God and Politics

Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    We’re in that time in our country where all the ads on television, radio, Facebook, etc., seem to be about politics.  Generally, those who love politics get really excited about this time of year, studying polls and updates on the races.  I think everyone else tends to put-up with all the commercials and mailings.  Our country seems particularly polarized, and for a while now we have failed to teach people how to dialogue respectfully and logically about candidates and policies, so we tend to just shout our positions at each other without truly engaging the people seeking office and the policies they support.  Rather than a healthy discussion over a meal or a drink, we tend to act more like monkeys at the zoo, throwing dung at each other.
    So in the midst of the political activity, today the Church, which doesn’t assign the readings based on the democratic system in the United States, puts before us a first reading and a Gospel that remind us about government.  In the first reading, we hear about Cyrus, God’s anointed, whom God chose for the sake of His People.  What’s interesting is that Cyrus was the Persian king, a pagan.  And yet, the word for anointed is mashiach, or messiah.  Cyrus is not the messiah; that is Christ.  And yet, Cyrus is God’s anointed who, though he doesn’t know God, will help return the Chosen People to the Holy Land so that they can witness that there is one God.
    And in the Gospel, the Pharisees try to trap Jesus with a puzzle concerning another pagan foreign leader, Caesar, and whether they need to pay taxes to the pagan Roman government.  The Pharisees likely thought that if Jesus said to pay taxes, the people would reject Him (after all, who wants to be encouraged to pay taxes to an occupying force that teaches a false religion).  But, if Jesus said not to pay taxes, they could report Him to the Romans and they would take care of Him.  Easy peasy.  But instead, Jesus turns the question on its head, and avoids both the scylla and the charybdis that the Pharisees put before Him.
    All of this should remind us that the question of who has governmental power and authority does not concern God all that much, because as Jesus said to Pilate on Good Friday, Pilate would have no power unless God had allowed Pilate to use it.  God can use a pagan government like the Persians to accomplish good for His People.  He can use a pagan government like the Romans and the pax Romana that came from their military domination of Europe and the Near East to create the perfect time for Jesus, the true Messiah, to be born and grow up in the Holy Land.  
    Everything, in the end, finds itself subject to God and what He directs or allows through His will.  “Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more,” St. Paul reminds us, and God can use the sinfulness of rulers and governments even to accomplish holiness in His People.  The invitation to give God what belongs to Him really reminds us that, while we have civic responsibilities that we should exercise responsibly, our first duty is to God, who has given us everything and against whom no power on earth can ever compete.
    For that reason, I no longer tend to get worked up about politics.  I can’t honestly say I was always that way, and when I was younger I loved politics and reading the polls and trying to understand positions and policies and how to argue for the best ones.  But after the delayed election results in 2020, I found that I obsessed about politics and it stole my peace.  When I stopped trying to think that who the president or the governor was would greatly change my life, I found that I was happier.
    To be clear, I do not mean to communicate that elections don’t matter.  Elections do matter, and we ought to form our conscience well and vote accordingly.  We ought to do our best to support candidates and policies that protect and promote human dignity and the common good.  A great many people in the world, including 1.4 billion people in China, probably wish they could vote for their government officials freely.  We ought not to take our political process for granted.  
    But, no matter who gets elected, and no matter how good or how evil the policies they enact are, God is King, and no one can challenge His power or unseat Him from His Throne.  Yes, it’s nice when the City of Man resembles the City of God, but even when governments oppress us, our key is to be faithful to God and give God His due, no matter what Caesar says.  The Church certainly rejoiced when Constantine legalized the practice of Christianity, but She didn’t shrink for the three hundred years earlier that Roman emperors sought to stop the spread of the Gospel.  
    Yes, do vote this November with a conscience informed by the Catholic faith.  Do not worry if your candidate got elected or didn’t, or if the candidates or the policies they support are contrary to the Catholic faith, like abortion, euthanasia, gender dysphoria, same sex marriage, or socialism.  “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,” and God will sort out everything else in the end when His victory comes to fruition.

What Doesn't Belong to God?

Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    At some point in elementary school I came across a word that looked similar, but was also different.  I couldn’t quite make out if it meant the same thing as the word to which it looked similar, or if it might be a different word altogether.  I asked my teacher how I was supposed to pronounce the word c-o-l-o-u-r, and what its meaning was.  I was sure it was supposed to be pronounced cah-LUHR, but was surprised that both the pronunciation and the meaning was the same as our word color, c-o-l-o-r, and that this was simply a British spelling.  I have always preferred our American spelling as much more obvious and logical.
    When we hear the Gospel, we likely are colored, however you might spell it, by our American experience.  Though the words “separation of Church and State” never appear in Constitution, it has been so ingrained in our minds that we probably hear this Gospel and figure that Jesus was advocating the same some 2,000 years ago.  I will admit that I have probably preached a homily or two on the same point.

Cyrus

    But look at our first reading today.  God speaks through the prophet Isaiah about the Lord’s anointed, Cyrus.  Cyrus was not a king of Israel.  He was not a Jew at all.  He was the king of the Persians, who had recently defeated the Babylonian Empire, which had exiled the two southern tribes of Jews.  But God calls Cyrus his anointed, though he was altogether pagan.  Still, Cyrus would start to provide for the return of the Jews to their homeland, and even for the building up of the temple, which had been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar when the Babylonians sacked Jerusalem.  God is clearly demonstrating, through Isaiah, that even this pagan ruler was in God’s hands.  There was no separation between God an any reality.
    This idea, that what I do in politics and what I do in religion have no bearing on each other, is an intriguing idea.  But it cannot be called Catholic.  Because for the Catholic (as for the Jew before him), God is God of everything, not just some parts of the world.  Though others may not recognize it, God holds sway over everything in the created world, and we cannot compartmentalize aspects of our life into Church and State, or said differently, religion and politics.  If we really claim to follow God, then God has a say over everything I do, not just what I do within these four walls.  If we owe God everything, then every act of our life belongs to God, even that which belongs to Caesar.
    To be clear, I’m not advocating theocracy.  I’m not advocating that we rush to rebellion to overthrow the government in order to set up our bishops as rulers.  But if what the Church teaches is true, and truth applies to everyone, not just those who profess it in church, then our goal would be that all our laws would reflect the truth of what God has revealed, not just for Catholics, but for everyone.  
    Instead, we are used to the tired trope, “I personally believe X is wrong, but I’m not going to force that belief on others.”  We usually hear it from baptized Catholics who advocate the heretical view that abortion should be legal.  And people get very defensive about the abortion issue and how we seem to be forcing the Catholic Church’s teaching on others.  So let’s apply this logic to other moral teachings, which the Church holds dearly, and if a Catholic supported it, he or she would be in heresy.  Imagine a politician saying, “I personally believe that slavery is wrong, but I’m not going to force that belief on others.”  Would you vote for that politician?  How about, “I personally believe that human trafficking is wrong, but whom I am to judge another person?”  Or, also consistent, “If a person’s conscience tells him that he should break into a house to get more money, that person should follow his conscience.”  I would hope that no one would support such ridiculous propositions.   But it’s precisely the same argument that people use for advocating that abortion should be legal so that those who think it’s ok can get one.  
    We do live in a pluralistic society, with many different religions.  And there is some good in not having a particular religion being forced down our throats.  Imagine that baptists were in charge, and they created a law that said that Bibles cannot be printed with the books we Catholics include but they tore out.  That wouldn’t be right.  But many of the laws that we should have do not have to be particular to one religion.  You can know abortion is wrong without being Catholic, just like you can know stealing is wrong without being Catholic.  We don’t eliminate all our laws against stealing just because we, as Catholics, hold theft to be immoral.  
    And further, the same Jesus who said, “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God,” also said that if we are value family more than Him, then we are not truly following Him as He desires.  Certainly if father and mother, brothers and sisters come in second place to Christ, so should the Republican or Democratic parties.  
    We view things with our American understanding because that has been our culture that has pervaded much of what we do and how we think.  But Christ is not American, and His teachings don’t always square up with our Constitution.  We may pay taxes because they belong to Caesar, but when it comes to how we live our lives, including our politics, it is all subject to God and His will, because to God belongs all that is.