Last Sunday we heard the Gospel reading about giving to Caeser what is Caeser’s and to God what is God’s. Fr. James Doran, OMV preached an excellent homily, as always, which focused on the duties we have as citizens in working with the civil authorities for the common good. He quoted from the Catechism, especially the section on the 4th commandment and talked about how our duties to the state are similar to our duties to our parents. These are issues that I have thought about and struggled with for a long time.

Also recently, on two of the blogs I regularly read (la nouvelle theologie and Caelum et Terra), Justin Nickelsen has asked questions about the political philosophies of the blog hosts, and in one case spoke of an un-American tone. Over the course of this week, reflecting on the Gospel of Sunday, and reading about similar issues in the blogoshpere has given rise to some thoughts that I really need to flesh out better. So I’m going to use this space to do that.

A few weeks ago we went to a different parish, St. Therese, in Aurora, instead of Holy Ghost. We were privileged to have a newly ordained priest, Fr. Angel Perez, celebrate the mass. That week the Gospel was about the landowner who planted a vineyard and leased it to tenants, who refused to turn over the produce, and eventually killed the servants and the son of the landowner. Fr. Angel spoke about the Lordship of God over all things, and he particularly stressed the Lordship of God over goods we think of as our own: out homes our families, our bodies, our country and our money. He even brought up the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus taught us that you cannot serve both God and mammon.

To complicate matters more thoroughly, I read some of the materials linked to by Daid Jones on la nouvelle theologie by Eugene McCarraher. One of the articles, “Mammon’s Dealdly Grin: The New Gospel of Wealth and the Old Gospel of Life” dealt with these issues directly. He claims that we live in a Corporate-National-security-Entertainment state directed towards the un-holy triumvirate of mammon, mars and saturn.

Then Thomas Storck reported on the Caelum et Terra Blog that Stephen Kobasa had been fired from his job at Cathedral High School in Bridgeport, Connecticut for refusing to display an American Flag in his office. This story was mentioned again on Mark Shea’s blog. The Bishop of Bridgeport is William Lori, who is also the Supreme Chaplain of the Knights of Columbus. One of the four principles of the Knights is patriotism, the other three are charity, unity and fraternity. When you see knights dressed in their regalia (the fancy hat, cape and sword), you can rest assured that they have attained their patriotic degree. Only a knight who has attained the patriotic degree is entitled to wear the regalia; the Knights want their public face to be a patriotic one.

I am not a fourth degree knight, and I have not taken my patriotic degree. Yet, I have promised on several occasions to live according to the principles of Columbianism, the most notable instance being when I was sworn in as Grand Knight of my council for a term of office that ended a few months ago. Being grand knight during the Bush v. Kerry election gave me even more opportunities to think about the connection between serving God an my country. I even took the opportunity of using my position as Grand Knight to give a reflection on patriotism to my council last October. It focused on patriotism being rooted in a love of the land and neighbors, and came something close to what Daniel Nichols refers to as a “sense of place”, or what Caleb Stegall calls “practicing a discipline of place.”

However, the Sunday readings have been taking us through Matthew lately, so I have been looking for some answers there. The readings this coming Sunday are awesome. From Exodus we are going to get a admonition from the Father to be merciful to aliens, which is especially important as illegal aliens have been scapegoated in an election to raise taxes in Colorado this year. We are also going to get the command from Sinai against Usury. From Our Lord in the Gospel we are going to get the two commandments:

You shall love the Lord, your God,with all your heart,with all your soul,and with all your mind.This is the greatest and the first commandment.The second is like it:You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.

We are getting ready, through these readings for Christ the King Sunday, you can see easily that the Church is going to relieve us somewhat from the stress of pondering the tension between our duties owed to the state and those owed to God which was highlighted last Sunday. It will be a welcome relief. However, I notice that the Church, in her wisdom, confirms to us as we make this transition that the tension shouldn’t be there in the first place. After Jesus tells us the greatest commandment, he tells us that the second is just like it, and it is from this second commandment that we get the duty to render unto Caesar. Maybe the answer lies in the readings of a couple of weeks ago about the landowner and the bad tenants in his vineyard. Perhaps if we behave as if the state were God’s vineyard, our duty will take care of itself. We will cooperate with the government when they are doing what is right for the vine.

I don’t know where this leaves Stephen Kobasa though; perhaps he is with St. Francis and Brother Leo on the way to St. Mary of the Angels, learning about Perfect Joy.