Loyalty

The latest Impeachment Trial of Donald Trump led me to examine the attribute of loyalty. We all value it when invoked in our favor but are frustrated if opponents use it to shield our truth. So the trait runs the gamut from goodness to badness, depending on your perspective. Blind loyalty can be based on love or fear. If you are loyal to God, country, and family, this is generally viewed as noble. If you are loyal to Hitler, slave traders, or child molesters, you are widely vilified. I own a paperback copy of the book Objections to Roman Catholicism printed in 1966 when I was in college. The book is edited by Michael de la Bedoyere and contains seven essays by Catholic writers. The objections they identified were: (1) superstition and credulity; (2) worldliness, political bias, autocracy, and legalism; (3) authoritarianism, conformity, and guilt; (4) censorship; (5) freedom and the individual; (6) existential reactions against scholasticism; and (7) contraception and war. The latter essay was written by a Jesuit Archbishop, Thomas Roberts, apparently the most prestigious of the contributors who were all identified as devout Catholics. As far as I know, they all remained loyal to Catholicism despite laundering their collectively substantial objections. In the intervening years, the Catholic Church has continued collecting robust criticisms. And here I am a practicing Catholic. I assume human capacity for loyalty was built on a survival instinct. Early humans needed strong alliances just to have a chance of living long enough to pass on their genes. Loyalty is eminently logical and yet the stronger it gets, the more irrational it can become. What a fascinating seven letter word.