Synodal Obedience

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.