The Catholic View of the Public Square

Homily Delivered by Father Chas Canoy, Sunday, Oct. 19, 2008, St. Thomas the Apostle Parish, Ann Arbor, Michigan , Diocese of Lansing [Emphasis added by blogger]

“Render Unto Caesar”

Today’s Gospel that touches on the nature of civic responsibility is a fitting one as our country heads into voting booths in a couple of weeks. To understand the Gospel better we have to know a little bit about the groups involved. It begins with a group of Pharisees teaming up with a group of Herodians. These two groups do not like each other, they have opposite political views. It’s like a group of Democrats and Republicans teaming up to take out a third threat so that they can go back to the business of fighting for power between themselves. I guess the people in power back then didn’t like third parties either.

So, these two groups were trying to trap Jesus. They try to force him to take sides, so as to justify one of the groups taking action against him.. The Herodians favored Roman rule, and the Pharisees wanted independence. So they asked him, “Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?” If Jesus went against the tax, the Herodians would go after him on the basis of treason since the words might instigate a revolt on the tax the Jews were charged. But if Jesus spoke in favor of the tax, then the Pharisees would make him out to be a disloyal son of [Israel], favoring Roman tyranny over national independence. So what should Jesus do? First of all, he calls them out, letting them know that he knows what they are up to; “Why are you testing me, you hypocrites?” But then he actually takes them up on the question and asks for a Roman coin. He asks them whose image in on the coin, and they answer, “Caesar’s.” And so Jesus cleverly responds, “ ‘Then render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God,’ When they heard it they marveled, and they left him and went away.” So Jesus evades their trap.

The Herodians got their tax. Jesus didn’t say not to pay it. It’s Caesar’s image on the coin anyway. But then the Pharisees fail to trap Jesus as well because of the second part of what he said: “Render unto… God what belongs to God.”Out of all creation what uniquely bears the image of God? The human person bears the image of God. This is a foundational truth, as one reads in Genesis that man and woman are made in the image and likeness of God. And so because it is God’s image that each human soul bears, each person then has the obligation to give himself or herself back to God. And this higher obligation is a duty to which even Caesar himself is held, whether he believes so or not. Everything that we do then must be in the context of love and service of God. Even the way that we render to Caesar what is Caesar’s should be in harmony with our love and service of God. In other words, the fulfillment of our civil obligations must be in harmony with the will of God.

So, it’s at this point that I want to hone in on this aspect of rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s because, for a nation that is a democracy, this is no small thing. The fulfillment of our civil obligations is no small thing for a democracy because who is the sovereign in a democracy? It’s the people! As we will be doing soon, we as our own Caesar deputize other citizens nationally, state-wide and locally, all of whom act as Caesar on our behalf and benefit. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work out so well, but that’s the idea. The ones in power are not to act selfishly on their own behalf, but govern the country on behalf of the sovereign people, govern for their common good and for the protection of every human being and their inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as we say in our adopted Declaration of Independence. Now those things being “inalienable” means that they cannot be taken away. We have those rights by virtue of the fact that we are human beings. Our right to life, our right to liberty, and our pursuit of happiness never should be taken away by any state. Rather the state exists to preserve and protect those rights for each one of us.When that does not happen, when the state begins to infringe or take away those rights, that is when it begins to become what John Paul the Great described as a tyrant state. In his encyclical, John Paul mentions how this is particularly true when the first of those three rights, the right to life, the right upon which the other two depend, is infringed upon or taken away, which is very fitting to address since we are celebrating Respect Life Month.

John Paul II says this about a democracy that begins to forget that the state exists to protect the right to life of its people, not to take it away: “In this way democracy, contradicting its own principles, effectively moves towards a form of totalitarianism. The state is no longer the ‘common home’ where all can live together on the basis of the principles of fundamental equality, but is transformed into a tyrant state, which arrogates to itself the right to dispose of the life of the weakest and most defenseless members, from the unborn child to the elderly, in the name of the public interest which is really nothing but the interest of one part.” Have we not seen this dynamic throughout the tragedies of human history, the interest of one part asserting itself over that of a less powerful part? I would like to quote Dr. Peter Kreeft, a well-known professor at Boston College , who used a poignant example at a recent talk he gave. “Adolph Hitler gave the people a lot of good things: a sense of self-worth, hope, solidarity, community, optimism, meaningful work, and national pride. He cut unemployment. He was responsible for the autobahns and the Volkswagens. He eliminated starvation, almost all private crime, and most poverty. The people freely elected him and loved him until he started losing military battles. But this egomaniacal tyrant started the world’s worst war and hated, enslaved and murdered six million of God’s Chosen People.”“That was not just an unfortunate excess, a side effect, the one dark spot on a wonderful record. That was the issue because all other goods are means to the end of the good of persons, and Hitler denied millions of persons the very right to life, which is the foundation of all other rights, including liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Even if we hate to think about it, I know I do, we have to ask the question of a tyrant state in our own time and place. Do we ever see the staggering loss of human life due to abortion as just an unfortunate excess or a side-effect or a mere issue among others? If we ever wonder how the people of Germany would just do nothing or how so many could think that a certain people were less worthy of life or why the surrounding countries didn’t act sooner or more forcefully, if we ever ask that of them and think of them judgmentally, we shouldn’t. Our count is not 6 million, but over 40 million. And I know it’s depressing to hear about it and to think about it, but maybe it is because we don’t hear about it enough and that we continue to permit it not just by putting Caesars into power that just see right to life issues as side issues, but electing Caesars that actually work to ensure that people can choose to kill their preborn children without restrictions. This is precisely what will happen with the passage of the so-called “Freedom of Choice Act.” That’s why in Respect Life Month, as much as I wish we didn’t have to, we put the question front and center. “Do all human beings have the right to life or only some of them?” Is the right to life inalienable or is our right to life to be determined by whoever is in power? “Render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar, but render to God what belongs to God.”

Blogger Note: As I understand it, this particular young priest is a vocation from the nearby charismatic parish in Ann Arbor, which has close links with this particular parish.


Another great pro-life homily can be found at this podcast audio link (scroll down to Oct. 5, 2008, Respect Life Sunday homily by Fr. Ed Fride, pastor of the charismatic parish from which Fr. Canoy came). Fr. Ed Fride (photo at left) makes a clear, simple, incisive argument for the life of the unborn that even an atheist can't honestly and responsibly deny.