God and Caesar

“Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God." An appropriate Gospel to hear, just weeks before a national election! A sobering Gospel, given religion’s increasing subordination to politics in American society! A confusing Gospel, given that it leaves unspecified exactly what belongs to God and what to Caesar!

 

As another election approaches, we are all aware of the many challenging and difficult issues facing our country, along with the contentious and acrimonious arguments that increasingly characterize campaigns and dominate national news. Disagreement and debate are natural and appropriate in a free society. That is how we choose among competing candidates and their policies and so provide for the peaceful transfer of political power to those we designate to govern our country according to the political, cultural, and moral values which we express in our votes.

 

As committed Catholic Christians, we also share with our fellow citizens in the benefits and the responsibilities of citizenship in 21st-century American society. So, what resources does our faith offer us to participate in civic life? What lessons from centuries of Catholic tradition and the experience of Catholic history in the United States can we share with our fellow citizens? What can we do together to promote the common good and care for our common home?

 

From the beginning Christians have been conscious of being both in the world while not of it. [John 17:15-16]. Jesus, as we just heard, cleverly commanded his questioners to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s [Matthew 22:20]. Saint Paul said that our citizenship is in heaven, but he also instructed Christians to obey lawful governments and to pay their taxes [Philippians 3:20; Romans 13:1-7].  In the 3rd century, despite Roman persecution, the early Christians prayed, “for Emperors, their ministers, for the condition of the world, for peace everywhere, and for the delaying of the end” [Apologetics, 39].

 

The New Testament emphasized that our religious obligations to God, while always absolute in themselves, do not cancel out our membership in civil society and our resulting obligations to the political community in which we all share. Whether as public officials or as ordinary citizens, we want the peace, security, and justice that civil society makes possible. And we have corresponding obligations. Thus, the Second Vatican Council called upon all citizens to “be mindful of the right and also the duty to use their free vote to further the common good” [Gaudium et Spes, 75].

 

Civilization doesn’t come free. Nor does our faith allow us any excuse to act as if it did. Thus, the Second Vatican Council warned: “They are mistaken who, knowing that we have here no abiding city but seek one which is to come, think that they may therefore shirk their earthly responsibilities. … This split between the faith which many profess and their daily lives deserves to be counted among the more serious errors of our age” [Gaudium et Spes, 43; Cf. Hebrews 13:14; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13; Ephesians 4:28].

 

The same Council taught that, while the Church as such has received from Christ “no proper mission in the political, economic or social order,” even so from its explicitly religious mission comes “a light and an energy which can serve to structure and consolidate the human community according to the divine law” [Gaudium et Spes, 42].

 

Over time, the Church has adopted - and adapted to ever changing political and social situations - the ancient understanding that human beings are social and political by nature [Cf. Aristotle, Politics I, 2], that human beings are naturally intended to live and thrive in close cooperation with others, and that the most developed and fulfilling form of that is our political association as fellow citizens. This political association as citizens with one another provides us with many benefits, which we would not otherwise enjoy. At the same time, it also challenges us with serious responsibilities and obligations to one another and to the wider community.

In this traditional understanding, political choices are ultimately moral choices that express what we value. Such choices identify whom we care about enough to include (or not) and highlight what kind of nation (and world) we want to be. 

 

As Catholics and citizens, we need to be particularly attentive to this dimension of political decision-making, to the moral complexities of power, of pursuing power, of exercising power. As I said at the outset, Jesus did not conveniently clarify what precisely belongs to God and what to Caesar. He recognized both duties. Then as now, he challenged the Pharisees - and he challenges us – to give God his due while caring for the world.

As Catholics and citizens, we need to respond to the challenges of voting and other political choices in a morally serious way that transcends simplistic sloganeering and emotional appeals to narrowly defined secular identities and group interests. As our own American bishops reminded us over a decade ago: “Catholics may choose different ways to respond to compelling social problems, but we cannot differ on our moral obligation to help build a more just and peaceful world through morally acceptable means, so that the weak and vulnerable are protected and human rights and dignity are defended” [USCCB, Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship (2015), 20]. 

Homily for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, October 18, 2026.