Reasons and Funciom of Authority

REASONS AND FUNCTION OF AUTHORITY Obedience: we are treating the subject fearlessly even though today there is a bad press for whoever declares himself in favour of obedience and of respect for the values and virtues always considered basic to civil and spiritual life. Being free from any responsibility (which is always a cross) and from every concern for a position of power (which is always a temptation) may perhaps guarantee to a person the hope of not being misinterpreted if he attempts to express in current terms considerations which might seem—but really only seem—so out of date.
If the modern age is characterized by the substitution of the principle of reason for the principle of authority, we know that in more recent years a kind of charismatic impulse has been on the increase; in every area of life, profane and religious, it takes the place of reason itself as the motive of action and is imposed in a much more decisive manner. Democracy is the daughter of reason and to it owes its definitive validity, even if it was conceived among the presumptions of the Enlightenment.
The recent totalitarian regimes were linked to a will for power which in its wear and tear fashioned various ideologies as substitutes for the objective principles of the natural law, contested as it was by philosophical relativism and juridical positivism. The contestation is the expression of primordial impulses, at times defined in profane and lay circles, as charisms. In the name of these there are some today who tend to break all barriers. Others, more reasonable, attempt to reassess the relation between liberty and authority, between the communitarian and the directional element (no longer are the terms subjects and superiors used, nor indeed authority or hierarchy) according to criteria considered responsive to the asserted maturity of man, which true or presumed as it may be, constitutes a psychological component which in the organization of social relations cannot be