On bishops and laymen tentatively starting, after Vatican II, to organise things their own way, he strenuously imposed obedience to the diktat of the Holy See.
It will not surprise the euro-sceptics among you that the European Union, in its own parallel self-driving car programme, is trying to solve this dilemma through a system of bureaucratically imposed obedience.
In "Arresting God in Kathmandu," Mr. Upadh yay's first collection of stories, this city is an awkwardly modern place where temples, painted with the eyes of the gods, are on the periphery of ordinary life, peering into consciences but imposing no obedience.
That I was far from extending this code of obedience to the blind code of obedience imposed on the slave has, I consider, been proved beyond all manner of doubt by my previous testimony.
Here, the sacred is not meant to cause wonder, but to impose order and obedience and curb visceral urges.
Indeed, Michel Barnier, the EU commission's chief negotiator, confirmed last week that such an arrangement was not logically possible and the bloc has not so far allowed any country to obtain the benefits of the internal market or the customs union without imposing obligations in the form of obedience to EU laws.
For that to happen, it is futile to try to train our children into obedience or impose on them our own beliefs.
A conformist, he imposed a degree of obedience on the clergy that apparently alarmed even the Queen's ministers, such as Lord Burghley.
Like Chinese autocrats before him, he believed that obedience had to be enforced and that social harmony is a matter of imposing "correct thinking", not of finding peaceful solutions to inevitable conflicts of interests.
"As it is when the student doesn't cheat he merely gets credit for obedience and fear of the monitor," Mr. Rosenthal continued, "if he does cheat he is punished for imposing on the confidence of his instructor".
This old-school argument for unquestioning (and unrewarded) obedience contrasts sharply with my claim that praise is more likely to function as a tool for imposing our will and eliciting compliance.
