(HOST) Recent news from Poland left commentator Olin Robison pondering the concept of moral authority: what is it, why is it important, and who has it?
(ROBISON) On the very day in January when Father Stanislaw Wielgus of Poland was scheduled to be consecrated as the new Archbishop of Warsaw, he resigned.
The Pope accepted his resignation because, according to a Vatican statement, the public charges against Father Wielgus, some of which he confessed to be true, “compromised his moral authority”.
It was a sad day for Roman Catholicism and for Poland for the charges against him and his subsequent confession had to do with his having been many years earlier a spy for the Communist Polish secret police.
An interesting detail in all of this was that what he was charged with having done apparently was not illegal but was or at least now is considered to have been immoral.
Moral authority often seems to reside in religious figures, although not always.
People tend to impute moral authority to political figures with whom they are otherwise sympathetic. And the reverse is certainly true. For instance, many Americans of conservative persuasion cannot say a kind word about Bill Clinton because of his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky while many progressives (formerly known as Liberals) feel the same about George W. Bush because of decisions and claims he has made in connection with Iraq.
A few political figures seem to transcend all of this. Nelson Mandela is a good example.
In my opinion, moral authority almost never resides in a position or title. Most of us look to specific individuals for moral authority. Sometimes that person is a pastor, or priest, or rabbi, or a mom. Often that person is simply someone we know and trust; someone who, in our opinion, leads an exemplary life. That person can be a parent, a sibling, a neighbor – almost anyone we admire.
Now, back to Poland: Newspaper reports suggest that while Father Wielgus did indeed render some service to the Polish Secret Police he was considered by them to have been a reluctant, recalcitrant and unreliable recruit – anything but able and willing. This suggests to me that there may well be other issues involved, in this highly public episode, namely an attempt by persons high up in the Polish establishment to deny a position of leadership to anyone who can be shown ever to have been connected to the communists in any way.
This is, over time, almost certainly a mistake. Everyone now knows and publicly acknowledges that the communists really were morally bankrupt. They used all sorts of devious means to co-opt anyone they thought could be of use to them at a particular moment. That probably included almost every talented individual in the country. Most of those people are still around and they are likely no less talented now than they were back then. If the current crowd in charge can exclude from the public square all of those people, then the claim of the current crowd to the right of leadership is all the easier.
There is simply less competition.
Olin Robison is past president of both the Salzburg Seminar and Middlebury College. He now lives in Shelburne.