Members only: Public Author­ity of the Church in the Cran­mer­ian Tra­di­tion

In western societies, the terms ‘political authority’ and ‘public authority’ (derived directly from the Latin adjectives publica and politica and the noun authoritas) have long been used interchangeably, to refer to the moral power to rule: that is, to command obedient action from every member of society in the course of enacting justice on behalf of, and for the sake of, society. In so far as western political thought has understood enacting justice as giving binding communal judgments on past human actions, condemning them or vindicating them, and often punishing or rewarding their agents, ‘political’ or ‘public’ authority has been ‘judicial’ or ‘juridical’ (from the Latin adjectives iudicialis and iuridicialis): it has been the moral power to give law as judicial decision. With respect to political authority, then, the verb ‘to command’ means not only to demand, but also to elicit, action or inaction from the ruled; and the power to elicit issues from a combination of factors: from the evident, intrinsic justice of any command, the communal right of the agent to command, and from coercive enforcement. In contemporary secular societies, public authority in this sense attaches exclusively to civil processes of governing and extends to society-wide bodies which are direct or indirect agencies of governmental policy and objects of governmental regulation.

The term ‘public authority’, however, has another current meaning (also with Roman roots): namely, the power to influence the beliefs, judgments and actions of members of ‘the public’. This use of the term retains the idea of commanding, in the sense of eliciting (some belief, orientation or action), but not that of coercive enforcement. When we consider possible agents of ‘public authority’ in this sense — say, commercial advertising firms, media organizations, academic specialists in one or another field — we are struck by the wide variation and asymmetry in the social scope, the credibility, and the moral status of their respective authority.