Courageous Obedience

This essay is a response to Douglas Farrow’s “Whether There is a Moral Obligation to Disobey the Coercive Mandates.”

Few theologians have been as courageously prophetic over the past few years as Doug Farrow. From the outset of the so-called pandemic, he has theologically engaged the issues involved, and he has consistently done so in a fearless manner. Farrow’s writings have unfailingly displayed courage or fortitude. According to Thomas Aquinas, courage consists of two aspects: “one is the good wherein the brave man is strengthened, and this is the end of fortitude; the other is the firmness itself, whereby a man does not yield to the contraries that hinder him from achieving that good, and in this consists the essence of fortitude” (ST II-II, q. 124, a. 2). Having followed Farrow’s writings in response to our current crisis, I can only conclude that the brave man must have been strengthened in the good and must have obtained the requisite firmness so as to obtain it.

I remember reading an article written by Farrow back in April. Already then, he warned that churches, too, might turn away the unvaccinated. At the time, it looked to me an implausible proposition. Sadly, Farrow has been vindicated, since this is exactly what happened this past Christmas in his home province of Quebec.

Farrow asks whether we are morally obliged to disobey the coercive mandates. His answer is unambiguously affirmative: we are called to resist unjust laws not only by disputation but also by civil disobedience. In fact, the moral obligation to disobey is obvious to Farrow: “Nothing could be plainer.”

Christians are called to obey God first, man second. When human laws (whether civil or ecclesial) conflict with laws that God gives in nature or Scripture (natural or divine law), the latter have priority over the former. Sometimes Christians are called to civil disobedience. When specific human laws are contrary to natural or divine law, we must transgress man-made laws for the sake of God-given laws. Such civil disobedience does not promote lawlessness or anarchy. To the contrary, because natural and divine law participate in God’s own, eternal law, civil disobedience, when properly exercised, is a higher form of obedience.

I should acknowledge, however, that distinguishing between just and unjust laws is not a straightforward matter. As a Christian Platonist, I believe that human justice participates in divine justice (eternal law), which is God’s own character. So, human laws participate to varying degrees in divine justice (and hence in being), and laws increase in justice and being to the extent that they reflect divine justice. Only entirely unjust laws fail to have any participation in justice; consequently, they have no being at all. We should disobey such “laws,” because they are entirely lacking in goodness or justice. They are simply evil; our conscience rightly tells us that we ought to disobey.

Thomas Aquinas makes a similar point by explaining that when human laws run contrary to natural or divine law, they cannot demand our consent. Such laws, claims Aquinas, “are acts of violence rather than laws; because, as Augustine says (De Lib. Arb. i, 5), a law that is not just, seems to be no law at all” (ST I-II, q. 96, a. 4). The Catholic Catechism similarly insists that “if rulers were to enact unjust laws or take measures contrary to the moral order, such arrangements would not be binding in conscience. In such a case, ‘authority breaks down completely and results in shameful abuse’” (§1903).

In many cases, laws are not simply just or unjust: they are more or less just. Frequently, we wish that they manifested greater participation in justice. For example, an onerous tax regime gets my hackles up because the government takes more than its fair share; a 45mph speed limit on a largely deserted divided highway seems disproportionate. Still, I should acknowledge in both rules some participation in justice, since the government rightly demands taxes and rightly limits the speed. Distinguishing justice and injustice requires prudential judgements about shades of grey.

We need to set a high bar for civil disobedience. In most cases, it is my obligation to pay the taxes and follow the speed limit. Romans 13:1–3 and 1 Peter 2:13–17 demand that I acquiesce to the authorities, also when justice is hard to perceive in their laws. The social fabric of society will quickly tear if we refuse obedience whenever we observe some lack of justice or of being. Perhaps that is one of the reasons the Catholic Catechism comments, “When citizens are under the oppression of a public authority which oversteps its competence, they should still not refuse to give or to do what is objectively demanded of them by the common good” (§ 2242).

I would go even further: unless human authority demands that we directly contravene a natural or divine law, we ought to obey. Only when charged not to teach in the name of Jesus, do Peter and the apostles insist, “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29; cf. 4:19). Civil disobedience was called for because a human law directly contravened the divine injunction of preaching the gospel. It is hard to see how paying exorbitant taxes or slowing down to a crawl contravenes natural or divine law, no matter how meagerly the governmental regulations may reflect God’s justice itself.

So, let’s apply my participatory account of justice to the vaccine mandates currently imposed.

Today’s vaccine mandates are broadly of three kinds: (1) civil laws limiting access to services (such as restaurants, theaters, stores, and travel) to vaccinated people; (2) civil laws outrightly requiring the vaccination of all citizens upwards of a certain age; and (3) ecclesial laws barring unvaccinated people from the Eucharist.

I believe the current circumstances put into question every one of these civil and ecclesial laws. Their participation in justice is weak at best, which is why the question of civil (and, as we will see, particularly ecclesial) disobedience bubbles to the surface.

What kind of obedience do the three types of vaccine mandate require? Type-1 mandates require service providers to exclude the unvaccinated from a variety of services. I will assume here that it is no more dangerous to keep the company of unvaccinated people than of vaccinated people. (I do not have the space here to make the case, but I would recommend this short video from Dr. Doug Allen, Professor of Economics at Simon Fraser University.) The current limitations of movement and association serve the purpose of coercing vaccination. Since hospitals in the US and even in Canada are hardly overwhelmed, this coercive policy likely aims at a Chinese-type of totalitarian surveillance and social credit system through QR-passports.

Perhaps civil disobedience was the appropriate response to type-1 mandates right from the outset. One may well argue that vaccination passports are so lacking in justice that to demand them is to overtly collude with evil. I personally tend to agree with this argument, but I can see why, early on during the “pandemic,” restaurant owners, airline companies, and others gave authorities the benefit of the doubt: the virus was truly life-threatening to a small subset of citizens, and their protection might require limitations on unvaccinated people.

Today, it is hard to see how one would make this argument with any sort of conviction. It is increasingly difficult to offer a defense of vaccine passports. From all I can tell, they do not—or, at least, no longer—participate in justice in any way. They do not promote health, and they demonize a particular group of people, which renders them dangerously divisive. Such mandates, therefore, do not have the force of law, and service providers would rightly appeal to conscience if they refused cooperation.

It goes almost without saying that governments do not have authority to impose vaccination outright (the type-2 mandate). The reasons are multiple: the current regime of vaccines remains experimental, they offer significant health risks for a substantial portion of the population, they advance transhumanist goals of human genetic manipulation, and they violate bodily autonomy. The lingering vestiges of a Christian conscience in the West have thus far prevented most governments from universal imposition of vaccinations—though with notable exceptions, such as Austria and Greece. It is not at all clear, however, that these moral inhibitions will continue, and theologians have the duty to explain that coercive vaccination lacks justice and that civil disobedience (by refusing vaccination) is entirely justified.

It is one thing to suggest that civil disobedience is allowed, another to insist that it is required. Of course, one is obliged to follow one’s conscience and to resist and disobey laws that one considers to be entirely unjust or evil. So far, I have made the point that it is increasingly difficult to argue in favor of restrictions on unvaccinated people. One’s judgement on this matter depends on a prudential weighing of the situation at hand. It is easier, I think, for Eleazar to judge that simulating the eating of swine flesh is evil (2 Macc. 6:21–28)—as being directly contrary to divine law—than it is for a shop owner to judge that verification of people’s QR passport is evil. The latter requires a more complicated process of prudential reasoning than the former. Though thankfully, the moral situation is becoming increasingly clear, I think we should respect people’s individual moral judgements on whether or not to embark upon civil disobedience.

I would show no such hesitation, however, in the case of ecclesial imposition of vaccine passports (type-3 mandates). Here, disobedience is not just permitted but required. As Farrow rightly maintains, such exclusionary masses are an exercise in liturgical apartheid, which is manifestly unjust as it divides the body of Christ. It is a case of human law failing entirely to participate in eternal law. While an argument may be made that churches should cooperate with civil authorities in order to secure the continuation of the freedom of worship, two principles ought to be inviolable. First, it is the church, not the government, that governs divine worship. Second, in the church, there is neither Jew nor Greek, vaccinated nor unvaccinated; we are all one in Christ (Gal. 3:28). When bishops do divide the church by demanding QR passports, individual priests have the duty to obey God rather than man.

It should be clear that I see eye-to-eye with Doug Farrow. Indeed, my response adds little to what he has already written in his courageous scholastic article. My own input in this article is admittedly minor. First, I have tried to clarify that justice comes in degrees of participation. This allows for some degree of nuancing: type-3 mandates are most obviously unjust, while injustice is least obvious in the case of type-1 mandates. Still, I agree with Farrow that every one of these mandates is likely unjust or evil and therefore lacking in substance. I have also tried to clarify that evaluating the justice of civil vaccine mandates (types 1 and 2) involves prudential judgement calls, so that civil disobedience should not be demanded but remains a matter of the individual conscience.

The question of courage, which Farrow raises at the very end of his article, is an important one. Merely to write an article such as his requires courage; and actually to embark upon civil disobedience as he suggests requires even greater courage. Aquinas’s comments about courage, which I quoted at the outset of this article, are linked to a discussion of martyrdom. Martyrdom, according to Aquinas, is the perfect instantiation of courage, for “in martyrdom man is firmly strengthened in the good of virtue, since he cleaves to faith and justice notwithstanding the threatening danger of death” (ST II-II, q. 124, a. 2). Civil disobedience, when properly exercised, is an act of courageous obedience to God rather than man. We should embark upon it only when our conscience unambiguously requires it. If and when we do, we should be deeply aware that, in the end, it may require of us the fortitude of martyrdom.

This essay was originally published at the Theopolis.