A Homily for the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost

+ God and Caesar; Church and State; the material and the spiritual; the extent and limits of the authority of rulers... Each age of the Church since the Pharisees of today’s Holy Gospel has, in widely differing circumstances, grappled with the correct implementation of the teaching of our Blessed Lord to “render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” We too, in our turn, must be very clear on what the Lord demands in this respect. Even monks who seek to retreat from it remain in the world ruled over by the Caesars of our day.

​In attempting so to do, there are some basic principles worth recalling. The first is that the distinction made by Our Lord between what is due to Caesar and what is due to Almighty God is real. A civil ruler may legitimately tax the population to provide for the needs of the people, from the provision of health care or education to transport infrastructure or means of defence. A just participation in this is a God-given duty. Tax evasion is a sin before God.  

The second is that all authority comes from God, is exercised under God and in accordance with His law. That which in the modern world is blithely called “the democratic process,” implemented however it may be in different places, does nothing other than put in place those thought best able, intelligently and even imaginatively, to exercise authority for the common good under God. It does not create new gods whose positivistic will is sovereign. Authority exercises power legitimately in so far as it is in accordance with the source of all authority: Almighty God.

In the face of contemporary politics and its radically divergent policies, often in flagrant contradiction to God’s law, we may be forgiven for thinking otherwise. What is right and legal before an election can be overturned and reversed by newly victorious Caesars the day afterward. They shrink at nothing if it serves their ideology, not even before the sanctity of innocent human life itself.
It has to be said that, most alarmingly, the Church herself is not immune to such politicisation of power.

The reception of the munus of service (cf. Mt 20:28) has too often become the occasion of the brutal and unprincipled implementation of the ideological will by a faction that behaves as would any secular political party (albeit often with less sophistication). As history shows, when popes and prelates – even abbots – ‘play Caesar,’ they have long since abandoned their sacred calling or their right to respect as faithful stewards of God’s House.

Following on from the fact that all authority is exercised under God and according to His law is the reality that authority exercised contrary to God’s law is no authority at all and may – indeed, must – be disobeyed. Rulers may and should make prudential judgements about the best way to serve the common good of the people. We may disagree with them, but they are authoritative and deserve due cooperation. However, rulers may not limit or infringe the God-given rights of individuals except when truly necessary, using proportionate means for their protection or punishment. If civil authority oversteps its competence, it is not owed obedience. Caesar is not God.

Even more so, those whose ministry is the direct service of Almighty God may do nothing contrary to His law. They also may make prudential judgements with which one may disagree, but which one must respect. Nevertheless, they cannot mutilate or dispose of that which Almighty God has revealed in history and has given to His Church in her living Tradition. Ecclesiastical potentates who purport so to do are rightly resisted. God and His Truth is faithfully to be served by His ministers, not remade in their own image and likeness.

These issues are far from academic. The sombre march of the culture of death gathers pace in too many countries. Caesars the world-over have seemingly almost enjoyed issuing edicts limiting many freedoms, including the liberty to assemble for the Worship of Almighty God or to receive the sacraments, even in extremis – met too often by a more than questionable acquiescence by ecclesiastical authority. In the Church, edicts have arrived politicising that which is sacred and good whilst process and change are idolised.

It is easy enough to render that which pertains to Caesar unto him: the work of secular politics is a God-given vocation essential to the good of all. Delineating what must be given to God, however, in the face of the confusing or even contradictory stances of secular and ecclesiastical authorities in our times, is not always straightforward.

As we consider anew what Our Lord’s teaching requires of us in our particular circumstances, let us ask in this Holy Mass for the grace and strength given to the North African martyrs of Abitina, who, arrested for defiance of an imperial decree forbidding Christian worship in 304 replied simply “sine dominico non possumus” – without the Sunday Eucharist we cannot live. For nor can we live today if we do not render unto God the things that pertain unto Him. +