God and Caesar

Just 40 years ago this week, the then Shah of Iran celebrated the 2500th anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire with a visit to the tomb of King Cyrus near Persepolis. That’s the same Cyrus to whom the prophet refers, in this Sunday’s 1st reading [Isaiah 45:1, 4-6], as the Lord’s anointed, whose right hand the Lord grasps. In the ancient world, apparently one way a god conferred royal authority on a king was by grasping his hand. Thus, Cyrus was seen as receiving royal legitimacy from the God of Israel, just like David, the preeminent model of an anointed king in Israel’s history. What’s so striking about this, of course is that Cyrus was a Persian – a pagan – and yet reigned apparently as God’s anointed. Some 5½ centuries later, pagan rule was again a reality in Israel. Hence the question posed to Jesus by the Pharisees and the Herodians in this Sunday’s Gospel [Matthew 22:15-21]: “Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?”
My high school math teacher was especially fond of this story. He used to use it to illustrate the attempt to create a “perfect dichotomy” – a case in which there are exactly two (and only two) mutually exclusive possibilities. The motivation behind the question is evident from the fact that this was an ad hoc alliance between the Pharisees, who generally tied to keep maximum distance from the ruling Romans, and the Herodians, who were, in effect, collaborators with the Romans. The Gospel tells us they were trying to entrap Jesus in speech – trying to make him come down on one side or the other and get himself in trouble, whichever way he answered.
Like political candidates today, who are experts in how not to answer the question they are being asked and instead answer the one they want to answer, Jesus cleverly circumvented the either/or of this supposedly perfect dichotomy. It was Jesus’ cleverness in doing this that so impressed my math teacher, as it has impressed people for centuries every since.
Well, as a witty way out of a trap, Jesus’ response was superb. But if instead we consider the question itself as an honest dilemma deserving an honest answer, then what do we make of Jesus’ clever retort, “repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God”?
Modern western liberal democratic societies tend to take the individual as the starting point for discussion. The issue then becomes the basis for and the extent of one’s obligations to society. The idea that paying taxes to support the common good, for example, (or compulsory military service such as we used to have, to take another example) are essentially infringements upon one’s individual rights reflects this individualistic modern starting point. Reconciling individual freedom with social and political obligations was not the central issue, however, in this encounter between Jesus and his opponents - nor would it probably have made much sense as a way of framing the issue, either to their contemporaries or to most people in most societies. The underlying issue was rather the relationship between two comprehensive (and potentially competing) sets of loyalties – loyalties to two comprehensive (and potentially competing) communities.
Whatever ambivalence the Pharisees may have felt about the Roman Empire, the early Christians by and large appreciated the benefits of Roman rule. More than once, the New testament instructed them to obey the law and honor the Emperor, insisting that one’s religious obligations to God, while absolute in themselves, do not cancel out one’s membership in civil society and one’s consequent obligations to its defender, the State [Romans 13:1-7; 1 Peter 2:13-17].
Within the Church, Christians were, of course, expected to resolve conflicts peacefully among themselves, not taking their disputes to secular courts, for example. But that didn’t mean that the State should not use its courts, its police, its army, as needed to provide peace, security, and some reasonable measure of justice for society as a whole.
Of course, everything got much more complicated when all of a sudden (and somewhat unexpectedly) the Emperor became a Christian and Christians began to exercise serious political power at all levels of society. Whether as public officials or as ordinary citizens, who vote, pay taxes, and affect public policy in any number of ways, we enjoy the peace, security, and justice that civil society makes possible, from which derive corresponding obligations. It’s interesting in this regard that the Catechism [2239] says that “the love and service of one’s country follow from the duty of gratitude.” After all, Jesus did say “repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar.” Civilization doesn’t come free. Nor does our faith allow us any excuse to act as if it did.
As for “what belongs to God,” the long list of the Church’s martyrs testifies to God’s uncompromisingly absolute claim on our consciences – in the face of any and all competing secular claims. There exists a transcendent moral order outside the self, built into the fabric of the universe. Some things are simply wrong – always and everywhere. No society, whether ancient or modern, whether dictatorial or democratic, whether rigidly united or wildly pluralistic, no society can make something right which is intrinsically wrong. And no one, who takes his or her citizenship in God’s kingdom seriously, may collaborate in promoting as right what is in fact intrinsically wrong.
Within what legitimately “belongs to Caesar,” however, within civil society’s legitimate sphere of action and responsibility, it is more often than not a matter of trying to approximate what will work best in specific circumstances. The ordinary dynamics of politics and economics have not been repealed by the Gospel, which does not provide us with a formula for which policies will produce a more prosperous economy or a more stable and secure international balance of power. What the Gospel does give us is a new outlook on life, within which we may see some of those things in a new way. When it comes to practical questions of economic policy or foreign policy, for example, we have to figure these things out, as best we can whether as citizens or as statesmen or both, by using the best human knowledge we have – always aware that, because we are human and our human wisdom is limited, we may make mistakes, and also that, when it comes to making such practical policy judgments, reasonable, morally sincere people, applying the same general principles, may well come to different but comparably compelling conclusions.
Jesus first asked his questioners to show him the coin. Then, taking into account all that the coin signified, Jesus challenged his hearers – challenges us - to live as loyal and committed citizens in the world and simultaneously as faithful citizens in the kingdom of God, our dual citizenship shaped by the interconnected demands of a faith that is inevitably public and never something purely private.

Who Shall Wear St. Edward's Crown?

Not being British - or Canadian or Australian or any of the other nationalities directly affected by this issue - I obviously have no personal stake in British Prime Minister David Cameron’s proposal to change from a cognatic to an agnatic order of succession to the throne and to amend the 1701 Act of Settlement to allow the sovereign to marry a Roman Catholic. What any foreign country chooses to do with its constitution is rightly its business and in principle none of mine. That said, as a sometime political scientist with an appreciation for the continuity of political institutions and their role in the continuity of cultures, I can’t resist commenting.
As for the proposed changes themselves, admittedly they seem harmless in the abstract. In the real world, however, constitutional tinkering tends to have unintended or unforeseen side-effects. Also such exercises often serve as substitutes for serious public policy aimed at more pressing but somewhat more intractable actual problems. All of which warrants a certain “hermeneutic of suspicion” whenever constitutional change of any kind is proposed in any country.
In the 16th century, St. Thomas More accepted martyrdom because he opposed both King Henry VIII’s attempt to annul his marriage to Queen Katherine and its principal public policy consequence – the Act of Supremacy by which the King and Parliament usurped power over the Church. St. Thomas did, however, accept that Parliament could legislatively alter the succession to the throne. There can be no question that the laws of succession (like all political constitutions) are human contrivances which can legitimately be changed whenever circumstances warrant. In my own lifetime, Sweden and Belgium changed from male-only succession to “agnatic primogeniture,” that is, an order of succession based exclusively on birth-order without respect to sex. Hence, Sweden’s Crown Princess Victoria, rather than her younger brother, will inherit the crown when her father, King Carl Gustav, dies. Even earlier in my lifetime, Denmark changed from male-only succession to “cognatic primogeniture,” that is, an order of succession in which both men and women can succeed to the throne but brothers have precedence over their sisters – the system that has long been in place in such kingdoms as Britain and Spain. Perhaps Prime Minister Cameron’s proposal reflects post-modern sentimentality – a desire to be on “the right side of history.” Even so, in societies where gender equality is now accepted as the norm, it may seem reasonable to apply the same principle to royalty.
The same might be said for allowing royal marriages to Catholics - although one wonders whether what this really reflects is actually the diminished importance of religion. A few years ago, when the current Crown Prince of the Netherlands married an Argentinian Catholic, she was expected to embrace the Protestant faith with which the Dutch Royal Family is historically identified. Likewise, when the Danish Crown Prince married an Australian Anglican, she became Danish Lutheran. The current Queen of Spain was born a Greek princess, but converted from Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism before marrying Catholic Spain’s current king (much as her mother, a German princess, had converted from Protestantism to Orthodoxy to marry the future Greek King Paul). In counties which have an Established Church or even just a strong historical-cultural association with a particular Church, it has always been seen as reasonable to expect their royalty to reflect that. So I suspect that that what this really reflects is the increased irrelevance of religion in post-modern Western societies - and hence its perceived irrelevance in relation to royal consorts.
The principal problem with these proposals, however, is not in the theory but the possible political and social costs of putting them into practice. The British Crown is unique in that its wearer is king or queen of some 16 sovereign states, all of whom must agree on any change. Thanks to the 1931 Statute of Westminster, the royal succession cannot be altered in any individual Commonwealth monarchy except with the consent of all the other states involved. (It gets even worse. The Canadian constitution, if I recall correctly, requires unanimous agreement of all the provinces to make any change in the order of succession.) In other words, the process itself invites political mischief by disgruntled obstructionists within some – or even only one – of those 16 states.
This has happened before. In the 1936 Abdication Crisis, replacing Edward VIII with his brother George VI required agreement among the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. The political mischief took place in Dublin, as Ireland took advantage of the crisis to pass something called the Executive Authority (External Relations) Act, effectively diminishing the monarchical character of the Irish constitution.
In theory, the proposed changes are reasonable, sensible, and even desirable. But what contentious constitutional cans of worms would this process open up?
And aren’t there many much more pressing problems right now that all countries need to be attending to and expending their limited political capital on?

Elections Do Have Consequences

Perhaps it was little more than just another thowaway line in the new (and very good) political-campaign movie, The Ides of March - the observation that modern Americans seem disposed to choose relaitvleu inexperienced candidates over the more experienced, e.g., Kennedy over Nixon in 1960, Carter over Ford in 1980, George W. Bush over Gove in 2000. To these one could easliy add Clinton over George H. W. Bush in 1992, and Obama over McCain in 2008. The case is actually renedered even stronger when one considers how in each instance the relatively inexperienced future President had also beaten more experienced rivals for his party's nomination - beginning with JFK's primary and convention victories over Hubert Humphrey and Lyndon Johnson in 1960 and right up to Barack Obama's win over the obviously more experienced and manifestly more qualified Hillary Clinton in 2008.

Interestingly, all these examples occurred in the Democratic Party. One would have to go back to Wendell Wilkie in 1940 to find something comparable among the Republicans. (Of course, McCain was the more experienced and qualified candidate for the 2000 Republican nomination. In our officially republican but unofficially actually quite aristocratic and monarchical politics, however, George W. Bush qualified by being the heir apparent of a previously reigning political dynasty.) The much remarked current malaise among Republicans right now in part stems from the dissatisfaciton of some in that party with the implications for this election of their tradition of choosing the more experienced (or at least longest standing) candidate as their nominee. But that is another discussion.

What all this does seemt o confirm, however, is the long-standing problematic of politics in an Americna society that seems to distruct politics (which then translates in to the even more serious problematic of government in a a country with a certain antipathy to being governed). This has long been institutionally evident in such constitutional anomalies as initiative/referendum/recall politics (whihc have helped make California, for example, so ungovernable) and the more recent craze for term limits (whihc will make states and localities less and less governable - unless they are lucky enough to have apopular and powerful Mayor who can brazenly create an exception for himself as happened in NYC just a couple of years ago).

As Americna society settles into a pattern of prolonged decline and the need for serious politics and energetic government correspondingly increases, we seem to persist in seeking solution which will only further trivialize our politics and so diminish our abilty to govern ourselves wisely and well.

The Postmodern Liberal State vs. Religion

Both by intellectual conviction and by emotional inclination, I remain a Hamiltonian believer in government – in a strong activist government. I have no libertarian tendencies, I and have no fondness for claims of states’ rights. None of that is blinding me, however, to the problematic aspirations of the postmodern liberal state (which Hamilton, of course, could never have envisioned) and in particular to its heightened hostility to religion (which would, of course, have horrified Hamilton). That is why Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Opportunity Commission, argued yesterday before the Supreme Court, could prove to be such a critical case.
The case concerns a teacher at a Lutheran school. In 2004, she was diagnosed with narcolepsy, for which she received treatment. After a semester, she wanted to return to work, but the school hired a replacement. In response, the teacher threatened to sue the school for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. Filing a lawsuit, however, would violate the church’s policy that conflicts be resolved internally, and so she was fired. (I’m guessing that this internal conflict resolution policy is that Church’s commendable attempt to remain faithful to the teaching of St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 6, where he strenuously opposed Christians suing one another in pagan courts).
The Equal Opportunity Commission contends that she was illegally fired in retaliation for filing a discrimination lawsuit. The school invokes the legal doctrine of “ministerial exception,” which bars such lawsuits so as to prevent secular judges from interfering in a religious institution’s mission. The extent of the concept of ministerial exception’s applicability to non-ordained church employees seems somewhat murky. Hence the potentially precedent-making character of this case.
During oral argument, Justice Elena Kagan asked the government’s attorney if the 1st Amendment entitled the church to hire and fire employees without government interference. The Assistant Solicitor General replied, “We don’t see that line of church autonomy principles in the religion clause jurisprudence as such” – a response Justice Kagan characterized as “amazing.” When Chief Justice Roberts asked if the Administration recognized anything special in the fact that this case dealt with a religious organization, the government’s attorney answered that it made no difference whether it was a religious group or a labor group or other association – a response Justice Scalia called “extraordinary.”
When Justice Breyer asked how the government differentiated this case from that of a woman who might sue the Roman Catholic Church for gender discrimination for ordaining only men to the priesthood, the answer was “The government’s general interest in eradicating discrimination in the workplace is simply not sufficient to justify changing the way that the Catholic Church chooses its priests, based on gender roles that are rooted in religious doctrine.”
Does that mean that this over-reaching government might someday decide that its “interest in eradicating discrimination in the workplace” had suddenly become “sufficient to justify changing the way that the Catholic Church chooses its priests”? No wonder the Christian Science Monitor has characterized the Administration’s argument as embracing “a line of analysis that would have virtually eliminated the ministerial exception.”
Fifty years ago, churches were among the major supporters of the Civil Rights movement. In the intervening decades, however, the culture has changed dramatically; and the concept of illegal discrimination has long since metastasized into something much more extensive and ominous – an additional weapon in the secularized cultural elite’s arsena,l abetting the postmodern liberal state’s increasingly totalitarian aspirations. It’s obvious that all authentic churches and religious institutions in the United States have a strong interest in the outcome of this case.

No Excuses

Recent events have keenly focused our attention on the fragility of our national and global economies. As we survey the shambles of a system that not that long ago seemed so strong and sound, we may more easily appreciate the Prophet Isaiah’s description of the vineyard that had so dramatically failed to produce its expected crop of grapes [Isaiah 5:1-7]. Just as we, in our society, seek explanations for the things that have gone wrong, likewise the Prophet Isaiah was not just seeking but providing an explanation for the disasters that Israel was facing. In that case, of course, there was no ambiguity about why things were going so badly in Israel. The vineyard in Isaiah’s song represented God’s People who, in spite of all God had done for them, had failed in fidelity.
Centuries later, Jesus used the same image of the vineyard to challenge his hearers regarding their own behavior by judging the way those whose task it was to harvest the vineyard either did or didn’t live up to their responsibilities [Matthew 21:33-43].
When vintage time drew near, the landowner in the parable, naturally sought to collect his share of the harvest and so sent his servants to the tenants to obtain his produce. Now, as is always the case in conflict situations, both ancient and modern, how we hear and interpret the facts depends in large part upon whom we identify with in the story. Once could, for example, identify with the tenants, constructing an interpretation in which right is on the side of the "oppressed" peasants. If one sides with the tenants, of course, then one will make excuses for their failure to fulfill their contractual obligations to the landowner – just as all of us at times try to make excuses for failing to fulfill our obligations, whatever they might be.
Yet, even though this particular parable does not begin with the typical introduction, “the kingdom of heaven is like,” it is pretty obvious, nonetheless, that we are intended to hear and interpret it in continuity with Isaiah’s vineyard song. In other words, we are intended to hear and interpret it from the standpoint of the landowner, who is obviously the parable’s stand-in for God.
In thus structuring the story so that the tenants have no excuse, Jesus has set it up so that neither can we claim any excuse for our own personal irresponsibility. Historically, of course, Jesus addressed this parable to the chief priests and elders of the people, with whom he was in conflict. Through them, however, he is now addressing this parable to all of us, for whom it should be obvious who is being referred to, when the landowner sends his son. Hence his question (What will the owner of the vineyard do to those tenants when he comes?) is addressed as much to us, as it was in the first instance, to the chief priests and elders of the people. And, like them, we all know the obvious answer, even before we hear them say it.
This, of course, is what conversion challenges us to do – to look at ourselves and at our relationship with God without excuses, from God’s point of view. When we do that, then we necessarily have to re-evaluate everything – just as the stone that the builders rejected was re-evaluated in order to become the cornerstone. And then we will become a new kind of tenant – a people that will produce fruit.
Now that’s actually meant to be good news. In other words, there is a solution to the basic human predicament. We can get right again with God (and with one another). Unfortunately for those in the parable’s original audience whose failure to respond positively to Jesus provided the historical basis for the parable, what’s meant to be good news for the world may have sounded like bad news for them. The challenge of the parable is to recognize the incredible opportunity God has given us in sending us his Son – a life-transforming opportunity to change our ways as tenants in God’s vineyard and get on board as full citizens of his kingdom.

Homily for the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, October 2, 2011.