TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN

A SERMON FOR THE 22nd SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

On February 15^th, 1971, something rather remarkable happened over in England.  That day was known as D-Day, not the D-Day of World War 2 when the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy, but D for “Decimal”.  It was the day when the United Kingdom changed its currency based on pounds, shillings and pence to a new decimal currency with a hundred pence in a pound instead of the 240 as before.  This newly contrived D-Day occurred just a couple of years after the introduction of the new Mass, and added to the general feeling of uneasiness and instability that was a result of all the changes being forced upon us by the progressives of the time, both in Church and State.  The old money had been in use since Roman times, when money was made of real silver, and a pound of silver was known in Latin simply as a librum, a “pound”.  This was divided into 20 shillings, each of which was made up of 12 pennies.  The penny was called a denariumin Latin, and if you were listening carefully to the Latin reading of today’s Gospel, you will have heard that when our Lord asked the Pharisees to show him the tribute money, they brought him just such a denarium. 

I was sixteen years old when this annoying modernization of the traditional currency was introduced.   Before the big change, the Bank of England never seemed to get rid of old coinage, and I had spent my childhood collecting pennies that dated back to the early reign of Queen Victoria, which you’d find in your pocket change every so often.  I had coins of every king and queen of England since then, even rare ones of Edward VIII, the king who abdicated after marrying the American divorcee.  It was fascinating to me that the system we still had in England back then was exactly the same system as the one in use when the Blessed Mother took the Christ Child shopping —pounds, shillings, and pence, with the image of the ruler of the land stamped on one side.  Whether it was Caesar Augustus or Queen Elizabeth II, the custom of minting coinage with the face of the ruler of the day on one side had been practiced from time immemorial, and continues even to the present day.

Every time we look at our coins and see the face of our ruler staring back at us, it is a stark reminder of the words of our Lord, that while we are busy buying and selling and giving unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, we nevertheless have another allegiance to one who also claims his own dues.  We owe to God the things that are God’s.

Church and State.  As separate institutions, neither one represents the complete picture. We are, after all, human beings made up of body and soul, and require both institutions to govern our whole being. The laws of the state govern and protect our physical rights, not to be stolen from, not to be murdered, not to be endangered by people who drive too fast, and so on.  Meanwhile, and in complete unity with the State, the laws of the Church, our so-called canon laws, govern and protect our spiritual rights. Our right to believe and practice the faith God revealed, our right to worship God as Christ himself taught us at the Last Supper, our right to receive valid sacraments, all these are under the purview of the Church.  At least, that’s how it’s supposed to be.  Again, in England, we had it right, at least for a time—the senior bishops of the Church had seats in the House of Lords, and participated in the running of the government, bringing their ecclesiastical expertise and oversight over the laws of the land.  This was the way it was done not only in England but in all the Catholic countries of Europe.  Church and State in harmony (at least most of the time), running the country and protecting its citizens from physical and spiritual harm.

The enemies of God made sure they brought all this to an end, in one way or another.  In England, it was the Church they attacked and overthrew at the Reformation. In France, they took thee opposite approach and overthrew the monarchy at the Revolution.  Meanwhile, in the newly formed United States of America, our founding fathers saw to it that Church and State would never work hand in glove for the good of the citizens.  Instead there was erected an artificial wall between the two, and the Separation of Church and State became an article of faith of the new nation, enshrined in its very Constitution.  This was the divorce of Church from State, and the nation we have today is the sad, unnatural child victim of this divorce.

This unnatural separation of Church and State is bound to favor the State, and we see a growing number of examples today of the Church’s rights being trampled.  The State started by claiming jurisdiction over the laws of marriage, first by recognizing divorce, then going after the very core of the sacrament, permitting marriage between people of the same gender.  The rights of Christians to display crosses or say “God bless you” when someone sneezes has somehow become offensive to a tiny minority, which now seeks to use the law separating Church and State to make Christian symbols and customs illegal.  Gradually, our rights as Christians in general, and as Catholics in particular, are being eroded.  This does not bode well, and history tells us where such assaults logically lead.  We should expect that as things spiral faster out of control, that the words of Holy Scripture will eventually be labeled as hate speech, that Bibles will be banned, that the true Mass and Divine Office will be outlawed, and that we will be physically hunted down and persecuted.

Our Lord didn’t say very much about it, but with his few words about giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s, he did make it extremely clear we should pledge our allegiance to both Church and State, and that their role should be to work together in complete harmony, a harmony created by God for the good of our body and soul.  Primarily, we should determine to be good sons and daughters of the Church, good children of God.  And then, if we are American, then by all means let us be good Americans, loyal, patriotic Americans, who want our nation to be safe and secure, based on the rule of law.  

But our first loyalty must always be to God. If laws are passed by Congress that defy the laws of God, then we should be ready to defy those laws, or at least to make sacrifices to defend God’s laws which can never be superseded by the laws of man.  We must be ready to use whatever lawful means we have at our disposal to change those laws. Our most effective means, I don’t need to tell you, is with our vote, and for that reason, Catholic citizens must be aware as Election Day approaches of this most cherished of privileges.  Like all privileges, it is also a duty, and those who are eligible to vote should do so.  It is imperative for the continued existence of our civilization, perhaps even of our ability to worship God freely, that good people with good sense do not abandon our nation to the godless mob of left-wing extremists.

While we vote only once a year, we should meanwhile pray daily.  Pray for the restoration of sanity to our Church and to our nation, that wisdom and peace may prevail, and that the laws of God and man, Church and State, may once again coincide for the benefit of all.