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Better is a poor and wise youth than an old and foolish king who will no longer take advice (Eccl 4:13).
Every man who has a cause must have his coterie.
—Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881).
Advisor-advisee, counselor-counselee, mentor-mentee: the dynamics in such senior-subordinate relationships are practically impossible to determine in advance and difficult to analyze even in retrospect. Consider the rapport (or subsequent friction) between, say, Colonel House and Woodrow Wilson, or between Harry Hopkins and Franklin Roosevelt, or between Sherman Adams and Dwight Eisenhower, or between Bobby and John F. Kennedy, or between Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon. Why should we be surprised that the chemistry between Elon Musk and Donald Trump, which seemed for a time to be symbiotic, has led to a massive explosion?
Morally wandering and intellectually weak leaders need counsel, of course. Think of Warren G. Harding. But doctrinaire and domineering leaders may need advice even more than their feckless counterparts. Andrew Jackson had his “kitchen cabinet.” Henry Ford is supposed to have said something to the effect that his greatest achievement had been to surround himself with advisors smarter than he. Doris Kearns Goodwin celebrated Lincoln’s genius in establishing for himself a “team of rivals.” The first chore of new leaders, then, whether presidents or popes, is the selection of their staffs and the creation of “ground rules” for submission of advice from them.
Almost without exception, wise counselors are regarded as those who will speak “truth to power.” One thinks of Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, advising Moses–somewhat along the lines of a nascent subsidiarity–to organize a judicial system to handle domestic disputes and thus to relieve Moses of an impossible range of duties (Exodus 18:13-27); or of the court prophet Nathan, who sternly rebuked David for his adultery with Bathsheba and his role in the death of her husband Uriah (2 Sam 12:1-15); or of the young Elihu, who attempted to confute Job (Job 33-37).
Our Lady is known as “Mother of Good Counsel,” and Our Lord referred to the Holy Spirit as the “Advocate” or “Counselor” (John 14:26). “Counsel,” we know, is among the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit (CCC #1831). St. John Vianney is rightly famous for spending many hours in the confessional, forgiving and retaining sin, counseling, and consoling. St. Padre Pio is similarly well known. The Book of Proverbs, largely attributed to Solomon, also emphasizes the critical importance of wise counsel: “Where there is no guidance, a people falls; but in an abundance of counselors there is safety” (11:14 RSV). Solomon himself, renowned for his noble character (1 Kings 3:9), was, for some time, widely sought after for his sage advice. We may conclude that good character is the wellspring of good counsel.
Solomon, though, finally failed as counselor and as King (1 Kings 11:1-8) because he fell into the (ubiquitous) errors precisely warned against in Deuteronomy (17:16-17), concerning weapons (love of conquest), women (debauchery), and wealth (avarice).
Scripture provides much evidence against the dangers of duplicitous counselors and mentors. Ahithophel, who advised King David and later Absalom, was so highly regarded that asking for his judgment was compared to seeking the word of God (2 Samuel 16:23). His story, though, serves as a cautionary tale about misplaced loyalty and betrayal. He was a respected counselor in the court of King David (1 Chr 27:33) but, for reasons of revenge and pride, he betrayed David, becoming counselor to the rebellious Absalom. When Absalom rejected Ahithophel’s sound tactical advice, Ahithophel knew that Absalom would lose the war against David, and so he committed suicide by hanging himself (2 Sam 17:23). Ahithophel is regarded as a type, or allegorical emblem, of the New Testament Judas, who committed treachery against Our Lord and later hanged himself (Mt 26:47-48, 27:5) in despair.
That story of course is incomplete without mention of counselor (and “double-agent”) Hushai, who remained in Jerusalem after David fled and, on David’s orders, successfully insinuated himself into Absalom’s camp and confidence, spied on behalf of David (2 Sam 15:33-37) against Absalom, and gave Absalom tainted advice (against the better military counsel of Ahithophel), leading, finally, to the death of Absalom. Scripture does not tell us about Hushai’s fate after David’s victory. Was his deception commended (like Rahab’s [Joshua 2]) or, after a fashion, condemned (like that of Ananias and Sapphira [Acts 5])? Was Henry Stimson (FDR’s Secretary of War) right in saying that “Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail”? Hushai, after all, had surely read Absalom’s “mail”!
Bad counselors include, certainly, the serpent (Gen 3:1-6), Rehoboam’s young “tax” advisors (1 Kings 12:6-15), Job’s friends (2:11-13, 16:1-2), and the murderous Jezebel (1 Kings 21:5-16). Their evil, though, is tepid compared with today’s raging dangers. As Alan Dershowitz points out in his new book The Preventive State, jurisprudential counselors have little wisdom to impart about the legality of prevention/deterrence as opposed to the norms of reaction/retaliation. Torture may be “gravely against justice and charity” (CCC #2296), but are there any imaginable perils which might lead to its toleration? Dershowitz suggests the possibility of “torture warrants,” limited “only to the most extreme situation,” granted only by the Chief Justice of the United States, and using only nonlethal means (p. 96). It’s clear that this counsel in situations of grave stress and danger is politically controversial and ethically inflammable. The tension between security and liberty is urgent today, but it is also timeless, as The Beginnings of Politics: Power in the Biblical Book of Samuel, by Moshe Halbertal and Stephen Holmes, testifies in its study of power, betrayal, and deceitful counselors. It segues only too well into Dershowitz’s new and provocative study.
If it’s true that every leader–from priest and bishop to pope, and from premier and procurator to president–needs virtuous advisors and wise counsel, then it’s equally true that, as Robert Caro sententiously put it, “Power reveals.” When leaders are morbidly fascinated with, and develop moral blindness because of, the meretricious and malignant fruits of office, we see (and suffer from)
them as they are. Henry Kissinger once said that power is the ultimate aphrodisiac, and its seductive charms and deleterious effects can imperil both leaders and their counselors.
Moral leaders and their counselors do not always produce virtuous policies and politics; but immoral leaders and their counselors always produce vicious policies and politics. Whoever is corrupt cannot produce the fruits of a goodness he does not have (cf. Mt 7:17-20 and Luke 6:43-44).
That leaders need wise counsel in no way obscures the reality that either they, or their advisors, will know it (i.e., sound advice) when they see it–as sapiential testimony, through the centuries, informs us (consider just Proverbs: 1:24-25, 29-33; 5:13; 12:15; 13:10; 15:32-33; 19:20; and 28:26). But lust for power–Thomas Hobbes’s implied libido dominandi–is to leaders and counselors what macular degeneration is to viewers. Knowing what is right to do does not ensure doing what is right. The natural moral law is more akin to soft law than to black-letter law. What is written in our hearts (Romans 2:15) may not be done by our hands (James 4:17). Power, after all, does reveal—as it did, finally and tragically, with Solomon and his son David. Power, as Lord Action famously told us, tends to corrupt—at all levels and in all times.
In saying that “The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse,” Edmund Burke highlighted the problem of the calculating, corrupt, and cunning counselor. Attracted to power and its perquisites–and desiring to maintain his financially or psychologically lucrative position–the cunning counselor often cultivates the leader by the sin of flattery (CCC #2480), which is tantamount to a refusal to speak “truth to power.” Until the Parousia, there is no perfect medicine for such corruption (Jeremiah 17:5).
There is, however, a traditional prescription for the cultivation of the kind of character which is the fountain of both good leaders and wise counselors: the four cardinal virtues, than which “nothing in life is more profitable” (Wisdom 8:7).
- Prudence is “right reason in action,” St. Thomas Aquinas taught (CCC #1805). The prudential ability to discern what ought to be done and then to have the good sense to reconcile that with what can be done is the heart of statecraft.
- Justice is “the constant and firm will to give their due to God and neighbor” (CCC #1807). It incorporates the satellite virtue of truth-telling which, in turn, means speaking the truth rightly ordered to charity.
- Fortitude (CCC #1808) concerns “firmness in difficulties and constancy in the pursuit of the good.” Counselors must have the plain and resolute moral courage to uphold him “who was stumbling, and [to make] firm the feeble knees” (Job 4:4; cf. Hebrews 12:12). Here is the core of good counseling, demonstrated, as well, by Esther, who says she will confront (and faithfully counsel) the errant king, even though it may mean her life (4:16).
- Temperance (see CCC #1809): Pete Hegseth recently promised to stop drinking if he became Secretary of Defense. Any counselor given to intemperance (and thus controlled by his appetites and urges) cannot be depended upon to provide prudent, truthful, and courageous advice. The disqualifying principle of “moral turpitude” is sometimes regrettably a victim of contemporary moral relativism—after all, how dare we judge? Neglect, displacement, or rejection of the principle of moral turpitude–refusal to discharge the malfeasant and the malevolent (as King Saul was “fired” in 1 Sam 15:23)–signals imminent danger in any consideration of wise counsel and of wise counselors. “Counsel involving right and wrong should never be sought from a man who does not say his prayers,” astutely wrote Bishop Fulton Sheen (in Peace of Soul). Nor sought, we might add, from someone who practices or tolerates chicanery, fraud, or evil.
Adherence to the cardinal virtues is no guarantee of either wisdom or virtue, for cognition, emphatically, is not equal to volition. But we know that ignorance of, or contempt for, the essence of those four enduring virtues leads to moral, then to political, corruption and catastrophe. Advisors purporting to be “wise” and chosen for that attribute, failing to marshal, mirror, and model the cardinal virtues, will, like the Pharaoh’s advisors, “give stupid counsel” (Isaiah 19:11 RSV-CE).
Leaders, surely, need sound, not stupid, counsel. But wise advice is much like any other instruction, for its worth depends upon the heart of the one seeking it: Quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur—a thing is received according to the mode of the receiver (a phrase attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas). Leaders, in short, get the inner circle–the confidants–whom they cultivate, matriculate, and tolerate. It was, moreover, Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821), the Catholic political thinker and opponent of the moral insanity of the French Revolution, who may have said all of this most simply in an 1811 letter: “In a democracy, people get the leaders they deserve”—and the counselors!