Men of the Legion of Valor, Building on Bishop Paprocki’s homily, which we shared in yesterday’s post, today we share some wisdom from Venerable Bishop Fulton Sheen, reflecting on this passage from the 17th Chapter of Matthew’s Gospel:

After having affirmed that as the King of Heaven He was immune from earthly tributes, He turned to Peter and said: But we will not hurt their consciences; Go down to the sea, and cast thy hook; Take out the first fish thou drawest up, And when thou hast opened its mouth Thou wilt find a silver coin there; With this make payment to them for Me and for thyself.

Mt 17:25

Venerable Fulton Sheen offers this reflection: 

The king’s son is free. But He Who is the Son of God became the Son of Man sharing the poverty, trials, the labors, and the homelessness of men. Later on, He would subject Himself to arrest, the crown of thorns, and to the Cross. Presently, as the Son of Man, He would not stand on His dignity as the Son of God, nor claim immunity from servile obligations, but would voluntarily concede to a tax in order to avoid scandal. It is not a mark of greatness always to affirm one’s right, but often to suffer an indignity. There might be scandal if He showed contempt for the temple. As He submitted Himself to John’s baptism to fulfill all righteousness; as His mother offered doves, though she needed no purification from His birth; so He would submit Himself to the tax to sanctify the human bonds He wore.

Venerable Fulton Sheen

Following the model of the master, Venerable Sheen points out the risk of our obsession with “rights” and points to the power of witness and the maturity to which the Christian is called—the higher standard to which we are called. He cautions us against the mistake of becoming yet another special interest engaged in the “fight” at the cost of bearing compelling witness to the Gospel.

Let’s apply this at a practical and uncomfortable level: What does it say to our pagan brethren, whom we are called to love and bring the good news of the Gospel, when we flout the (admittedly vague, confusing, and often arbitrary) “safety guidelines” that they believe will protect them and their families?

What does it say when one of our weaker brethren asks why we refuse to wear a mask, and we say “my mask is at home with my Constitution,” as I heard a prominent Catholic woman say to someone in the grocery store?

As Venerable Sheen illustrates, we need not speculate on the proper Christian response to this moment: Christ, Himself has given us the answer.

Christ entered human society under the rule of an oppressive, arbitrary, pagan government. He entered human society as a Jew at a time when His people awaited a theo-political-military Messiah who would forcefully throw the Romans off the back of the Jews and restore Jerusalem as the earthly, Davidic kingdom. He walked and lived among people in whom a spirit of revolution stirred. In fact, it was precisely the tendency toward riot and insurrection that forced Pilate’s hand to put Christ on trial and succumb to the Jews’ demands of crucifixion.

But Christ rejects the Pharisees’ litmus test of his Messianic identity, refusing to take up the mantle of military-political revolution. He shows that His kingdom is not of this world and calls us to a new way of engagement in the world, one in which we profess citizenship in the heavenly kingdom and only secondly, and to a far lesser degree, engage as aliens-in-exile in any worldly kingdom. Christ demands that we follow him on a path of humility and persecution in this world.

As Venerable Sheen notes, the Creator of the Universe refused to “standon His dignity as the Son of God, nor claim immunity from servile obligations, but would voluntarily concede to a tax in order to avoidscandal.” When the Lord, Himself showed the wisdom of forgoing His “rights” for the avoidance of scandal, who are we to reject his example and demand our own “rights” at the cost of scandal today?

Does this mean that we buy into the obsessive fear and agree with the arbitrary rules of mitigation?

No. We do have rights as citizens, and we should advocate for them in proper ways.

But we must avoid two traps:

The first is an obsession with the politics and culture of our time without supernatural faith in God’s providence and losing sight of the fact that our true citizenship is not of any kingdom of this world. This trap leads us to desperation and rash action that undermines the Gospel and leads us into sin. (We’ll have more to say about this in a post tomorrow.)

The second, and the central point of Venerable Sheen’s reflection, is abandonment of Christ’s mission of evangelization in exchange for a worldly mission of political battles…fighting worldly fights at the expense of evangelization. The matter ofscandalis central to this second trap, and it deserves some unpacking.

St. Paul ups the ante with regard to this matter of scandal for Christians, literally saying that causing such scandal is a sin against neighbor and Christ.

In his first letter to the Corinthians, addressing the scandal caused by Christians who eat meat sacrificed to idols, St. Paul writes, the Christian has a right and freedom to eat meat sacrificed to idols and is no longer bound by the strict (and complicated) Jewish dietary laws. But if doing so creates scandal and a barrier to evangelization, St. Paul says, then exercising one’s “right” is “sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience, when it is weak” and in doing so “you sin against Christ.” (1 Cor 8:7-13) He points out that those who have “knowledge,” i.e. baptized, confirmed Catholics who publicly claim the faith in our current time, have a solemn, humble duty to avoid scandalizing the non-believing of “weak conscience.”

We know that people who lack faith have been susceptible to manipulation by media, social media (as, I fear have we…again, more to come later this week on that topic). We know that they are scared, primarily due to their lack of faith, fear of death, and trust only in science and worldly forces. In short, they are of weak conscience.

Do we stoop to the level of the pagans and poke them in the eye precisely in their moment of great weakness, demanding our “right” to not wear a mask when the government requires it? How do they view us, as emissaries of Christ when we do this? They fear and loathe us. They view us as obsessed with our own rights at the expense of their safety and the greater good. We who have “knowledge” carry the flag of Christ set ourselves up as obstacles to conversion. We create scandal for the weak of conscience.

Our duty, according to St. Paul, and as illustrated by Venerable Sheen’s reflection above, is to avoid sinning against Christ and neighbor by humbling ourselves in obedience, patience, and long-suffering.

There is a time and a place for protest, and there is a proper way to do it. As we do so, we must be cunning as serpents and simple as doves (Matthew 10:16). We need to pick our battles and engage in them carefully, always with an eye toward avoiding the two traps: losing sight of our heavenly citizenship and alien-exile status in the world; and scandalizing our weaker brethren and undermining our mission of evangelization.

Again, does this mean we should not stand up for the rights of the faithful? No, not at all. But it does suggest that we need to get our minds right…that is to say to be of one mind with Christ…before we act. Like the disciples in the upper room awaiting Pentecost, and like Christ who spent 40 days in the desert before launching His ministry, perhaps our first action needs to be a purification of thought and of will lest we depart from Christ and unwittingly march toward our own ruin.

This is not cowardice. This is courage, humility and Christian charity. This is not pagan fear. This is Christian valor.

This is the path of Christ, and it is the way of the Legion of Valor.