The Fourteenth Sunday of the Year, C

    Lately we hear through the news media a lot about the so-called “separation of church and state.” It might surprise many that this phrase is not in America’s founding documents, but comes from the personal writings of, if I remember rightly, Thomas Jefferson, who wrote of the “wall between church and state.” Now, whatever Jefferson meant by that phrase, his idea is far from the notion bandied about by reporters, TV newscasters, the ACLU, and politically correct educators. For Jefferson the role of religion in public affairs was important; what he dreaded and so wrote against was any possibility of his country establishing one religion as the official religion of the state. As President he had no problem, for example, with the federal government paying the salaries of priests and ministers working in the territories for the spread of Christianity among Native Americans. That would not be even remotely possible these days, and probably not desirable anyway. But the point is, this contemporary idea that religion has nothing to say in the public square is simply an idea that has no American pedigree: it is lately invented by some who have their own agenda for our nation, and the traditional Judeo-Christian worldview has no place in that vision. Therefore, it must be excluded. That is, most of this blather about “the separation of church and state” is simply a power play.
    It is, quite frankly, frightening to think of our country in the whole of its public aspect as totally secular. For that would mean, in spite of assurances to the contrary, that America would become ever more amoral, and even immoral, in the governance of the nation. For religion, in spite of the many failings of the adherents of religion, is the preserver of the sense of morals, whether public or private. Religion, too, is not by its very nature a mere matter of the heart, a private thing between a person and God; religion by its nature is also public and has a rightful freedom to express itself publicly.
    That being said, there is also another problem that surfaces often in American life, and Christians, Catholics too, often fall prey to this idea that has no foundation either in the nation’s official understanding of itself, nor certainly in Catholic teaching: and that is the false notion that America is somehow a “sacred” nation or entity. This ideology springs from Puritan sources in America’s early founding: the Puritans had every intention of founding in the new world a country that would be, in their minds, the new Jerusalem, the new Israel, the fulfillment of the biblical idea of “the City set on a hill.” Here is almost the opposite problem to secularism: the Puritans saw the church and state as pretty much one and the same.
    The Catholic Church has always gone back to the words of Jesus in order to build up her understanding of her presence and mission in this world: “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” Now, of course, we owe God everything, but Caesar too – that is, the State – gets his due. In other words, the Church has never believed and advocated a “separation of Church and state,” but the Church does, has always, recognized a distinction between the two, calling them the “spiritual” and the “temporal” realms. The State cannot, according to Catholic teaching, enact any law that is against the law of God, even as the Church cannot usurp the role of the State in public affairs.
    The Catholic Church understands herself to the “City on the hill,” not America. For America does not bring people to a share in God’s eternal life; the Church does. America is a natural entity that was born 228 years ago and will cease to exist sometime in the future, as all natural things do. The role of the state or political community, according to Christian teaching, is to provide an environment in which citizens are protected and can flourish in all the natural virtues, a flourishing that enables them to also then strive toward their ultimate goal: that through the divine virtues of faith, hope and love, they might attain to eternal life with God.
    Something of this our Lord is getting at in today’s Gospel. He sends out His followers to bring the Good News to people all around, giving them the power to heal and cast out evil. Surely, one might think, that is the best that religion can do: heal the sick, vanquish the demonic, give people hope. The disciples evidently thought so. They were rather giddy with the authority over evil that our Lord had granted them. Yet, our Lord gently reprimands them – “do not rejoice because the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice because your names are written in heaven.”
    Though never perfect, still America has been the means of much relief from evil in the experience of many people. There have even been moments in her brief history where America has risen to greatness. Yet we find ourselves now struggling with even greater evils than were conquered in the past. And this brings us back to Jesus’ admonition to rejoice, not in the here-and-now, but in the prospect of heaven. America, whose founding we remember today, is not the means of our salvation. Though loyalty to one’s country is a noble and necessary virtue, it is not the highest, simply because it is incapable of getting us to our highest, our final end or goal – God.
    So let us pray all the more for our nation that she would not forsake the influence of true religion and ignore the laws of God. Let us recognize too that though loyal to our country, we have to render first to God the things that are God’s, that our first loyalty is to God and to the mission of the Church in the world, and that our reason for doing this is that America is not our ultimate home. We rejoice, that is, first and foremost, in our prospect of attaining to that everlasting happiness that is heaven, sharing in the life of God.