Catholics must be well-trained, operative citizens

“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” Following Christ’s command requires Catholic citizens to know “Caesar” and comply with Caesar’s just commands.

Salvation history shows that God often relied on leaders who knew how civil governmentworked.

Joseph, whose brothers sold him to merchants, was imprisoned and later rose in importance in the government of Egypt to become second in authority under Pharaoh. Joseph’s position enabled him to save the fledgling chosen people from death by famine.

Moses, who was adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter, learned first hand of the operations of the Egyptian government in Pharaoh’s household. That knowledge was critical to the Hebrews leaving Egypt.

When St. Paul was in a fight with the Jewish Sanhedrin to preach Christ crucified, he convinced the Roman governor, Festus (who wanted to turn Paul over to Jewish authorities), that he was a Roman citizen who could appeal to Ceasar to decide the dispute.

Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput noted, “Catholics need to wake up … What we’re watching emerge … is a new kind of paganism, and atheism … and … it is neither tolerant nor morally neutral.” (Public Discourse, 1/24/12)

Anti-Christian zealots are working to prevent the Church from finding families for orphans which it has been doing for nearly 2,000 years until the current imposition of LGBT demands. Now, nine states and Washington, D.C. (96 million people) have laws/policies that require faith-based agencies to place children for adoption or foster care with homosexual couples or have their adoption licenses revoked.

The Church’s social doctrine states, “No power can abolish the natural right to marriage or modify its traits and purpose. Marriage in fact is endowed with its own proper, innate and permanent characteristics,” but the 2015 Obergefell Supreme Court decision assumed that sodomy and other disordered behaviors constitute the predicate for same-sex “marriage.”

In 2017, Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) criticized federal Court of Appeals Trump Appeals Court nominee Amy Barrett, a Catholic, because “many of us … have this very uncomfortable feeling [that] … in your case … the dogma lives loudly within you. And that is a concern …” Apparently, killing roughly 60 million children under the Supreme Court’s 1973 abortion ruling is not a concern for Sen. Feinstein.

Planned Parenthood, LGBTQ activists, socialists, and others are pressuring school boards, courts, state legislatures, and Congress to remove Christians from the public square as was done in the Soviet Union by Joseph Stalin, in China under Chairman Mao, in Germany under Adolph Hitler, and in Mexico under Plutarco Calles.

Abandoning government to secular atheists has dire consequences for our families, friends, country, and the Church. A Woodrow Wilson Foundation poll of 1,000 American citizens found only 19 percent of those 45 or under would pass the citizenship naturalization test. Citizens hostile to the natural law who are ignorant of the Constitution and its due process requirements are easily led by demagogues.

So, starting with our own example and families, we must teach our children to be well-trained citizens knowing how laws are made and elections are won to better defend the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” in the public square as our Founders did.

Pope Pius XI (1937) told German parents, “none can free you from the responsibility God has placed on you over your children. … the eternal Judge … will ask. ‘Where are those I confided to you?’”

To love our neighbor we must be the leaven of America, the light of the world, and the salt of the earth as Christ told us, or we will be trampled underfoot by growing, angry mobs.

ROBERT MARSHALL was a member of the Virginia General Assembly from 1992 to 2018, and is the author of Reclaiming the Republic: How Christians and Other Conservatives Can Win Back America. Email him at r[email protected].