The Apostle speaks with "authority" from on high, not on the basis of his own expertise or worthiness. Again: the authority of the message may contrast with the poverty of the deliverer. All authority is from on high; all earthly authority comes down from heaven, however personally unworthy the recipient may be. So, Kierkegaard exemplifies: To say that I honor and obey my father because he is wise and kind would be an expression of filial impiety. I honor and obey my father because he is my father, whether he is wise or foolish, kind or mean. That is reverence for authority. Another example: driving down the highway I am waved to the side of the road by a police officer. I pull over obediently. I do so not because of his integrity, kindness, or wisdom. I pull over because he is a policeman; he has authority. In the same spirit I confess to a priest; his personal worthiness is irrelevant.
The distinguishing constituent of modernity and especially cultural liberalism, is disparagement of authority. Liberalism is individualism. It is the Protestant renunciation of Tradition and Church authority. It is the nominalist denial of interior form, of formal causality, of structure and boundary. It is the Enlightenment exaltation of reason uprooted from faith. It is the idolatry of the autonomous, isolated, lonely individual.
Catholicism is above all a religion of authority: that of the hierarchy, Tradition, scripture and of Jesus Christ. However here we do well to distinguish between apostolic office (priest, bishop, pope) and apostolic charism (the annointing of the Holy Spirit). As Catholics we defer to the objective apostolic authority of the office even where the charism is lacking; as we obey the traffic signal of a vicious, mendacious, promiscuous, racist, sociopathic police officer.
Authority really makes sense only in a two-tiered universe: where there is a higher, heavenly realm, that visits us and remains with us and leaves a hierarchical order behind it: bishop, state, father/mother et al. Without the supernatural, we are all equal; it is one against all; and authority is basically oppression and control.
Apostolic Preaching, by the apostles themselves and by saints like St. Anthony, is the Spirit-empowered speech that changes hearts, immediately. It is rare.
I consider where I have experienced it. I don't know it in its pure form by which hardened sinners are miraculously converted. But surprisingly, my strongest encounter was with the Charismatic Renewal within the Catholic Church. Ironically, the early leaders (Martin, Clark, Scanlon, etc.) drew upon the pentecostal and evangelical traditions and there fierce sense of biblical authority to bring to the Catholic Church a retrieval of apostolic authority just when the mainstream liberal Church was backing away from all forms of Catholic (allegedly triumphalist) authority. In that atmosphere of worship, thanksgiving, expectancy and love I experienced that teaching as apostolic and authoritative.
Years later, I experienced something similar in the Neocatechumenal Way and the catechesis of Kiko Arguello. It was a distinctive formulation; contrasting with the charismatic and traditional tridintine Catholic; but orthodox as well as pure, powerful and fruitful. Around that same time I became familiar with the 12-step program and strongly sensed an analagous "apostolic authority" in the practice of powerlessness, surrender, accountability and transparency in the Catholic-like rigor of AA meetings, sponsorship and practice. It has a strong internal form, structure, and sense of authority.
More recently my wife and I have benefited from participation in Our Lady's Missionaries of the Eucharist, an association of the faithful, guided by a holy consecrated virgin (formerly religious sister) named Sister Joan Noreen. Sister Joan has submerged herself entirely in the life of the Church, specifically the Eucharist, also devotion to Mary, the daily prayer of the Chruch, the teachings of the saints and popes, and simplicity of life. Her talks are predictably inspiring: she speaks with the authority of holiness, with the apostolic charism because she is herself surrendered (not perfectly of course) to the Holy Spirit.
Apostolic preaching/teaching like this is rare. The traditional Catholic teaching with which we were raised prior to 1965 benefited from a residual apostolic authority because it echoed the teaching of the Church but it usually suffered from being didactic, dogmatic in a formal-lifeless sense, and not rooted in holiness and prayer. Most theology since 1965 suffers from being intellectist and academic, not rooted again in prayer and holiness of life. Ordinary parish preaching spans a scale: tends to be reflective, related to the scripture of the day, exhortatory of a life of love, inclusion, forgiveness, and humility. At its best it breathes freshly from a life of prayer and obedience; often it is trite, monotonous. At its worst it is anti-apostolic, exultatory of the indulgent, narcisstic individual and covertly hostile to Church authority as it clothes itself in the appeal of psychological sentimentality.
From a Catholic perspective, we may want to moderate the fierce Kierkegaardian antinomy between the authority of the apostle and the wisdom of the genius. At its best, Catholicism marries the two in a delightful harmony: Augustine and Thomas, Dante and Michaelangelo, John Paul and Benedict, DeLubac, Balthasar, Giusanni, the entire Resourcement/Communio tradition...these are at once apostolic (obedient to tradition and hierarchy, grounded in prayer and holiness of life) and wise in drawing from natural gifts, erudition and dialogue. In the Catholic Church we receive the Revelation from on high which in turn opens us to welcome all that is True, Good and Beautiful in Creation by our Triune God.
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