The Limits of Power

We have a King, and yet no King,
For he hath lost his power;
For ’gainst his will his subjects are
Imprison’d in the Tower.
We had some laws (but now no laws)
By which he held his crown;
And we had estates and liberties,
But now they’re voted down.
We had religion, but of late
That’s beaten down with clubs;
Whilst that profaneness authorized
Is belched forth in tubs.
We were free subjects born, but now
We are by force made slaves,
By some whom we did count our friends,
But in the end proved knaves.
—Anonymous, “It’s a Mad World, My Masters”

The anonymous ballad whose lyrics we have opened with was penned around 1642. At that time, the Puritan Parliament was beginning its hostilities against not only King Charles I (whom, in the end, it would murder) and his Cavalier supporters, but all that was left of Merry—indeed, Catholic—England. So, too, did it make war on all that was truest and best in His Majesty’s other kingdoms of Scotland and Ireland, to say nothing of Wales, Cornwall, and the American Plantations. 

Indeed, the last battle of that sorry conflict was fought a decade later in Maryland. The king’s older son would return as a compromise in 1660, reign more or less peacefully for a quarter century, and be succeeded by his Catholic younger brother, James II. Having two Protestant daughters to succeed him, he could be tolerated by the heirs of those who had murdered his father. But the birth of his son in 1688 caused the oligarchs who controlled Parliament to depose him. He and his family went into exile; their Jacobite (from the Latin Jacobus, for “James”) supporters attempted to restore them militarily in 1715, 1719, and 1745—the last effort led initially by James’ grandson, “Bonnie Prince Charlie.” 

After that ended with the tragedy of Culloden, Jacobitism survived as a sort of sentiment, sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker—but along the way affecting such things as the Oxford Movement and various Celtic Nationalisms. As with similar folk around the European Continent from 1789 until today, the Cavaliers and Jacobites of song and story were motivated by questions regarding three features of human life: legitimacy, authority, and power. Their defeat certainly resulted in the current situation in the entire Anglosphere (not only in the British Empire; in many ways, the American Revolution and Civil War were partly repercussions of that earlier conflict). 

Today, from the Covid lockdowns to Traditionis Custodes to the Chinese population policies, the entire planet is enmeshed in varieties of tyranny which all may be traced to errors regarding legitimacy, authority, and power. Just what are they? Let us look at each in turn.

Power is the ability to make things happen—to be able to convince or to force oneself or others to do something or other; to have the resources with which to do or make others do what one wishes. Today, one often hears a distinction made between “soft” power, which is the sort of influence exerted by churches, artists, associations of varying kinds, and so on, and “hard” power. The latter means, essentially, brute force as used by individuals, crime families, judiciaries, police, armed forces, and ecclesiastical authorities upon those whom they are able to wield their might. In and of itself, power is an instrument—a tool, and so by definition, morally neutral in and of itself. In medieval times, power was diffuse—the king, the nobility, the Church, the gentry, the merchant and craft guilds, even the peasants and serfs all had some. Today, as the Covid lockdown showed, it is concentrated.

Authority is the right to say what ought to be done. Thus, the doctor has the authority to tell the patient what to do. In Church, State, and private life, authority has traditionally been used to regulate the use of power to a specific end: the Common Good. Equally opposed to this is the indiscriminate use of power—all-against-all, which is anarchy; or the use of power for purely private and personal ends, without regard to authority or its law. This is always criminal; but when it is done by rulers with authority, it is despotism. In the Middle Ages, authority was concentrated in the monarch; today it is conferred by either or both the electorate and the judiciary.

In order to rightfully command obedience, authority requires legitimacy. This is usually conferred upon the rulers by a religion of some sort (it need not be one with a God; Communism and modern Liberalism function similarly to the established churches of yore). The faith’s dogmas determine the rules whereby the society is governed; they also define the Common Good and the last end of governance. 

In the Middle Ages, both Church and State believed that the last end of Man was his salvation and that both institutions existed to help him attain that blessed state: the Church by direct application of the grace of Christ to believers via the Sacraments, and the State by assisting the Church financially and in other ways, and by creating a state of affairs whereby the individual was sufficiently secure in his safety and his livelihood that he could direct his attention to his soul’s good. The Church conferred legitimacy—and so political authority—upon the Monarch via the Coronation; he, in turn—ideally—used his authority to coordinate, like an orchestra leader, the various powers in the State to operate for this view of the Common Good. The Church conferred legitimacy—and so political authority—upon the Monarch via the Coronation; he, in turn—ideally—used his authority to coordinate, the various powers in the State to operate for this view of the Common Good.Tweet This

With the Protestant Revolt, subsequent revolutions—such as those resisted by the Cavaliers and Jacobites and their Continental equivalents—the World Wars, and the technological transformation of society, over the centuries the situation we face now arose. The dominant animating philosophies of today’s world have replaced Man’s voyage to Heaven as the final end of governance and the Common Good with the greatest pleasure for the greatest number. 

In a sense, the modern leadership have two faces. One is very egalitarian because the wish to shove their snouts into the common trough in the same pursuits they declare to be the proper end of their subjects is quite sincere. But at the same time, they are extremely despotic, doing their best to suppress alternative views or answers to the questions besetting us. While talking about freedom on the one hand, they are zealous in suppressing what they consider heresy on the other—albeit with the kinder, gentler means of such things as cancel culture or “doxxing.” 

In the meantime, their educational and media industries do their best to reduce the subjects’ aspirations to those of their masters—the same trough. To be fair, to that rulership, anything higher—most certainly what was considered the Common Good in days of yore—is seen as a fantasy or illusion to many if not most of those currently in charge, from which they must struggle to free those whom they rule.

None of this has left the Catholic Church unscathed. What has happened in the State and Culture has certainly affected her leadership to a very great degree—this was the net effect of opening up to the world. What Benedict XVI denounced in 2016 as the nearly general universalism of Catholics is simply adopting the point of view of the world around us. Certainly, if salvation is assured to all, then the Church must point out to her children that they may partake in the moral pig trough offered by the World—the Church exists to say grace over it, so to speak. But those hierarchs who hold this point of view, like their equivalents in the State and Culture, immediately find those who will not accept this revision to be a threat to be repressed and punished.

In both cases, then, all the power available to the modern rulership shall be used to repress those who dissent from their view of the Common Good. What makes this problematic, however, is that it is not merely a question of conflict between two points of view. That espoused by the vast majority of our Fathers and many of us today is objectively true; that which opposes it is objectively false. Now, this is not just a question of good versus evil, although that does explain why the Cavaliers, Jacobites, etc., carried on their seemingly doomed and endless struggle constantly.

It is also a question of what is objectively true, of what actually works. Man’s final end beyond this world of sin and shadows is no dream—although our fallen natures and the depredations of the devil make it no certainty. God bestows legitimacy upon authority for no other reason than that last end; to be legitimate, authority has no right to direct power, other than to bring Man toward his proper Last End. Power, in turn, has no right to be exercised save to that goal. As usual, Dom Gueranger expresses this reality quite forcefully: 

How great, then, is not the dignity of human Law! It makes the legislator a representative of God, and at the same time, spares the subject the humiliation of feeling himself debased before a fellow man! But in order that the law oblige, that is, be truly a law, it is evident that it must be, first and foremost, conformable to the commands and the prohibitions of that God whose will alone can give it a sacred character, by making it enter into the domain of man’s conscience. It is for this reason that there cannot be a law against God or his Christ or his Church. When God is not with him who governs, the power he exercises is nothing better than brute force. The sovereign, or the parliament, that pretends to govern a country in opposition to the laws of God has no right to aught but revolt and contempt from every upright man; to give the sacred name of law to tyrannical enactments of that kind is a profanation, unworthy not only of a Christian, but of every man who is not a slave.

Regardless of whether such usurpation faces opposition or not, there are inherent limitations to the illegitimate application of authority and use of power. When exercised over a long period of time against the authentic Common Good for whose service they were instituted, they tend to break in the hands of their misusers. The subjects do their best to evade the pronouncements of their masters, unconsciously contemptuous of them. Midlevel functionaries shirk their duty, often frustrating the wills of those in charge for mere amusement, if not ideology. The machinery of governance becomes ever more inefficient and begins to totter. Give it a good external push, and it collapses. History is replete with such examples.

Unfortunately, all of this does a great deal of damage, initially, to the legitimate and God-given exercise of authority on the part of whomever rises to the top in the ecclesiastical and temporal spheres. However long this period in which we are living through shall last, we must try to keep whatever legitimate exercises of authority there are around us in view. If we live to see it end, it shall fall to us to assist whomever God raises up to rebuild the reputation and strength of the various institutions of Church and State. Just as all the adulteries in history do not change the ideal of matrimony in the slightest, all the abuses of law and power that have ever been do not negate the God-given importance of legitimate and duly exercised authority, nor our obligation to be obedient to it—however obscured by abuse and misapplication it may be.

Above all, let us remember that even in those periods when Church and State had saintly popes and monarchs, life was far from ideal, and neither authority nor power were exercised perfectly. That can only be in the hereafter, when—should we save our souls—we, too, shall be part of that Heavenly Kingdom which has always been and ever shall be the acme of perfection.

[Image: Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender]