After some prior thought…
The Rabbi wrote in one of the answers as follows:
“If there really is no source, then it could be one of three mechanisms:
A rabbinic decree or enactment.
Interpretation of the text.
Reasoning.”
My question specifically concerns the source of authority of the “great ones of the generation,” בעלי the “Torah viewpoint”—from where do they draw the authority for relations of obedience and subordination, analogous to the “magisterium Ecclesiae”—the authority of the Church—in the Catholic religion?
As I wrote above, the Church saw a need for a source of authority. Why do the “great ones of the generation” and their believers not feel this issue / not feel the need to address it?

Benjamin, the denier of authority, Gorlain

Maybe it would be worth creating a special category on the site for rhetorical questions whose purpose is just blowing off steam.

My dear Moses, why is this question rhetorical?
You are absolutely invited to answer my question; please address it substantively.

You are assuming that Da’at Torah is something other than interpretation or enactment. But Benny Brown shows that it is not. Therefore the question does not arise in the first place. The subject of Da’at Torah was already discussed in another thread, and I do not see what this question adds to the discussion. It ignores what happened there.

With God’s help, 22 Adar 5780

To Benyomin Goyrlin — peace and greetings,

First, I apologize for using spelling without Ashkenazi pronunciation in the body of my remarks. Since some of the site’s readers are Religious Zionist and some are from Sephardi and Mizrahi communities, I am forced to write in normal Hebrew spelling (normalish, in the vernacular).

The source of the concept of central spiritual authority is in the words of the Torah in the portion of Shoftim: ‘If a matter of judgment is too difficult for you… then you shall arise and go up to the place that the Lord your God shall choose, and you shall come to the Levitical priests and to the judge who will be in those days, and you shall inquire, and they shall tell you the matter of judgment… And you shall observe to do according to all that they instruct you; according to the Torah that they instruct you and according to the judgment that they tell you, you shall do; you shall not turn aside from the thing that they tell you, to the right or to the left.’

That is to say: already in the Torah it is explicit that there must be a central Torah authority so that the Torah not become like two Torahs. The Sages called this authority the “Sanhedrin” or the “Great Court.” Even after the destruction, when the Sanhedrin was exiled from the Chamber of Hewn Stone, the central academy still existed in Yavneh, and after it in Usha, in Shefar’am, Sepphoris, and Tiberias, from which rulings went out to all Israel in the period of the Tannaim.

In the period of the Amoraim, the exile had already intensified, but there were still central academies in Babylonia and in the Land of Israel from which rulings went out to many lands. At the end of the Geonic period, the prestige of the Torah centers in Babylonia and the Land of Israel declined, but in their place arose Torah centers that constituted central authority for many lands. Such were the study hall of Rabbenu Hananel and Rabbi Nissim Gaon in Kairouan, of Rabbi Yosef ibn Migash and the Rif in Spain, of Maimonides in Egypt, of Rashi and the Tosafists in France, of the Ra’avad in Provence, and of Nachmanides and Rashba and their students in northern Spain.

This is the root of the conception that there are great Torah scholars whose authority the public accepts out of recognition of their greatness. And in our own generations too we have seen great Torah scholars who illuminated the many with their Torah, such as the Hazon Ish, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach and Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, and Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and Rabbi Isaac Herzog, Rabbi Ben-Zion Meir Uziel and Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, and many others.

Christianity, in its usual way, borrowed many things from Judaism, such as monotheism, the weekly day of rest on which people gather for the worship of God in the house of prayer, and so on. One of the things Christianity borrowed from Judaism was the concept that there is a central spiritual authority, until that authority became corrupt and the Reformation arose and rebelled against it, while creating other centers of central authority.

It is worth noting that in Islam a central religious authority did not develop de facto, because there, de jure, the caliph, the king, is the successor to Muhammad, and those caliphs were in practice political rulers who had no interest in determining positions on religious questions. A similar situation can also be found in Anglican Christianity, where the king/queen of England is the head of the Church, while in practice the bishops determine religious matters.

Regards, Shimshon Tzvi the Ever-Loving Levi

Not that I am all that expert in Church matters and all that, but it seems to me that one of the main differences—and I am not saying this cynically—is that Catholic authority mainly includes sermons, Hebrew Bible interpretations about the prohibitions of homosexuality and abortion, and bits of moral teaching here and there.
And I am not saying this in order to express revulsion toward Christianity, but simply to say factually that authority in the Haredi Jewish sense cannot really exist there, because Christianity is mainly faith-based and only very minimally practical.

I assume the answer will not satisfy you.