Loyalty and disloyalty are familiar ideas. Employees who keep company secrets are loyal. Friends who gossip behind your back are disloyal. It is easy to give examples of loyalty. But it is often harder to define it.
Is “loyalty” just another word for “supporting” people? Or is it a type of perseverance in attitudes of support, maintaining a positivity “come what may”?
Perhaps the concept of loyalty includes different shades of implications, which depend on context? Soldiers can be loyal, as can spouses. But this does not mean that married loyalty would look like military loyalty.
Loyalty in the Catechism
A convenient place to begin reflecting on loyalty is the current Catechism of the Catholic Church. The English version refers to loyalty in three places:
- Mary’s consent to the Annunciation is loyalty to God (CCC 969)
- People in societies owe loyalty to their leaders (CCC 1880) and
- Citizenship is loyal collaboration with government (CCC 2238).
The two latter examples are political examples of loyalty which will be familiar to most people. The reference to Mary’s loyalty is more surprising.
Mary’s consent is described in the Latin version of the Catechism as acting fideliter. The word fideliter is an adverb of faith, meaning acting “faithly.” It is traditionally translated as acting “faithfully.”
Describing Mary as acting “faithfully” makes sense because Mary’s relationship to God is one of “faith.” She accepts God and acts on her acceptance by embracing God’s will for the world. She lives out her faith, fully; so she acts “faithfully” when she accepts the Annunciation.
Telling us that Mary is “loyal” to God seems to add nothing beyond telling us that she is faithful. Arguably, using the word “loyal” may even tell us less. “Loyalty” is not a traditional theological concept, and it is used sparsely in sources like the Catechism. Faithfulness, however, is exemplified repeatedly throughout the Bible.
Faithfulness
For Christians, faithfulness is the heart of the covenantal relationship between God’s promises and human responsibilities. Faithfulness to God defines humanity’s ethical context. In doing so it creates nested responsibilities within differing ranges of duties.
Jesus noted this complexity when he insisted that people should “render to Caesar” their political obligations of faithfulness, while rendering their religious obligations of faithfulness to God (Matthew 22:21).
But what happens when faithfulness to God conflicts with faithfulness to humans? St. Peter encountered exactly this problem in his conflict with the Temple authorities. His solution was clear: “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).
This is also the underlying implication of Jesus’ observation that “no one can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other” (Matthew 6:24).
Jesus is saying that no one can serve two equal masters. One master must always be subservient to the other. This means that human’s responsibilities of faithfulness must always be nested within overarching responsibilities to God.
For example, marriage involves spouses being faithful to each other. But that faithfulness is subject to a higher faithfulness to God. So, even where wives vowed obedience to their husbands, Christians have always insisted that wives could never be legitimately commanded into sin.
Similar issues arise in politics. For example, when King Henry VIII (d. 1547) began the Reformation in England, St. Thomas More (d. 1535) refused to accept the religious changes. He was duly accused of treason for refusing to obey the king. As he was led out to his execution his last words were: “I am the king’s good servant, but God’s first.”
Thomas More is saying that he is faithful to the political authority, but he has a deeper faithfulness to God. When conflict arises, faithfulness to God must override faithfulness to the political authorities, and so he died a martyr.
If “faithfulness” is a well-established and effective way of talking about religious and political relationships, then it raises the question: why use the word “loyalty”?
Loyalty in Feudalism
The etymology of the word “loyalty” relates it to the French word for law (loi). Entering medieval English through Norman French, the idea of loyalty referred initially to a “lawfulness.” A knight was loyal to his lord if he was obedient to the law of his feudal master.
A knight entered into this relationship of feudal loyalty by swearing an oath of fealty and then living faithfully to that oath. So, loyalty was initially faithfulness.
Talking of “loyalty” rather than “faithfulness” introduces a subtly different nuance. Faithfulness was about relationships between humans which, as we have seen, were nested within deeper covenantal relationships with God. Feudal loyalty focused on obedience to an individual.
Understood in this way, loyalty is a much simpler idea. Loyal subjects do not need to think about the different implications of faithfulness to humans and God. They simply need to obey their ruler.
Although this idea of loyalty is simpler, its simplicity makes it simplistic to the point of becoming potentially dangerous. Medieval rulers often viewed themselves as totalitarian arbiters of right and wrong. Their legal systems often incarnated such ideas, with the result that loyalty could start to become a matter of “blind” obedience to the autocratic will of a ruler.
For example, the murder of the archbishop St. Thomas Becket (d. 1170) was committed by knights acting loyally to the wishes of the son of King Henry II. If they had murdered a non-Church official their actions would have gone unremarked, as no one could challenge the monarchy within a feudal state.
But, murdering an archbishop raised the wrath of the pope. Popes at that time had the power to make their wrath felt, and so the King of England eventually had to apologize and treat the murder as the crime that it was.
The king’s knights might have acted loyally, but they acted immorally in doing so.
Modern Loyalty
As we come into the modern era, “loyalty” has largely replaced “faithfulness” in popular consciousness. It is recognized as an obedience to, and a defending of the interests of, entities which can be as diverse as states, businesses and friendships.
The popularity of the concept is no doubt due to its simplicity, but also its clearly secular origins. In a diverse world, it is a simple way of calling people to a unity across religious and ideological differences.
But the complexities of diverging commitments within the older idea of “faithfulness” have not gone away. People are still faced by demands which can pull in opposing directions of loyalty.
This is recognized popularly with the adage that people cannot have “divided loyalties.” If loyalties do seem to diverge, then there must always be a supreme loyalty which defines the conditions of other loyalties.
But what should people be supremely loyal to?
In the modern world there is a tendency to insist that people should be supremely loyal to their sovereign state. This is Nationalism. Its inadequacy was shown at the Nuremburg Trials (1945) which punished the German War Criminals of World War II.
At those trials General Alfred Jodl (d. 1946) was accused of murder because he executed captured commandos (prisoners of war). He claimed that in doing so he was just loyally following Adolf Hitler’s orders, and he would have been executed himself if he had refused to do so. His claims were accurate, but his defense was rejected and he was executed as a war criminal. The court recognized his loyalty but condemned him for it.
This outcome shows that people should not be supremely loyal to their state, or their head of state. When states are acting immorally, loyalty to the state is not a virtue. It is an immoral vice which is punishable.
In the aftermath of World War II, the United Nations has codified principles of Crimes against Peace, War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity. They have also published principles of Human Rights, which clarify when individuals and states are acting immorally (where immorality consists of contravening international law).
If people should not be supremely loyal to their state, then perhaps they should be supremely loyal to the UN (United Nations)? But the UN is a human organization like nation states, except that it exists on a larger scale. So what reason is there to think that the views of the UN will be more worthy of supreme loyalty than the views of a specific nation state?
If there are no human institutions that people can have supreme loyalty to, then perhaps they should be “authentic” and so be supremely loyal to themselves? But imagine if General Jodl had used “authenticity” as his defense at the Nuremburg trials. “I’m not guilty of murder because I was just being true to myself when I executed the captured soldiers.”
No, that kind of loyalty to self is as bad as loyalty to a despotic leader.
This brings us to the central problem of the modern idea of loyalty. If we should only have conditional loyalty to humans, human institutions and even to our own authenticity… then to what should we direct the supreme loyalty which overrides all the conditional loyalties?
Loyalty to the Church
Perhaps supreme loyalty should be to the Church?
The Catechism insists that the Church was instituted by Jesus Christ (CCC 763) and so the Church claims to be not just a human organization. Could it be the solution to the question of what people should be supremely loyal to?
The International problem of clerical abuse suggests caution with such an idea.
Research on German clerical abuse shows that between 1946 and 2016 around 4.4% of German clerics (1670 individuals) were involved in abuse. The report notes that this compares to roughly 4% of American clergy and 7% of Australian clergy (although these figures have disputed degrees of robustness).
Clerical abuse consists of instances of abuse, but it also includes the inadequacy of the response to it. This has included failing to investigate and “covering up,” which has enabled abusers to evade justice and, in some cases, continue abusing.
The problem of inadequate responses was particularly highlighted by the Independent report on Catholic clerical abuse in England and Wales (2020). Amongst the concerns raised by that report was the fact that the head of the English and Welsh Church (Cardinal Vincent Nichols) seemed to be too often focused on protecting the reputation of the Church, rather than dealing with allegations of abuse.
To put it another way, an important aspect of the problem of clerical abuse has arguably been a misplaced “loyalty” to the Church. That misplaced loyalty has put the institutions’ interests above those of the vulnerable victims of clerical abuse.
Those misplacing their loyalty in this way are potentially making themselves guilty of the sin of complicity in the child abuse. (See “Could it Be a Sin to Be a Christian?”). This means that their loyalty to the Church is sinful, because their loyalty is at the cost of being unfaithful to God.
Ultimately, the problem of clerical abuse shows that giving a supreme loyalty to the Church is as problematic as giving it to any other organization which contains sinful human beings. Yes, loyalty to the Church can be a commendable virtue; as can loyalty to any organization. But it can also be a culpable vice; as can loyalty to other organizations where wrongdoing is taking place.
Conclusion
Whether a particular instance of loyalty is a vice or a virtue depends on the context. Some instances of loyalty are praiseworthy, but other instances are not. This means that when loyalty is called for, people must take responsibility for judging the degree of loyalty which is morally appropriate in the circumstances.
Ultimately, loyalty is not a simpler idea that the older idea of “faithfulness,” as people must be just as careful of underlying conflicting moral demands.
If that is the case, then it raises the question of whether the concept of loyalty is genuinely useful, especially in theological and religious contexts. Perhaps it would be better to revert to the older concepts and language of “faithfulness”?
8 thoughts on “Loyalty: Vice or Virtue?”
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Side note: Loyalty is also a two way street. In order to receive loyalty, those in authority are required to perform their assigned duty. Today, that seems open to question as many in high places appear more taken with their own agendas at the expense of duty and to the detriment of those under their authority. Jodl paid for his misplaced duty; Rommel paid the same price for acting as Thomas More. Which man acted with honor? With high duty comes high responsibility.
Thanks for the response. That is a good point about Vatican I.
I used the word “effectively” because of the Vatican I ideas behind oversight – I just didn’t have the astuteness to link those ideas to Vatican I. The idea (or sales pitch at least) for oversight was there, but I would contend it has been a massive failure. A pope providing direct oversight to thousands of bishops was never going to succeed. And given that I think it’s impossible for a single person to have the only actual power over thousands of subordinates, I think we need to create a new system rather than supplement the current system.
I am curious as to where you have seen this issue be raised by the Church? Outside of Germany, I haven’t seen much of a discussion about Church power structures. I don’t consider Vos Estis to be a meaningful reform. It’s too small to have a material impact on how the church operates. But if there are other reforms being proposed, I would love to hear about them. I’m looking for any signs of hope I can get my hands on.
Thanks again for the response!
You’re right that it would be difficult, if not impossible, for a single human being to have oversight of the whole church. The development of the Papal curia was supposed to provide a wider team to support the office of Pope.
Although the papacy is an ancient institution, the idea of a central team monitoring and supporting the wider organisation is one that will be found in many modern corporations. So the model isn’t necessarily the problem. Indeed successful and failing businesses often have similar models of governance. An analysis of corporate failings (and extraordinary corporate success) shows that it is all too often the values of individuals which is the main factor: not institutional structures.
So, the heart of the problem in the church may be more about individuals, than structures. If this is so, then a focus on structures could even be a distraction which gets in the way of improvement. Often corporations which fail have gone through repeated rounds of corporate restructuring before they fail, all of which took time and effort away from the real factors which needed to improve. So… perhaps the key issue for the church is about how to improve leaders’ values and commitment to those values ?
I agree that the type of individuals and their values make a difference. In terms of corporations, the market, the product and many other variables also make a difference. Companies can fail for a myriad of reasons outside of corruption or their corporate structure. Sometimes the product is just bad or no longer needed. The market can dry up for certain products or services. (Hopefully selling Jesus isn’t the problem, and I don’t think it is).
And sticking with the corporate comparison, bad structures can be run cleanly, and good structures can be run corruptly. Our case in point – the catholic church – has a corruption problem. Are there bad people in positions of power? Certainly. The question I ask is whether the current system fosters transparency/clean operations or corruption? I would say that it fosters corruption. A good system will help people make the right choice. When you know their is a check on any bad decisions you make – and that trying to cheat, steal, lie, etc will have negative consequences – it is easier to make the right decision. In the current church structure, the reverse is true. You know that you’ll be protected if you make bad choices that try to help out the guys on your team above you. And you also know that if you don’t make that bad choice to help the guys above you, someone else will and they’ll take your promotion. You are encouraged to try to be corrupt to get ahead. The whole system works this way. It self selects those willing to be corrupt to positions of power. Bishops need to have their whole diocese after them with lanterns and pitchforks to get removed. They have no structural incentive to make the right choice.
I’ve also heard the “be holier” argument made, but we’re talking about the church. For hundreds of years, these have been – or should have been – the “be holier” guys. They are supposed to be in charge of what is holy. If anyone should be committed to holiness, shouldn’t it be these guys? Either way, it didn’t work. Our church leaders are only human, and they need a structure that helps them make the right choices. And to your point, who is in those positions of power also matters. That is why I think we need to open the church up to get new voices into the decision making processes. The current powers that be have had more than ample time to clean things up, and they have failed. I think it’s long past time to let a new group of individuals try to clean this up.
I would love it if our church leaders acted better, but hoping for a different result while doing the same thing seems futile.
Thank you, a pertinent observation. Vatican I’s model of “papal supremacy” is (theoretically) a way of having oversight of dioceses, but it is debatable how well it has worked in practice. Whether the effectiveness of the model needs improving, or whether it needs supplementing is one of the issues raised by the Church’s response to the problem of abuse.
This puts a very useful and important spin on the idea of loyalty. I agree that loyalty to the church authorities over faithfulness to God has been a problem in our church, and the child abuse crisis has put a spotlight on this issue. Opposing a bishop’s handling of child abuse does not signal disloyalty, but rather faithfulness to God – as this article does a great job of pointing out. Some church leaders have been eager to call for complete “loyalty” when what they really want is complete submission. Loyalty has been a wedge to push people either behind a bishop’s immoral decision-making or out of the church.
We need to do something about this, and I think the most important aspect of change would be to take away the bishops’ absolute power within their dioceses. There needs to be a system of checks and balances on any church’s officials power. If a bishop oversteps his bounds or acts immorally, there needs to be somewhere to appeal to. This type of system effectively does not exist today. With no checks on a bishop’s power, they have the ability to call for complete “loyalty” which is actually an unjust call for complete submission. And if we submit to immorality completely (complicity in child abuse for example), I also believe we will have to answer to God just like Jodl answered to the judges at the Nuremburg trials.