Friday of the First Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 309 

Samuel was displeased when they asked for a king to judge them.
He prayed to the LORD, however, who said in answer:
“Grant the people’s every request.
It is not you they reject, they are rejecting me as their king.”

Despite the complaints of American bishops against President Trump's harassment of Mexican immigrants, they have supported his undoing the former administration's prohibitions against the free exercise of faith. Children may pray in school, protests against abortion may continue, adoptions into Catholic households that reject transgender nonsense may continue, Catholic institutions need not support immoral methods of birth control. 

We hear our traditional ambivalence about human governance in today's first reading. Clearly, the old judge Samuel preferred the ill-defined authority of charismatic religious men and women like himself. The Book of Judges describes some of the heroes of those centuries between Moses and David. Some of them were heroic warriors defending the people; some were rogues; and some of the heroes became rogues. 

In any case, other nations were forming better governments with armies who could invade Hebrew territory and destroy its people with their memories of God, Abraham, and Egypt. It was time for a God-fearing king to govern the people of God. When Saul proved to be a capable warrior but an unrighteous ruler, Samuel was told to anoint the shepherd boy David, who became Israel's model king. He was a devout, courageous warrior and a competent administrator, despite his many wives and innumerable children whom he did not govern well. 

The Church has never sponsored a theocracy. Jesus, with his teaching about paying Roman taxes, and Saint Paul recognized the right of civil governments to govern human affairs.  

President Trump's "...Religious Liberty Commission’s... recommends steps to secure domestic religious liberty and identifies opportunities to further the cause of religious liberty around the world." The commission includes Bishop Barron and Cardinal Timothy Dolan. Mark David Hall, the director of the Center for Religion, Culture, and Democracy at Regent University, testified that, 

"...the separation of church and state is not a 'bilateral barrier' but is rather meant only to restrict the state from imposing itself on the church." 

Catholics cannot pretend to be faithful if they do not oppose so-called rights to abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage, or transgenderism. These rights may be legal in temporal laws, but they are immoral in the eternal law of God. Turning a blind eye and hoping they go away doesn't seem to be helping.  

Catholicism includes people of every nation, language, and form of government. Its boundaries are very wide, and we cannot despise human beings who truly need something we can provide, regardless of where they are or where they come from. Americans who see Mexican workers on roofs and road gangs in severe cold and exhausting heat cannot suppose these workers are stealing from the system. We cannot believe that they should be severely punished for a misdemeanor. or that providing food, clothing, and shelter for them is wrong or illegal. 

The Judge Samuel's opposition to kings in Israel was eased by King David's governance. He sinned egregiously when he molested Bathsheba and murdered Uriah, her husband; but he also taught the world the supreme value of Penance and the inexhaustible mercy of God. Because we worship his ancestor Jesus, the Son of David, we pray for our religious and civil leaders, that they will lead us in the practices of justice, mercy, and penance.