I think the good father was over-scrupulous in equating the kind of disobedience which is rooted in opinion and the disobedience which is obedience to the superior’s superior. This over-scrupulosity is what got the Church into trouble – all it took was to get a bunch of bishops and theologians who held the authority of the Holy See as nugatory into positions of authority, and then all the vocations within the diocese would be delayed, deferred, often destroyed, as was the case in my home diocese, where the diocese was in fact wholly governed for fifteen years by priests in the sexual promiscuity network and their accomplices.
