Zitat am Sonntag

Authority cannot be effective unless its subjects accept it. Acceptance must be threefold. First Catholics ought to listen to the guidance by authority and the reasons it gives for its judgments and if these reasons are objectively valid submit of their objective truth. Second, Catholics must also intelligently accept the guidance of authority even when authority cannot give convincing reasons. Third, Catholics must refuse acceptance of authoritative teachings only when authority exceeds its legitimate limits, or contradicts itself or the evident truth. The notion that we ought to decide everything for ourselves and reject whatever we do not understand pervades our individualistic culture, but is absurd, since in fact we must often trust the guidance of others more qualified than we are. Since to be a Christian requires us to accept God's guidance, whether we understand it or not, and to be a Catholic Christian we must believe that God has chosen to guide us through the successors of the apostles, it is totally contradictory to refuse to accept that guidance, within its proper limits and when one is not certain that it is mistaken,

Benedict Ashley, The Ashley Reader: Redeeming Reason, p.90