Mirror of Justice

A blog dedicated to the development of Catholic legal theory.
Affiliated with the Program on Church, State & Society at Notre Dame Law School.

Sunday, July 8, 2012

"We Belong to God, and Only to God"

Here , with thanks to Rocco, is a link to Archbishop Chaput's excellent close-of-the-Fortnight-for-Freedom homily, "We Belong to God, and Only to God."  An important point:

Thinking about the relationship of Caesar and God, religious faith and secular
authority, is important. It helps us sort through our different duties as
Christians and citizens. But on a deeper level, Caesar is a creature -- a
creature of this world -- and Christ’s message is uncompromising: We should give
Caesar nothing of ourselves. Obviously
we’re in the world. That means we have obligations of charity and justice to the
people with whom we share it. For Christians, patriotism is a virtue. Love of
country is an honorable thing. As Chesterton once said, if we build a wall
between ourselves and the world, it makes little difference whether we describe
ourselves as locked in or locked out.

But God has made us for more than the world. Our real home isn’t here. The point of today’s Gospel passage is not how we might calculate a fair division of goods between Caesar and God. In reality, it all belongs to God and nothing
– at least nothing permanent and important – belongs to Caesar. . . .

https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2012/07/we-belong-to-god-and-only-to-god.html

Garnett, Rick | Permalink

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