Common Mistakes About Obedience

A Word That Has Become Odious: “To Obey” as a Synonym for Self-Diminishment

Few Christian words provoke such immediate resistance. In common usage, “to obey” evokes subordination, even humiliation: the dog that obeys, the soldier who executes orders, the child who is trained. One “makes obey” as one imposes; one “refuses to obey” as one asserts oneself. The verb has shifted from the realm of greatness to that of shameful dependence.

This degradation partly stems from forgetting its etymology. The Latin oboedire comes from ob-audire, meaning “to listen by turning toward.” To obey, originally, is not to bend under constraint: it is to lend an ear to a trustworthy word. The Catechism reminds us of this regarding faith itself:

“To obey (ob-audire) in faith is to submit freely to the word heard, because its truth is guaranteed by God, Truth itself.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 144^[4]

Obedience is therefore not, at its root, the crushing of one will by another, but the free act of one who listens to a word and trusts it. Quite the opposite of the image of a trained dog.

The Legacy of Modernity: Autonomy Elevated to an Absolute

The deepest misunderstanding of our time is not to despise a particular obedience, but to regard all obedience as an affront to dignity. Contemporary culture makes autonomy — literally, giving oneself one’s own law — the supreme value: the fulfilled person is one who depends on no one, receives law from no one, submits to nothing external.

The Catechism precisely identifies this false conception as a “threat to freedom”:

“The exercise of freedom does not imply the right to say or do everything. It is wrong to claim that ‘man, the subject of freedom, is self-sufficient, having as his end the satisfaction of his own interest in the enjoyment of earthly goods’ (CDF, instr. ‘Libertatis conscientia’ 13). […] By deviating from the moral law, man violates his own freedom, becomes imprisoned within himself, disrupts neighborly fellowship, and rebels against divine truth.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1740^[5]

Yet absolute autonomy is an illusion: no man gives himself existence, truth, or goodness. To refuse in principle to listen to anyone is not to become free, but to condemn oneself to have no master other than one’s own impulses — which is precisely the definition of interior slavery. The real question is never “to obey or to be free?” but “to whom or to what will I grant the authority to guide me?”

Reminder: What Obedience Really Is

Before examining the errors, we must state the truth they distort. Christian obedience is not primarily a power struggle between a leader and a subordinate. It is a moral virtue, which Saint Thomas Aquinas connects to justice: it renders to legitimate authority what is due, the fulfillment of what it commands within the limits of its competence^[6]. But it only takes full meaning when related to God: to obey a legitimate superior is, through him, to obey God from whom all true authority comes.

Three characteristics distinguish it from its counterfeits. First, it has God as its ultimate end: one never obeys a man for the man’s sake, but God through the mediations he has established. Second, it is free: it presupposes a will that gives itself, not a broken will. Third, it is ordered to the good: it never extends to evil, because “we must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29)^[7]. Remember these three traits: most of the errors that follow arise from forgetting one of them.

Error — “To obey is servility, to behave like a sheep”

This is the most widespread objection: to obey would be to follow the herd, to abdicate one’s personality, to become the docile instrument of another. The error is appealing because it contains a grain of truth: there does indeed exist a false obedience that is mere servility, flattery, fear of displeasing. But it confuses the virtue with its caricature.

Servility obeys out of fear and for oneself: it seeks to avoid punishment or to gain favor. The virtue of obedience, on the other hand, obeys out of love and for God: it recognizes in legitimate authority a sign of the divine will. The servile one lowers himself; the obedient one, however, rises, because he does through a man what Christ did through His Father. The obedience that pleases God is never the crushing of man, but the gift of his highest will.

“My daughter, blind obedience, perfect obedience — that is my first recommendation.” — Jesus to Saint Gemma Galgani, words reported in her first letter to her director^[8]

Far from erasing the person, true obedience reveals him: it takes a strong will to freely place it in the hands of another out of love for God. The sheep endures; the saint chooses.

Error — “Obedience means giving up thinking, resigning one’s reason”

An intellectual variant of the previous error: to obey would mean to extinguish one’s intelligence, to say “amen” without understanding. This error appeals to modern pride, which makes critical examination the sole criterion of human dignity.

Yet Christian obedience has never asked to extinguish reason, but to order it. Saint Thomas precisely distinguishes the acts: one does not owe obedience to a man in the realm of interior judgment, which belongs only to God — “as regards the interior movement of the will, one is not bound to obey men, but God alone”^[9]. The obedient person retains his judgment; what he surrenders is his conduct, freely, where a legitimate authority has competence to guide him.

Moreover, the great spiritual tradition sees in obedience not a flight from intelligence but a school of discernment. The Imitation of Christ warns the independent spirit that his own light is short and deceptive:

“It is much safer to obey than to command.”
— The Imitation of Christ, Book I, ch. 9^[10]

Not because thinking is dangerous, but because isolated judgment, given over to self-love, errs more surely than judgment enlightened by a wise authority. To obey is not to refuse to think: it is to refuse to believe oneself to be one’s only light.

Error — “To obey is weakness, it shows a lack of character”

In contemporary imagination, the strong person is the one who imposes himself, and the obedient one a weakling, spineless. The error draws its strength from a confusion between firmness and hardness: stubbornness is mistaken for strength and flexibility for softness.

The reality is the opposite. It takes infinitely more strength to submit one’s will than to follow it. Christ, the freest of men, is also the most obedient; His Passion is not a defeat suffered but a sovereignly chosen obedience: “No one can take it from me: I lay it down of my own accord” (Jn 10:18). The obedience of the saints is nothing like resignation: Saint Catherine of Siena wrote to Pope Gregory XI urging him to return to Rome and reform the Church^[11], while remaining a submissive daughter of the Church; Saint Thomas More mounted the scaffold a faithful subject of the king, declaring himself “the king’s good servant, but God’s first”^[12]. To bend one’s own will requires a mettle that rebellion ignores: rebellion is often the solution of the weak, obedience that of the strong.

Error — “Obedience kills freedom”

Here is the mother of all misunderstandings, from which almost all others derive: there would be a zero-sum struggle between obeying and being free — the more I obey, the less free I am. The error seems obvious: he who obeys does the will of another, therefore renounces his own.

But it rests on a false idea of freedom. Freedom is not the absence of all determination — that would be emptiness, indifference, a weather vane. It is the power to choose the good and to grow in it. The Catechism settles the matter:

“The more one does good, the freer one becomes. There is no real freedom except in the service of what is good and just. The choice of disobedience and evil is an abuse of freedom and leads to ‘the slavery of sin.’” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1733^[13]

Far from killing freedom, obedience to the good frees it from its inner tyrants — passions, whims, self-love. The Imitation observes that it is obedience “out of necessity,” not obedience itself, that makes one unhappy: “Some obey more out of necessity than out of love, and those, always suffering, are prone to murmuring. They will never possess freedom of spirit unless they submit with all their heart”^[14]. True obedience, done out of love, is itself an exercise of freedom — the highest there is, that of God Himself freely giving His life.

Error — “To obey is only to carry out orders”

Opposite to those who refuse to obey, some believe they obey perfectly because they do what they are told — but dragging their feet, grumbling, with their heart elsewhere. This error reduces obedience to its outward shell: the act accomplished, without the will or assent.

The spiritual tradition is more demanding. Saint Ignatius of Loyola, in his famous letter on obedience to the Jesuits of Portugal (1553), distinguishes three degrees. The first is obedience of execution: doing what is commanded. This is necessary, but it is the lowest. The second is obedience of the will: wanting what the superior wants, making his decision one’s own. The third, the most perfect, is obedience of judgment: judging good what is commanded, in all that is not sin, so as not to obey with a divided will^[15]. To obey is therefore not primarily to move one’s hands: it is to unify within oneself the act, the will, and the heart.

Saint Benedict already said the same thing differently: true obedience is done “without delay,” “without murmuring and without any word showing that one is unwilling to submit”^[16]. The inner murmur is not a detail: it reveals an obedience still external, which has not reached the heart.

Error — “One must obey everything, even an unjust or evil order”

This objection seems to silence defenders of obedience: “What if you are ordered to do evil? The executioners obeyed orders!” Presented this way, obedience appears as moral surrender, the alibi for all cowardice.

The Catholic tradition’s response is clear and longstanding: obedience never extends to sin. This is even one of its constitutive limits. Saint Thomas distinguishes two cases where the subject is not bound to obey: when the superior commands something contrary to the purpose for which he received his authority—that is, contrary to God—and in matters beyond his competence^[17]. The principle comes from the Apostles themselves, who were ordered to be silent and responded:

“We must obey God rather than men.”
— Acts of the Apostles 5:29^[18]

The Catechism draws the civic consequence without ambiguity:

“A citizen is obliged in conscience not to follow the directives of civil authorities when they are contrary to the demands of the moral order, to the fundamental rights of persons, or to the teachings of the Gospel.”
— Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2242^[19]

Thus, refusing to obey an unjust order is not a failure of obedience: it is obedience itself, but rendered to its highest term, God. The executioner who invokes received orders does not obey too much: he obeys badly, placing a man in the place of God.

Error — “’Blind’ obedience: a superior can demand anything”

Conversely, religious obedience is sometimes caricatured as total submission, without reservation, to the abdication of all conscience—the image of the Jesuit “like a corpse” (perinde ac cadaver) has become, outside the Church, the symbol of indoctrination. The error is to take a strong ascetical formula as a blank check for arbitrariness.

What does Saint Ignatius really say? The comparison appears in the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus:

“Let each one who lives under obedience be persuaded that he must allow himself to be led and directed by divine Providence through the superiors, as if he were a corpse that is moved in every direction, or as the staff of an old man that is used wherever and however one wishes.”
— Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, VI, 1, [547]^[20]

The image is striking, but it is framed on all sides. First, it aims at divine Providence: one lets oneself be led by God through the superior, not by the whim of a man. Secondly, and decisively, Ignatius always excepts sin: obedience goes as far as there is no fault, never beyond. Ignatian spirituality, far from being a mechanism of indoctrination, presupposes dialogue, a possible “presentation” of reasons, and the full freedom of the person^[21]. “Blind” obedience does not mean stupid obedience: it designates trust that does not demand full understanding before acting, in matters that are not sin.

Error — “Obedience is for children, soldiers, and monks”

Many consider obedience a virtue of youth or a particular state: it is demanded of the child, the conscript, the religious; the free adult would be exempt. The error has its logic: visible obediences—those of rules, hierarchy, vows—indeed belong to determined states.

But obedience as a virtue belongs to every Christian, at every age. All must obey God, His Word, the commandments, the Church in what pertains to its mission, their rightly formed conscience, and just laws. Christ Himself, God made man, wished to live thirty years of hidden obedience:

“He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them.”
— Gospel according to Saint Luke 2:51^[22]

If the eternal Word submitted to Mary and Joseph, no adult can consider obedience unworthy of him. It changes form with the state of life but never disappears: the father obeys truth and duty, the citizen obeys just laws, the baptized obeys the Gospel. Obedience is not a stage of life one leaves behind: it is a permanent dimension of filial life.

Error — “One obeys only when one agrees”

This is obedience à la carte: I submit when the order suits me, I resist when it displeases me. Presented as discernment, it seduces because it flatters one’s own judgment. But it empties obedience of all substance: to obey only what one would have chosen anyway is not obedience, it is following one’s taste.

Virtue begins precisely where agreement ends—except, again, in what would be sin. As long as the order is legitimate and good, obeying despite one’s reluctance is the proper act of virtue. This is what tradition calls overcoming the “own will”—not the will itself, but that attachment to impose one’s point of view that makes each one his own little god.

“Obedience kills the own will and pours divine graces into the soul in torrents. In the practice of other virtues, even the most sublime, self-love can always slip in; but, in the practice of obedience, never!” — Jesus to the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, vol. 2, August 17, 1899^[23]

To obey only when one agrees is to leave intact the root of pride that true obedience uproots.

Saint Francis of Assisi already described this relapse: many religious “imagine they have found something better to do than what their superiors command; they look back and return to their vomit, that is, to their own will”^[24].

Error — “One must obey even against one’s conscience”

A serious error, symmetrical to the previous one: under the pretext of obedience, one could—or even should—act against the certain judgment of one’s conscience. This is the logic of “I was only following orders.” It appeals to scrupulous or fearful souls who prefer to shift all responsibility onto an authority.

But Catholic doctrine is firm: no one must act against the certain judgment of their conscience, because “as regards the interior movement of the will, one is not bound to obey men, but God alone”^[25]. This is precisely the limit: one entrusts legitimate authority with one’s external conduct within its domain of competence, never the soul’s adherence to evil. True obedience is therefore not the enemy of conscience—it is its daughter, for to obey God is first to obey the voice by which He speaks most intimately.

However, beware of the opposite trap: invoking “my conscience” to cover a mere whim or a refusal to be corrected. The conscience that dispenses from obedience must be a right and certain conscience, formed in truth—not a convenient alibi to do whatever pleases. Between servile resignation and rebellion disguised as conscience, virtue walks the narrow path: obey in all that is good, refuse all that is evil, and form one’s conscience to know how to distinguish one from the other.

Error — “Obeying by carrying out orders but grumbling inwardly is obedience”

As seen with the three degrees of Saint Ignatius: performing the act is not enough. Yet many are content with this and believe they have obeyed because they have not visibly disobeyed. Inner murmuring, constant criticism, obedience accompanied by bitter commentary—all this passes for obedience.

Tradition sees this as sick obedience. Saint Benedict demands of his disciples that they obey “with the fullness of their hearts,” because “only he who gives with joy, pleases God”^[26]. Obedience that broods, that takes revenge in thought, that obeys outwardly but disobeys inwardly, retains its root in self-love. It has not yet reached the freedom of the heart. This does not mean one must feel enthusiasm—one can obey in sorrow and darkness—but one must will to obey, not endure it while resisting. The difference between bearing and grumbling is the whole difference between virtue and its counterfeit.

Error — “Obedience is a sad constraint, the enemy of joy”

Obedience would drag along a grayness: duty against desire, rule against life, submission against happiness. The error seems confirmed by all obedience lived out of necessity, which is indeed sad.

But the saints testify to the contrary: true obedience is a source of deep peace because it frees one from the crushing burden of having to decide and carry everything alone.

“There is no true peace without obedience. If one believes to enjoy some peace without it, it is a false peace. Disobedience accords well with our passions, but obedience never does. When one moves away from obedience, one moves away from Me, the king of this noble virtue. And one runs to one’s ruin.” — What Jesus said to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, vol. 2, August 17, 1899^[27]

He who knows his will is placed in God’s hands, through sure mediations, walks with a light step: he no longer has to torture himself to guess the way alone. The joy of the obedient is not that of the carefree, but that of the child who knows he is being led. This is why Saint Francis de Sales, in his chapter “On Obedience” (Introduction to the Devout Life, Part III, ch. XI), recommended obeying “gently, promptly, and cheerfully”^[28]: cheerfulness is not an optional extra, it is the sign that obedience has won the heart.

Error — “Obedience is outdated, alienating, infantilizing”

A contemporary argument: obedience would belong to a bygone world, that of domination and submission, which mature humanity has surpassed. The virtue would become suspect in principle, as a relic of an authoritarian age.

This error confuses obedience with its historical abuses. That authority has been, here or there, tyrannical, and obedience perverted into servile submission, is true—and the Gospel itself provides the antidote by reminding us that “the greatest among you shall be your servant” (Mt 23:11), overturning the logic of domination. But the abuse of something does not condemn its use. Far from infantilizing, mature obedience is an adult act: it presupposes recognizing that one is not self-sufficient, that one has received everything, that one needs to be guided. Absolute autonomy is childish—the whim of the child who wants everything to yield to their will. Saint Charles de Foucauld saw in obedience not a regression, but the summit of love received from God through others:

“Obedience not only directly to God, but also indirectly to God, by obeying for His sake and as to Himself, those whom He gives you […]” — Words of Jesus received by Saint Charles de Foucauld, as reported in the collection Words of Eternal Life (from Spiritual Writings)^[29]

All the previous errors ultimately fall on either side of the virtue, like two ditches bordering a path. On one side, rebellion; on the other, false obedience. The virtue of obedience holds the middle ground—not through lukewarmness, but through correctness.

Rebellion — Pride That Refuses All Mediation

Rebellion is the refusal of all authority in the name of the self. It often dresses itself in noble words—freedom, autonomy, conscience, critical thinking—but its root is pride: “I will not serve.” It is the original sin replayed, man wanting to decide good and evil alone. Rebellion is right to reject evil; it is wrong to reject also the good, as soon as it comes from someone other than oneself. Its tragedy is to take all dependence as humiliation, whereas the creature is made to receive.

False Obedience — Servility, Obedience Out of Fear

The opposite pitfall is more discreet but just as serious: obedience that is only external, self-interested, or fearful. The servile obeys to be well regarded, the pusillanimous to avoid trouble, the coward to shirk responsibility. This kind of obedience can even lead to evil when it obeys an unjust order “to avoid making a fuss.” It has the appearance of virtue but the heart of vice. The Catechism reminds us that the choice to follow orders contrary to the moral order is never excused by submission: conscience then obliges resistance^[30]. False obedience betrays God by believing it serves a man.

Between these two ditches lies the virtue: to obey God in all things, men for God and within the limits of good, freely and with all one’s heart.

The table below summarizes the main misunderstandings and the Catholic truth that responds to them. The left column gives the error in its common formulation; the middle, why it is false; the right, the doctrinal reference that corrects it.

A final family of errors arises from similar words taken for one another. Distinguishing them completes the purification of the idea of obedience.

Error — “To obey is to submit”

Submission has become a word of defeat: to submit is to yield, bend, lose. But there is a submission that is not capitulation: that of Christ “subject” to Mary and Joseph (Lk 2:51), that of the wife and husband: “Out of reverence for Christ, be subject to one another” (Eph 5:21). Christian submission is reciprocal and ordered to love; it is not the crushing of the weak by the strong, but mutual service. Obedience is a noble form of submission—not the submission of a slave, but that of a son.

Error — “Obedience is docility”

Docility (from docere, to teach) is the disposition to allow oneself to be instructed; obedience, the disposition to allow oneself to be led in action. Docility regards the truth received; obedience, the regulated conduct. They are sisters: one obeys well only if one is first docile, capable of listening and learning. The Blessed Jan van Ruysbroeck united them in the same rule of life:

“What makes a man good is the fact of obeying in all things God, the holy Church, and his own discernment, equal obedience being required toward all three.” — Bl. Jan van Ruysbroeck, Writings I, cited in the collection Words of Eternal Life^[31]

This “equal obedience” does not put the three on the same level: God and the Church command; one’s own discernment is obedience only if it is that of an upright conscience, formed in the truth and subordinate—it never dispenses from obeying God or the Church, it teaches how to obey them in truth.

Saint Josemaría Escrivá likewise joined the two virtues: “Great obedience to one’s director and great docility to grace are needed.”^[32] Docility and obedience complement each other: the first forms judgment, the second inclines it to the right act.

Error — “Obedience and humility are the same”

They are confused because they go together; but they differ. Humility is the truth about oneself: recognizing what one is before God. Obedience is the act that follows: carrying out another’s will out of love. Saint Benedict was not mistaken in placing obedience as “the first degree of humility”^[33]: one truly obeys only if one has first recognized oneself as small, dependent, made to receive. Without humility, obedience is mere tactic; without obedience, humility is only a feeling. For the proper path of humility, see How to Grow in Humility.

At the end of this journey, obedience appears as the opposite of what prejudice says about it. It is neither servility nor resignation, neither weakness nor loss of freedom; it is not reserved for children nor owed to just any order. It is the free act by which a person, out of love, fulfills the will of God—directly, or through the mediations He has established—in all that is not sin. It has an absolute limit, “to obey God rather than men,” and a summit: to make the will one carries out one’s own, up to judgment and in the heart.

Its greatness lies in its model. Obedience is not a morality for subordinates: it is what the eternal Son lived by becoming man, “I have come down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of Him who sent me” (Jn 6:38)^[34], even to the extreme: “he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:8). It is through this that Adam’s disobedience was repaired. In the eyes of God, obedience is therefore worth more than all sacrifices:

“Obedience is better than sacrifice, and submission than the fat of rams.”
— 1 Samuel 15:22^[35]

Relearning to obey is not a regression to an authoritarian age: it is rediscovering the secret of the freedom of sons, which is never possessed better than by giving oneself. To live this virtue concretely—means, steps, daily pitfalls—see How to Grow in Obedience; to let it flourish in total trust, How to Grow in Surrender to God.

• What the Saints Say About Obedience — a selection: Scripture, Benedict, Catherine of Siena, Ignatius, Francis de Sales, and the mystics gathered.
• How to Grow in Obedience — the practical guide: nature, degrees, and concrete means.
• How to Grow in Humility — the root of all obedience.
• How to Grow in Surrender to God — obedience carried to filial trust.
• How to Grow in Spiritual Direction — obedience in the accompaniment of the soul.
• Common Mistakes About Faith · Common Mistakes About Hope · Common Mistakes About Charity — the same series on other virtues.

Main sources

• Holy Scripture, official liturgical translation (AELF): 1 Sam 15:22; Phil 2:6-11; Heb 5:8; Lk 2:51; Acts 5:29; Rom 5:19; Jn 6:38.
• Catechism of the Catholic Church, §§ 143-144 (obedience of faith), §§ 1730-1740 (freedom), § 2242 (limit of civil obedience). Full text at vatican.va.
• Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 104 (On Obedience), a. 2, 5, and 6 (trans. by the Dominicans of the Revue des Jeunes, Éd. du Cerf).
• Saint Benedict, Rule, ch. 5 (On Obedience) and ch. 71-72.
• Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, VI, 1, [547], and letter on obedience to the Jesuits of Portugal, March 26, 1553.
• The Imitation of Christ, Book I, ch. 9 (On Obedience and Submission).
• Spiritual quotations, verified against the texts (October 2026): Saint Gemma Galgani (Letters and Ecstasies, Part 1, Letter 1, trans. Fr. Joachim, Brunet/Mignard 1920); Saint Francis of Assisi (Admonitions, III, § 10, cf. §§ 5-6); Saint Francis de Sales (Introduction to the Devout Life, Part III, ch. XI “On Obedience”); Saint Josemaría Escrivá (The Way, no. 56, chapter “Direction”); Jesus to the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta (The Book of Heaven, vol. 2, entry of August 17, 1899 “The power of lady obedience”, French ed. GE – La Volonté Divine, Lumen Luminis, vol. 2); Saint Thomas More (words on the scaffold reported by William Roper, The Life of Sir Thomas More, c. 1556-1558, printed 1626); Saint Ignatius (letter to the Jesuits of Portugal, March 26, 1553, MI Epp. IV; Constitutions VI, 1, no. 547); Saint Charles de Foucauld and Bl. Jan van Ruysbroeck, as collected in Words of Eternal Life (thematic collection, Spiritual Library) with edition and page, primary sources not consulted.