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What is Caesar’s, When All is God’s?

A clever writer[1] once observed that Jesus never made the mistake of qualifying any of his statements: “Sell you possessions, and give the money to the poor, . . .” “If your eye offend you, tear it out, . . .” “Take up your cross and follow me.” One might add the closing line from today’s Gospel, “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”[2] It sounds simple, but when you unpack it you find that its meaning is far from obvious. For what things are Caesar’s and what are God’s? Admittedly, an initial separation is possible, for the government is in charge of, for example, maintaining roads, national defence, international trade, the courts, and so on, as the Church provides Sunday Mass, religious instruction, and the sacraments for the living and burial for the dead. This division seems clear enough in modern times, when church and state are separate, but such was not the case when Jesus spoke. It was impossible for his contemporaries to conceive of a nation in which religion did not govern all aspects of life. The observance of the Jewish law was not a private matter in first-century Palestine, as the numerous clashes between Jesus and the establishment demonstrate throughout the Gospels. Diet, social conventions, national identity were governed in detail by the Mosaic law as it had developed in the traditions of the elders. The very courts were religious, so that the trial of Jesus was a religious trial; he was accused of blasphemy. (If that were a capital offence today, I wonder how many people would be left standing.) Things were similar with pagan Rome, where the official cult of the gods was regarded as essential to the well-being of the Empire. Hence, when the unthinkable happened, that is, when the imperial city of Rome itself was attacked and sacked by the barbarians in A.D. 410, many people blamed the Christians who, they said, had brought on the tragedy by banning the public cult of pagan gods and goddesses. Saint Augustine was moved to write a refutation of the charge in one of his greatest works, The City of God.

The Middle Ages were no different, in that Catholicism in the West and Orthodoxy in the East were intertwined in the workings of society. The kings wanted to appoint bishops because they were an essential element of the civil service, while the popes wanted men to be ordained who would be pastors of the flock. The result was a bitter struggle that lasted for centuries. Furthermore, the Church’s calendar of festivals and fasts was integrated into the daily life of the people, but also into the sitting of the government, the functioning of the courts, the opening and closing of the school year, and even the planting and harvesting of crops. How could one distinguish what was Caesar’s from what was God’s when often they were identical?

The Reformation may have altered society in many ways, but the role of religion was not reduced. It was not until the revolutions of the eighteenth century that our current understanding of a secular society could take root and spread. Nowadays, religion has little or no role to play in public life. No prayer is recited when parliament convenes or before the speech from the throne. Nor is the practice of religion significant for many—most?—people today. Think of how Christmas is celebrated or how Easter, the greatest feast of the Christian year, is essentially bypassed.

Praise the Lord

Read the Whole Article at https://catholicinsight.com/