses are charged with carrying out directives from attending physicians; and soldiers must follow lawful orders given by their superior officers. In all of these contexts, obedience is being practiced as a principle of organization. Obedience assures that the person(s) with authoritative responsibility is recognized as such and that their will is realized in the life of the community they lead. All people are acting out of obedience (whether knowingly or not) on a daily basis. We are constantly navigating the various sources of authority that guide the lives of the various communities to which we belong. As a principle of organization, obedience helps all members of a community recognize and live up to their responsibilities towards one another. It does this by clarifying the person(s) who makes the final decisions, especially when disagreements and conflicts arise. In this way, obedience is a structural mechanism that supports efficiency and coherence. “Through the virtue of obedience, the individual seeks to conform himself to the general moral order of society, which is embodied by figures of authority (parents, church, government). As such, obedience functions as the glue that binds the members of the society together, and which directs it at its communal goal.” (Velde 2017, p. 167).

Yet, obedience can be practiced in a manner that goes beyond mere organization of a community. Obedience can become a spiritual practice that is about transformation of the practitioners. More specifically, when seen as a spiritual practice, obedience is about transforming the way people understand and relate to themselves and the world around them. For example, practicing obedience can be a way of learning to let go of one’s own desires and adopt a stance of openness, attentiveness, and humility to something greater than the self. Obedience as a spiritual practice focuses less on the rules or orders given from an authority, and prioritizes the relationship with the person(s) in authority. In essence, obedience as a spiritual practice becomes a process of communal growth and transformation whereby the practitioners are going through a process of formation.

This is not to say that each instance of obedience is either a principle of organization or a spiritual practice; a principle of organization can serve as a spiritual practice, and vice versa. For instance, while the obedience required of a nurse may most fundamentally be a principle that assures the attending physician’s orders are carried out, this does not mean that the relationship between the nurse and the physician cannot take on a greater meaning due to the practice of obedience. When, through the habitual practice of obedience, a nurse develops a trust and appreciation for a physician, it could be argued that obedience has become a spiritual practice that deepens a relationship and impacts the character of the nurse and her community. The nurse’s obedience can facilitate the development of a community of care that strives for the flourishing of all people. That being said, it should not be assumed that a spiritual practice implies a positive, beneficial development. The development that occurs is not necessarily virtuous. There are vicious spiritualities that cause pain and injustice (Piccone-Camere and Lecaros 2025). As we will explore in greater detail, trust and appreciation can be misguided and weaponized.

The same is true of obedience as practiced in the Roman Catholic clerical context. Among ordained clergy, obedience undeniably serves as a principle of organization. Communities of Roman Catholic ministers are hierarchical in structure. There are men who hold positions of authority over others and there are ritualized vows and canon laws that establish the various expectations of obedience. For example, the Code of Canon Law often describes obedience in language that emphasizes its organizational goal. When describing the vow of obedience, canon 601 states: “The evangelical counsel of obedience, undertaken in a spirit of faith and love in the following of Christ obedient unto death, requires the submission of the will to legitimate superiors, who stand in the place of God, when they command according to the proper constitutions.” (Canon Law Society of America et al. 1985, #601). Here, superiors are described as authorities who issue commands on behalf of God. Of course, they cannot simply issue arbitrary commands as they personally see fit. Rather, their authority is always exercised in accordance with the “proper constitutions,” meaning that their role as superior and the scope of their authority is defined by their order’s legal documents. Building on the work Ladislas Orsy, canon lawyer Astrid Kaptijn has argued that canon 601’s use of the word “submission” (submissio) is often interpreted in a manner that prioritizes the external action of obeying a superior’s directive. Because canon law is primarily concerned with external and observable actions, its use of “submission of the will” describes an organizational concern that fails to adequately convey the spiritual discernment necessary for practicing obedience as a virtue (Kaptijn 1996, pp. 333–36).

Yet, even when obedience is described in organizational terms, we still see its spiritual importance. By describing the superior as someone who stands in the place of God, the Church makes it clear that obedience is primarily a way of relating to God, even if that relationship is mediated through a relationship to the superior. In the ecclesial document Faciem Tuam, authority and obedience are described in a way that places greater emphasis on their role in discerning God’ s will: “The consecrated person, therefore, gives witness to the task, at once joyful and laborious, of the diligent search for the divine will, and for this chooses to use every means available that helps one to know it and sustain it while bringing it to fulfilment.” (Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life 2008, #1). Within clerical culture, obedience is most fundamentally a spiritual practice whereby ministers continuously strive to discern and conform to the will of God. In this way, obedience is a process of listening and responding to God’s call. By practicing obedience, clerics support one another in their shared goal of becoming more conformed to Christ as a communal body.

3. Vicious Obedience

Before we attempt to define virtuous obedience in terms of communal discernment, we want to begin by describing the various ways that obedience becomes vicious. As Thomas Aquinas pointed out, when we are beginners in virtue, we must first learn to recognize vice and move away from it. Vice is not always readily apparent as such. In fact, vicious behavior is often misidentified as virtue. In a culture that is marked by pervasive vice (e.g., clericalism), vicious behaviors such as self-deprecation and/or idolizing authority become confused with righteous piety. Hence, we must learn to recognize these behaviors as vicious. Then, as we grow, we begin to move toward virtue in a more positive manner (Aquinas 1981, II.II.24.9c). By examining obedience through a virtue ethics lens, we are choosing to analyze obedience as a habit that can easily fall into two vicious extremes: an excess and a deficiency. Simply put, one can be excessively obedient or one can be lacking in obedience. So, we must examine each of these extremes in turn.

However, we also wish to examine these vicious extremes from the distinct perspectives of the subordinate and the superior. Because we ultimately want to describe virtuous obedience as an essentially communal process that unfolds in a relationship between superior and subordinate, we need to consider how each role in this relationship might become viciously deficient and viciously excessive. To that end, we will begin by considering the role of the subordinate.

3.1. The Vicious Subordinate: Self-Idolatry and Cadaveric Obedience

Perhaps the most common use of the word ‘disobedient’ is to refer to someone who refuses to comply with the directives of an authority. If a child refuses to clean their room after their parents have instructed them to do so, they might rightfully be described as disobedient. Rather than finding ways to conform one’s own will to that of their superior, the disobedient individual chooses instead to prioritize their own desires. In terms of vice, this form of disobedience is a deficiency. The rebellious child is lacking in conformity to the will of their parents. In the context of clerical life, deficiency in obedience might occur when a priest rejects the bishop’s directives not from a place of charitable conscience, but out of resentment or pride. Rather than resisting a particular command on moral grounds (i.e., conscientious objection), he refuses to obey out of unquestioning rejection of authority. With regard to the search for religious truth (i.e., the search for God’s will), the Church is clear that the right and duty to follow one’s conscience is paramount. Yet, the sacred dictates of one’s conscience should not be confused with the whims of one’s desires. The Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom states that:

Truth, however, is to be sought after in a manner proper to the dignity of the human person and his social nature. The inquiry is to be free, carried on with the aid of teaching or instruction, communication and dialogue, in the course of which men explain to one another the truth they have discovered, or think they have discovered, in order thus to assist one another in the quest for truth.

(Vatican Council II 1965, #3)

Because human beings are essentially social, meaningful conscientious objection requires communal discernment that includes “the aid of teaching and instruction.” As Erich Fromm puts it: “the person who is only capable of disobeying is a rebel (not a revolutionary) who acts out of anger, disappointment, and resentment, not in the name of a conviction or a principle.” (Fromm 1981, p. 685). As such, stubbornness and rebelliousness are forms of disobedience that are vicious deficiencies in obedience.

Obviously, this vicious rebelliousness confounds obedience as a principle of organization and as a spiritual practice. A subordinate who uncritically rejects the will of an authority figure makes it difficult for the community to achieve shared goals. If a minister is instructed to report any and all instances of child abuse, but refuses to do so simply because he feels such a decision should be left up to his own discernment, then the community’s goal to protect children is compromised. Additionally, a vicious deficiency in obedience deeply hinders the minister’s spiritual growth. Writing in the years immediately following the Second Vatican Council and echoing the council’s emphasis on authentic human freedom, Don Gino Corallo S.D.B. warned that, while rebelliousness may feel like freedom, it is quite the opposite: “The alternative to this notion of obedience is not freedom. It is egoism, the opaque shutting up of the individual within himself, which ends in him losing his human sense and the meaning and purpose of his existence. In a word, it leads to small-mindedness.” (Corallo 1968, p. 173).

In this way, vicious deficiency in obedience is tantamount to self-idolatry. The human person is fundamentally social and egoism is a clandestine form of dehumanizing isolation. The more a person instinctively rejects authority in favor of their own desires, the more they close themselves off to encountering others. In the context of Roman Catholic clerical culture, egoism stops obedience from being a fruitful spiritual practice. Discerning the will of God is substituted for following the whims of one’s impulses.4 Perhaps even more dangerously, a deficiency in obedience can manifest itself as rebelliousness that is driven, not by a preference for one’s own will, but by a negative perception of authority. In such cases, previous adverse experiences of authority cause a person to instinctually contradict the will of the authority figure. Instead of following their own desires, a person rashly moves away from conformity without thinking through where they are going. Of course, this is often a survival mechanism that helps people avoid experiencing repeated abuse. Yet, it is vicious in so far as it is a habit that often leads to unintended personal and communal harm.

In contrast to vicious deficiency are the excessive forms of obedience often described as servility, obsequiousness, or subservience. While rebellious children can seem quite vicious to a parent with waning patience, all good parents know that an unquestioning and unfailingly obedient child is not developing properly. Similarly, superiors with a good sense of authority know that subordinates who refuse to critically evaluate the authority of their superiors are dangerous to themselves and dangerous to the community. This form of vicious excess has been referred to as cadaveric obedience (Piccone-Camere and Lecaros 2025, p. 2). Through Roman Catholic tradition, there are many examples of obedience being described as a process of becoming like a lifeless puppet.

For instance, in his biography of St. Francis of Assisi, St. Bonaventure describes Francis having implored his brothers to practice obedience by becoming like a corpse who is always humble and impartial regarding the orders of his superior.

“Take a lifeless corpse,” Francis said, “and place it wherever you want! You will see that it does not resist being moved, nor complain about location, nor protest if left. Sit it on a throne, and it will look down, not up; dress it in purple, and it looks twice as pale. This,” he continued, “is someone truly obedient, who doesn’t argue about why he’s being moved; he doesn’t care where he’s placed, he doesn’t pester you to transfer him. When raised to an office, he keeps his usual humility; the more he’s honoured, the more he considers himself unworthy.”

(Bonaventure 1999, p. 571)

Similarly, the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus say, “… those who live under obedience must let themselves be led and ruled by divine providence through their superiors, as if they were a corpse which allows itself to be carried here and there and treated in any way, or like an old man’s cane which permits itself to be used anywhere and in any way that the man who holds it wishes.” (Ignatius 1991, p. 304). This emptying of the self is framed not merely as a principle of organization, but as a spiritual practice that allows one’s self to be possessed and moved by the Holy Spirit. Of course, in Christian spirituality, accepting the movement of the Holy Spirit should be one’s goal. However, accepting the indwelling of the Spirit can be misunderstood as extreme self-negation, resulting in vicious self-harm. Cadaveric obedience is a spiritual practice that aims to imitate Christ’s kenosis (i.e., “self-emptying”) as described in Philippians 2:7–8: “he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.” Just as Christ was willing to die for the sake of fulfilling God’s will, so too the obedient subordinate should see themselves as one who has died (i.e., whose own will has been negated) in service of God’s will. Yet, one can readily see the dangers of such cadaveric obedience, especially as a catalyst of the abuses of clericalism.

According to theologians Piccone-Camere and Lecaros, cadaveric obedience causes authority to go unquestioned in a manner that perpetuates abuse and undermines the healthy relationships required for true communion. (Piccone-Camere and Lecaros 2025, pp. 10–11) Yet, at its worst, this form of cadaveric obedience goes beyond simply submitting one’s agency to an authority; it can also lead to actively denying one’s perception of reality. For example, in the Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius of Loyola exhorts his brothers to trust the decisions of the magisterium so fundamentally as to supersede their own senses:

To keep ourselves right in all things, we ought to hold fast to this principle: What I see as white, I will believe to be black if the hierarchical Church thus determines it.

(Ignatius 1991, p. 213)

Like all metaphorical language, when taken too literally, problems arise. If this directive is taken literally, the result can be self-negation that is antithetical to one’s human dignity. Recognition of one’s inherent dignity requires us to see all people, including ourselves, as divine gifts to be shared with others. To negate one’s self to the extent that we deny our own perception of reality can be tantamount to rejecting the inherent value of one’s existence. Or, to use the language of Pope Francis, clerical culture is often marked by rigidity—an obsession with external authorities (e.g., rules and rituals) that remove the need for the exercise of one’s freedom. At its core, this rigidity is a denial of human freedom:

… rigidity is one of the manifestations of clericalism. Clericalism is a perversion of the priesthood; it’s a perversion, and rigidity is one of its manifestations. When I meet a rigid seminarian or young priest, I say: “something awful is going on within him.” Behind all rigidity, there is a serious problem, because rigidity lacks humanity.

(Francis 2021)

Whenever our humanity is alienated, virtue becomes impossible. Corallo highlights the Second Vatican Council’s emphasis on human agency and freedom: “It is quite obvious that one cannot speak of truly human conduct at all unless this be rooted and actually expressed in the centre of man’s personality, that is, in the conscious moral exercise of his own freedom.” (Corallo 1968, p. 165). Put differently, viciously excessive obedience negates one’s humanity by alienating our right to freedom and ceding it to an authority. Obedience ought not be the “passive denial of the vigor of one’s own will.” (Corallo 1968, p. 174). The grace of virtuous obedience ought not destroy and replace the will of the subordinate. To use the famous phrase of St. Thomas Aquinas, grace does not destroy nature, it perfects it (Aquinas 1981, I.I.8.ad2).

Obedience, then, becomes vicious when it fails to meet the appropriate mean between the extremes of self-idolatry and cadaveric obedience. As we will see, this virtuous mean is not a static balance located perfectly half-way between the extremes. Rather, it is dictated by the particular circumstances of the obedient act. Yet, before we attempt to describe the virtuous mean of obedience, we will first examine the ways that vicious forms of obedience can be embodied by superiors.

3.2. The Vicious Superior: Control and Neglect

Like subordinates, superiors can participate in obedience in ways that are deficient and in ways that are excessive. A superior who does not listen to his subordinates and who dictates orders without concern for the desires or insights of his subordinates is exercising obedience with vicious deficiency. Conversely, a superior who overly trusts his subordinates and offers no guidance or structure is viciously excessive in his obedience to the will of his subordinates. This can lead to a form of neglect where the subordinates are left to their own devices. Let us examine each of these vices in turn, beginning with the vice of deficiency.

As we pointed out above, one could accurately describe clericalism as a culture lacking in accountability. The men in authority fail to seek the will of God by failing to listen to the will of their subordinates. According to moral theologian James Keenan, there is a distinct form of clericalism that plagues the culture of Roman Catholic bishops; he calls this culture hierarchicalism. This unique episcopal culture “is vicious in its elitism, power, networking capability, and impunity…” (J. F. Keenan 2022, p. 91). In the context of obedience, hierarchicalism can occur when bishops distance themselves from their subordinate ministers. Hierarchicalism arises when the relationship between a superior and a subordinate does not require mutuality and interdependence. Instead, hierarchicalism manifests when a subordinate is unidirectionally dependent on the superior, and the superior uses their power to control the subordinate. Subordinates are treated as objects to be manipulated in service of the superior’s understanding of God’s will. If a superior’s discernment practices exclusively rely on relationships with peers (i.e., other ministers of similar rank) and personal prayer, they are primarily functioning in a hierarchicalist manner. The result is a viciously deficient form of obedience wherein the subordinates are dehumanized in favor of the superior’s own will. The superior, who is called to obediently discern God’s will in the life of their subordinate, fails to listen. Instead, they exert their own will in a manipulative and controlling manner.

Conversely, the superior may fall into the vice of excessive obedience wherein subordinates are given excessive trust and freedom; the result can be a superior’s withdrawal from the responsibilities of leadership. This neglect is also a failure to seek God’s will. The superior is essentially alienating his right (and, therefore, his responsibility) to lead. Rather than being controlling and manipulative, he is neglectful and disengaged. In doing so, he fails to provide the necessary support and guidance that makes discernment possible. As the ecclesial document Faciem Tuam states when describing the responsibilities of those in authority: “A task always to be considered most important today on the part of persons in authority is that of accompanying the persons for whom they are called to care throughout their lives. This they do not only by offering help in resolving possible problems or in managing possible crises but also in paying attention to the normal growth of each one in every phase and season of life… “ (Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life 2008, #13).

When the superior does not accompany the subordinate in the discernment process, he leaves him to navigate the search for God’s will in isolation. It is like an excommunication. The subordinate is denied sacramental authority in a manner that makes him far more likely to fall into egoism. Hence, when a superior is excessively obedient to the subordinate (i.e., neglectful and detached), the subordinate is spurred into deficient obedience. Because they are denied accompaniment, they are encouraged to place excessive trust in themselves in a way that isolates them and denies their communal nature. In this way, a superior’s excessive obedience can result in a failure to seek God’s will for both the superior and the subordinate. For example, Pope Benedict XVI emphasized that fact that our behaviors have deep influences on one another: “… no man is an island, entire of itself. Our lives are involved with one another, through innumerable interactions they are linked together. No one lives alone. No one sins alone. No one is saved alone. The lives of others continually spill over into mine: in what I think, say, do and achieve. And conversely, my life spills over into that of others: for better and for worse.” (Benedict XVI 2007, #48).

As is the case with most vices, vicious forms of obedience in one party are likely to provoke and foment vice in their counterpart. A superior who is controlling is likely to provoke subordinates who practice cadaveric obedience. On the other hand, a superior who is neglectful is likely to provoke subordinates who overly rely on their own will.5 In this way, vicious obedience perpetuates itself and obfuscates God’s will behind the clouds of egoism and isolation.6 When love is not practiced, the presence of God is confounded. The clergy who are ordained to be sacraments of God’s will instead become idols. Both vicious excess and deficiency are idolatry because they undermine the collaborative task of discerning and responding to God’s will.

As we will explain now, virtuous obedience is not simply a matter of listening well. Rather, it is a diligent search for God’s will within the encounter of consciences. No source of authority in the world places the unmediated will of God into our hearts. No ordained bishop, no page of sacred scripture, and no consecrated host presents the will of God in a manner that relieves us of our duty—our personal responsibility—to interpret and judge the message being revealed. Put differently, it is every human person’s inalienable right to experience the Image of God alive within them. We have a duty to strive to know and love God. It is sinful and dehumanizing to alienate one’s share in the divine image by practicing cadaveric obedience. Likewise, it is sinful and dehumanizing to deny another’s share in the divine image by controlling or ignoring their experiences, insights, and desires. It is in the dialectic that we communally come to glimpse God’s will and help one another to live it out.

4. Virtuous Obedience: The Mutual Encounter of Consciences

Having described some common manifestations of vicious obedience that confound the search for God’s will, we turn now to a consideration of virtuous obedience. In brief, virtuous obedience is the process of communal discernment wherein a subordinate and superior work together to share the current dictates of their consciences and prayerfully attend to the interaction in an effort to achieve a consensus regarding how to live out God’s will in the dynamic circumstances of their lives. Virtuous obedience avoids idolatry by emphatically protecting the freedom of each party while simultaneously respecting the unique role held by each party. This is fundamentally a shared, communal activity that is greater than the sum of its parts. Strictly speaking, no individual can be virtuously obedient on their own. To use the words of Cardinal Suenens:

There are not two classes of beings: those who command and those who obey. Fundamentally, there is only one species of human persons, persons who gradually discover and accept the multiplicity, the vastness, and the depth of interpersonal communion, and consequently the sense of the groups in which each one lives, discovering there his true dimension and assuming his own place. Each one must help the others to discover the meaning and intensity of interdependence, of the bonds which only find their true meaning when imbued with love.

(Suenens 1968, p. 195)

So, while we will now address the roles of the subordinate and superior each in turn, this is not meant to convey two acts of obedience done simultaneously. Virtuous obedience is a mutual encounter between free and interdependent agents dedicated to a shared search for God’s will.

4.1. The Virtuous Subordinate

As before, we will begin by considering the role of the subordinate in the process of obedience. Here, the virtuous mean will be found between the two vicious extremes of self-idolatry and cadaveric obedience. In order to achieve this balance, the subordinate must safeguard his own freedom while maintaining deep respect for the authority of the superior. In other words, the subordinate must be willing to both speak and to listen. While he has a responsibility to listen to the guidance of his superior, he also has a responsibility to respectfully share his insights and judgments in return. Any eventual acts of obeying his superior should be the result of careful and prayerful attention given to his superior and to his own conscience.

In the ecclesial document, “The Gift of Priestly Vocation,” the church emphasizes the essential role of the subordinate’s agency: “He cannot limit himself simply to demonstrating a veneer of virtuous habits, a merely external and formalistic obedience to abstract principles. Rather, he is called to act with great interior freedom.” (Congregation for the Clergy 2016, #41). Even if the resulting behavior is beneficial and fruitful, instantaneous obedience that solely considers the source and not the content of the superior’s will inevitably fails to achieve virtue because the subordinate’s full, free agency is lacking participation in the decision. The exercise of the subordinate’s agency requires habitual honesty with one’s self and with one’s superior:

This journey of being honest with oneself calls for a special care of the inner life by personal prayer, spiritual direction, daily contact with the Word of God, the contemplation of the priestly life in a spirit of faith along with other priests and the Bishop, and all the other means that help to cultivate the virtues of prudence and right judgement. In this ongoing path of discernment, the priest will learn how to interpret and understand his own motivations, his gifts, his needs and his frailties, so as to ‘free himself from all disordered affections …’

(Congregation for the Clergy 2016, #43)

If there is a feeling of uncertainty or unease that arises when a command or request comes from a superior, interrogating that feeling and trying to understand the source of the discomfort is necessary if the subordinate is going to uphold the dignity of his conscience. The Church is exceedingly clear that one’s conscience is binding (Catholic Church 1994, #1790). Habitual cadaveric obedience atrophies a conscience. This self-awareness is the result of habitual formation that involves both interior work and external work.

In order for mature agency to develop and flourish within a hierarchical relationship like that between a subordinate and a superior, external factors that impact one’s freedom and dependence must be considered. For example, during the formation of new presbyters, each seminarian should receive an education that allows them to readily leave the priesthood if that is discerned as the correct path for him to take (Congregation for the Clergy 2016, #22). Each presbyter should have the skills and knowledge to survive and flourish without the institutional and financial support of the Church. Without this education, a subordinate may become overly dependent on his superiors, leading him to feel trapped and unable to follow his own conscience when it differs from that of his superiors. Someone who has no other options is not free. Having a backup plan does not mean that an individual lacks commitment to their vocation to the Church. Rather, allowing and encouraging an individual to have that backup plan can create more trust between a subordinate and a superior.

Further, throughout their ministry, subordinates must also be given opportunities to develop their understanding of the contexts of their choices. For example, in the Code of Canon Law, the Church provides an option known as exclaustration which allows members of religious communities to temporarily live apart from their communities for the purpose of vocational discernment (Canon Law Society of America et al. 1985, #686–687). Even after having professed perpetual vows, the subordinate is granted freedom from many of the obligations of their religious life in order to better experience and understand the circumstances of life they are considering as part of their discernment. Education and exclaustration are two brief examples of ways that the free agency required for virtuous obedience is concretely cultivated. For virtue to be realized, it is not enough to speak about it—it must be practiced. This practice is not in isolation, however. It must be done in context with others, as virtuous obedience insists on the tension of encounter.

4.2. The Virtuous Superior

If the virtuous subordinate is called to hold together freedom and respect, the virtuous superior is called to hold together authority and humility. Just as the subordinate must learn to speak and to listen, the superior must learn to lead and to be led. His task is not to dispense his pre-determined will, but to help facilitate the encounter of consciences in which God’s will becomes discernible. In this sense, the superior’s fundamental posture is not that of an answer-giver but of a companion in the search. By virtue of his role, the superior bears a particular responsibility for making that search possible.

This responsibility begins with the superior emptying themselves of their own certainties. This is quite different from the self-emptying demanded by cadaveric obedience. Where the subordinate is tempted to empty himself of his own conscience, the superior is tempted to fill every encounter with his own certainties before his subordinate has had the chance to speak. Because a superior’s opinions carry disproportionate moral and institutional weight, his words can unintentionally preclude the very dialogue that obedience is meant to sustain. The ecclesial document “The Gift of Priestly Vocation” names this danger directly, urging ministers to avoid the instinct to lead with settled conclusions: the pastor “will learn to leave behind his preconceived certainties, and will not think of his ministry as a series of things to be done or norms to be applied, but will make his life a ‘place’ for listening openly to God and to his brothers and sisters.” (Congregation for the Clergy 2016, #120). A superior who speaks first, and who speaks with the presumption of already knowing, ends the dialogue before it can begin. Virtuous obedience requires him instead to cultivate the discipline of restraint. This is not the passivity of neglect, but the active patience of someone who trusts that God’s will emerges within interpersonal encounter rather than descending from one person to another.

This restraint is meaningless, however, without genuine availability. A superior who withholds his opinions but also withholds his presence has not practiced humility; he has simply practiced the vice of neglect discussed above. Interpersonal encounters cannot happen in absentia. The superior must make himself accessible to his subordinates not as an occasional concession but as a constitutive part of his own spiritual life, since it is precisely in the conscience of the subordinate that the superior is called to meet God. Faciem Tuam captures this mutuality when it describes those who exercise authority not as possessors of divine will but as companions within it: some members of the community are called, “usually temporarily, to exercise the particular task of being the sign of unity and the guide in the common search both personal and communitarian of carrying out the will of God. This is the service of authority.” (Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life 2008, #1). The operative image here is guidance within a shared search, not transmission from a private store of certainty. The superior does not already possess the answer he is charged with communicating; he is himself still seeking it, alongside those he leads. The Program of Priestly Formation makes the same point in more practical terms, insisting that “a necessary element in the process of accompaniment is mutual trust.” (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops 2022, #101). Trust, on this account, is not something a subordinate owes a superior by virtue of rank; it is something built jointly, through the superior’s own willingness to be vulnerable within the relationship.

This vision of authority resonates closely with what has come to be called servant leadership, a term coined by Robert Greenleaf in 1970 and since adapted across business, psychology, and political theory (Greenleaf 2008). A servant leader is servant first and leader second: though he occupies a position of institutional power, his primary orientation is toward the flourishing of those he leads, and he characteristically resorts to “less institutional power and less control” than his office would technically permit (Jørgensen 2016, p. 112). Vulnerability, on this model, is not incidental to leadership but constitutive of it. As Jørgensen observes, a servant leader must be willing “to listen to reason, to be corrected,” and must actively solicit “feedback from followers about my leadership.” (Jørgensen 2016, p. 115). A superior who cannot be corrected by those beneath him in the hierarchy has already ceased to be a partner in discernment and has become, once again, the sole arbiter of God’s will. This is precisely the hierarchicalist attitude that we described earlier as a source of clerical abuse.

Faciem Tuam offers a vivid image of what this looks like in practice, insisting that the one in authority …

… must not act like the owner of the community but should try at any cost to have the community move along together, waiting, if necessary, for the one who goes more slowly, valuing the contribution of each one, sharing as much as possible the joys and efforts, insights and uncertainties, so that all feel as theirs the apostolate of each one of the others, without envy or jealousy. Apostles may be certain that no matter how much of themselves they give to the community, it will never equal what they have already received and will continue to receive from it.

(Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life 2008, #25)

The superior’s uncertainties, on this reading, are not liabilities to be hidden from those he leads but goods to be shared with them, since it is precisely in the vulnerability of shared uncertainty that a community learns to search together rather than defer to a single voice. In an article addressing servant leadership and ecclesial authority, Frans Dokman makes the stakes of this vulnerability explicit, describing spiritual leadership as the practice of “freeing others from the desire for power and… support[ing] the growth of the individual as well as of the community,” which requires “the ability to listen to and be sensitive to the desires and fears of oneself and then those of others… to offer sufficient space for the basic human need of safety.” (Dokman 2023, p. 1041). A superior practices virtuous obedience, in other words, not by insulating his subordinates from uncertainty but by creating the kind of safety in which uncertainty can be faced together.

It is tempting to think that certainty itself is what provides safety. It might seem that a subordinate is best served by a superior who projects unwavering conviction about God’s will. But this is precisely the temptation that produces cadaveric obedience in one’s subordinates and self-idolatry in oneself. Genuine safety is not the product of one person’s certainty; it is the fruit of trust sustained within a loving community. A superior practicing virtuous obedience refuses to manufacture the false safety of a single, unquestionable interpretation of God’s will, because doing so would require idolizing his own discernment at the expense of his subordinate’s.

None of this dissolves the superior’s canonical responsibility to decide. Servant leadership does not mean the abdication of authority any more than virtuous subordination means the abdication of conscience; both vices—control and neglect—remain live possibilities, and a superior who declines to decide has simply fallen into the second of them. What virtuous obedience demands is that transparency and accountability structure the discernment process from its beginning rather than arriving only as post hoc justification for a decision already made in isolation. A subordinate should never encounter his superior’s reasoning for the first time in the moment a decision is announced to him; he should have been a collaborative presence, so far as possible, to its formation.

Ultimately, then, the virtuous superior is not a figure who has achieved some fixed midpoint between control and neglect, as though virtue could be plotted at a stable coordinate between two vices. Because the mean of virtue is always responsive to circumstance, what humility and authority require of a given superior will shift with the particular subordinate, community, and moment before him. What remains constant is the posture: a superior formed in virtuous obedience approaches every exercise of authority as an invitation into encounter, trusting that the community’s search for God’s will is not something he administers from outside it, but something he undergoes from within it, alongside those he is called to serve.

5. Conclusions: Synodal Obedience

In short, virtuous obedience is a process undertaken by a communal agent; the superior and the subordinate communicate in a way that manifests the revelation of and conformity to God’s transcendent divine will. Virtuous obedience is, in essence, a process of divinization, and it is never the achievement of an isolated individual. To illustrate this process, consider the description of obedience in the Constitutions of the Congregation of Holy Cross:

By our vow of obedience we commit ourselves to adhere faithfully to the decisions of those in authority in Holy Cross according to the constitutions; we owe obedience to the Pope as well. We forgo the independent exercise of our wills in order to join with brothers in a common discernment of God’s will as manifested in prayer, communal reflection, scripture, the Spirit’s guidance in the church, and the cry of the poor. This vow includes the entirety of our life in Holy Cross, and through it we hope to discover and accept the Lord’s will more surely.

(Congregation of Holy Cross 2026, #50)

Here, obedience is beautifully described as a communal spiritual practice that rejects vicious forms of obedience. This form of obedience rejects the independent exercise of any individual’s will (i.e., subordinate or superior). For the Congregation of Holy Cross, obedience is a “common discernment of God’s will” carried out through diverse listening practices. Notice that this description of obedience is not guidance offered solely to those in subordinate positions; it is a holistic vision intended to simultaneously inform superiors and subordinates alike, each bound to the other in a single act of discernment rather than two parallel acts of compliance. In this way, the Congregation calls itself to a synodal practice of obedience rooted in a sense of mutual responsibility.

Here, the pastoral urgency of this essay must be stated plainly. We have not provided this analysis of obedience as an abstract exercise in virtue theory. We have undertaken it because the Roman Catholic Church is still living in the midst of a clergy sexual abuse crisis that was fostered, enabled, and repeatedly concealed by vicious forms of obedience of exactly the kind we have described. Bishops continue to practice hierarchicalism, treating their brother clergy and the communities entrusted to them as instruments to be managed rather than consciences to be encountered. Subordinates formed in cadaveric obedience learn to silence their own perception of wrongdoing rather than speak out against evident abuses of power. Survivors and whistleblowers who attempted to speak the truth of their experience were frequently met not with the mutual encounter that virtuous obedience requires, but with the self-idolatry of superiors who had already decided, unilaterally, what God’s will (and the Church’s reputation) required. Any account of virtuous obedience that does not reckon with this history is not simply incomplete; it risks becoming one more instrument of the very clericalism it should be dismantling.

This is why a virtue ethics framework is especially well-suited to the present moment. Virtue, on the Aristotelian and Thomistic accounts we have relied upon throughout, is never a fixed midpoint that can be calculated in the abstract and then applied uniformly across every circumstance; the mean of a virtue is always dictated by the particular situation in which it is practiced. A community with no history of abused authority might reasonably accept a somewhat wider latitude in how obedience is understood and practiced. The Roman Catholic Church, in its current clericalist state, enjoys no such latitude. Given the scale and severity of the abuse crisis, and given how thoroughly clericalism and hierarchicalism have shaped the ordinary exercise of clerical authority, the virtuous mean of obedience today must be calibrated with particular vigilance against the vices of control, neglect, self-idolatry, and cadaveric obedience.7

Superiors bear a special burden here, since it is disproportionately the abuse of their authority that has done the deeper damage to the Body of Christ. But subordinates, too, must resist the temptation to treat unquestioning compliance as piety, since it was precisely this misidentification of vice as virtue that allowed abuse to be so easily concealed. Any community genuinely committed to virtuous obedience must continuously hold the history of clerical abuse in mind, not as a closed chapter to be regretted, but as the living context that determines what faithfulness demands right now. When synodal obedience is practiced, the decision made by a superior will be the manifestation of a mutually informative discernment process. As a principle of organization, obedience is often employed to suppress conflict and tension. On the contrary, as a spiritual practice, synodal obedience is leaning into the unavoidable conflicts and tensions that naturally arise even in virtuous loving communities. It is accepting that God is found in the relationship, not as a fixed source of authority.

At the outset of this essay, we said that our primary goal was to articulate ways the Church can recognize and avoid abusive forms of obedience that perpetuate clericalism. In recent years, the Church’s leaders have espoused synodality as a characteristic and process by which the Church might better mitigate its ongoing abuses of ministerial authority (i.e., clericalism). According to Christophe Pierre, synodality is an ecclesial spirituality that “can be lived at every level of the Church, offering the faithful a sense of shared responsibility for her mission. A synodal Church is a Church that walks together.” (Pierre 2021, p. 4). This commitment to walking together has, in recent years, motivated the Church to experiment with ways to better listen to the voices of the lay faithful. Yet, synodality should also be found in the relationship between clerics, including superiors and subordinates. Describing the impact of synodality on his own Ignatian spirituality, Jos Moons writes that…

…discernment is not an individual process; it needs the purification brought about by sharing, questions, suggestions, exploration… Jesuits have in past decades been experimenting with ‘common discernment’. While I think it is fair to say that we ourselves are still learning how it works, the following elements are essential both for common discernment and a synodal process: getting to know one another, clear information, praying together, sharing.

(Moons 2022, p. 88)

When synodality allows obedience to avoid vicious forms of self-idolatry or self-negation, it becomes the institutional manifestation of the communion ecclesiology insisted upon by the Second Vatican Council and emphatically championed by Pope Francis during his pontificate.

By adopting a commitment to accompaniment and mutual discernment, Church leaders can begin to correct the harmful lack of transparency and accountability that have fostered and covered-up a culture of abuse in the Church. This scandal that has shaken the church in recent decades must be taken seriously as the proper context for understanding obedience. We have used a virtue ethics framework in this essay precisely because virtue ethics insists that the particular contexts of the current moment will dictate what a virtuous mean will look like. Given the hierarchicalism and clericalism that have dangerously (and disastrously) privileged bishops and other clerical leaders, we believe that seeing obedience as a spiritual practice of mutual encounter of consciences can help to mitigate the abuses of clerical power that perdure. If virtuous obedience is practiced as a foundation of ecclesial authority, then the synodality that the Church strives toward will be able to take root in the life of the Church. In this way, virtuous obedience becomes a synodal obedience whereby superiors and subordinates collaborate to move the Church onward in their shared mission of becoming a sacrament of Christ for the world.

We conclude with the words of Leo Josef Cardinal Suenens: “Obedience does not primarily mean submission. It is the welcoming attitude towards the body which constitutes the authorized expression of the common good and which enables one to pay constant attention to this community dimension and avoid the danger of self-centered attitude.” (Suenens 1968, pp. 193–94). Synodality is a form of spiritual existence that grounds people in the truth of their communal nature. Synodal obedience, then, is a communal virtue that rejects the idolatry of self-assured certainty. Instead, synodal obedience is a habitual character of a community that seeks God through loving encounter.