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Twenty Ninth Sunday of the year


In today’s Gospel Jesus poses the Question that many people in pubs right across our land and at dinner tables tell us that we should never do and that is to mix politics and religion.  They are in one sense poles apart and yet they are linked also. We live in a world where Politics and Religion sit side by side sometimes not very well.  As a Catholic Christian how do we respond to this? Well I think that we have a very clear answer in today’s readings. In the Gospel today we see that Jesus is asked a question about politics and especially tax. Jesus gives a very clever response he realises he is trapped so he says “Very well, give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and give to God what belongs to God” 

Religion and Politics live in harmony together we cannot take one away from the other. We are called to be responsive to both society and to God. We have a responsibility to both and our following of God must inform our decisions about politics and especially what political party we chose to vote for.
Through our religion and our way in the world we are called to be responsible citizens in the place of whom we live in. We have a responsibility to inform ourselves of the politics of the time and of those who live around us. When the Pope visited England last year  and spoke to the Houses of Parliament in the Historical surroundings at Westminster Hall he spoke about the role that politics and Religion were linked together he says about politics that:  “It is a two-way process. Without the corrective supplied by religion, though, reason too can fall prey to distortions, as when it is manipulated by ideology, or applied in a partial way that fails to take full account of the dignity of the human person.”

So next time we watch Question time or think about what party to vote for we should take these words by the Pope and meditate on them. In our Judgement we should not think about single issue politics which I feel is quite dangerous. When we look at single issue politics we fail often to look at the whole picture.  So we should look at the policies that they are promoting and “take full account of the dignity of the human person” as it says in the Bishops conference statements leading up the 1997 election this means to look at those who are venerable in our society to look at the common Good of all people.

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