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To: Land of the Irish
Please point out where I have strayed from my position on the errors of "blind obedience".

The term "blind obedience", properly understood, is not an obedience of errors as suggested in your post. St. Ignatius taught, in his Letter on Obedience, a "blind obedience", which almost resulted in a condemnation by Pope Sixtus V.
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At this critical moment, St. Robert Bellarmine was appointed to write a defense of St. Ignatius' Letter, which he did in such masterly fashion that it remains to this day a "theological epitome of religious obedience." Since the center of attack was on blind obedience, Bellarmine limited himself to this concept, proving in a series of five chapters that obedientia caeca is as old as Christianity and perfectly consonant with the Catholic Faith. Several points in the apologia are specially worth noting: the clear definition of "blind obedience," the Patristic evidence in its defense, and Bellarmine's favorite “argument from analogy.”

At the outset, St. Robert explains that “the name ‘blind obedience’ means nothing else than obedience which is pure, perfect, and simple, with no discussion of what is commanded or why, but remaining satisfied that a command had been given.”

In Patristic support of this virtue, Bellarmine traces the exact places where St. Ignatius found his arguments, illustrations and examples. The term "blind obedience" was explicitly used by at least two great leaders of Christian monasticism, John Climacus and St. Bernard. Climacus says that, "The Lord gives His light to the blindly obedient, to see the virtue of their superior, and mercifully hides from them his faults." And St. Bernard describes perfect obedience as “a blessed blindness, by which the eyes of those who once were sinners, are now happily shielded from the dazzling glare of sin.”

But even without using the expression caeca obedientia, the Fathers of monasticism from the earliest centuries described its equivalent whenever they spoke of the perfection of this virtue. Thus St. Augustine:

For religious obedience to be pleasing to God, it must be prompt without delay, faithful without servility, willing without complaint, simple without discussion, constant without cessation, orderly with no deviation, joyous without perturbance, strenuous without scrupulosity, and universal with no exception. For in the measure that we listen to our superiors, God will also listen to our prayers.
Bellarmine concludes in typical controversial style by answering the most serious objection which even Catholics sometimes make to the blind obedience of religious. "It is dangerous," the argument runs, "for religious to trust their superiors so blindly, because the latter as fallible men are often mistaken, and therefore what began as obedience may end as a widely propagated error, or even as heresy."
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More here, by Fr. John Hardon
70 posted on 02/27/2005 8:04:21 PM PST by lrslattery (Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam - http://slatts.blogspot.com)
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