{"id":2674,"date":"2007-03-07T09:21:45","date_gmt":"2007-03-07T09:21:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/hey-caesarare-you-listening.html"},"modified":"2007-03-07T09:21:45","modified_gmt":"2007-03-07T09:21:45","slug":"hey-caesarare-you-listening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/hey-caesarare-you-listening.html","title":{"rendered":"Hey, Caesar…are you listening?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s General Audience:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

By praying for the civil authorities, even when they are persecuted by them, Christians follow Christ\u2019s teaching on the cross and recognise the legitimacy of the political institutions. But \u201cCesar is not everything, another sovereignty emerges\u201d born of the truth that God is coming, and thus \u201cis worthy of being heard even by the State\u201d. <\/p>\n

After having dedicated past general audiences to the lives of the single apostles and witnesses, starting today Benedict XVI will centre his Wednesday catechesis on the \u201cthe apostolic fathers of the church, that is the first and second generation after the apostles\u201d. First among those \u201cfathers\u201d is St. Clement, third of St Peter\u2019s successors who St Irenaeus tells us \u201chad seen the apostles he had met them\u201d. <\/p>\n

Examining Clements letter to the Corinthians, defined by the Pope as \u201cthe first act by the Roman primate following St Peter\u2019s death\u201d, in his audience address Benedict XVI, underlined that the Church\u2019s structure is \u201csacramental and not political\u201d. Indeed the letter was motivated by \u201cgrave problems\u201d which had arisen in Corinth, where \u201cthe priests had been deposed by a group of young contesters\u201d. <\/p>\n

In the document, first and foremost is the joyful news of the grace which saves and Gods gift to Christians is underlined. News which \u201cfills the heart with joy\u201d and \u201cgives certainty to our lives\u201d.  But we must coherently dedicate ourselves to this gift and to a journey of conversion.  Clement states that if there have been abuses it is due to the undermining of charity, he recalls the faithful to humility and fraternal love, the fundamental elements of the Church. Moreover for the first time the term laikos, layman, member of Gods people, different from religious, appears in Christian writings. But the distinction must not mean opposition, because it is the same Spirit which breaths through the diverse members of the one body of Christ. <\/p>\n

The letter, underlined Benedict XVI, shows that the Church \u201cis neither confusion nor anarchy, in which each person can do as they wish\u201d and Clement clearly explains the doctrine of apostolic succession: the norms which rule this are on analyses derived from God himself. The Father sent Jesus, he the apostles and they in their turn their successors. \u201cEverything proceeds from the will of God\u201d. This explains why the Church\u2019s structure is \u201csacramental and not political\u201d and that the sacramental structure guarantees the precedence of the divine gift. The Church \u201cis Gods gift not our creature\u201d.<\/p>\n

Written in the shadow of Diocletian\u2019s persecution, ( Should be Domitian…Diocletian’s Great Persecution was 305) <\/em>circa 96 AD, the Pope underlined that it also shows that Christians did not cease in their prayers for the authorities, even when they were unjustly oppressed by them. This text \u201chas guided the Christian attitude to politics and the State down through the centuries\u201d: \u201cin the aftermath of persecution Christians still prayed for those same authorities who unjustly condemned them. The reason is primarily found in the Christological order: we must pray for our persecutors as Christ did on the cross\u201d. \u201cBy praying for the authorities Clement recognises the legitimacy of the political authorities in the order established by God; at the same time, he expresses the concern that the authorities are open to God and that they use the power which He has granted them in peace and with pity\u201d. But, beside \u201cCesar\u201d, \u201canother sovereignty emerges, whose origins and essence are not of this world, but come from above: it is the sovereignty of truth which bears the right to be heard even by the State\u201d. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

More on St. Clement and his letter<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s General Audience: By praying for the civil authorities, even when they are persecuted by them, Christians follow Christ\u2019s teaching on the cross and recognise the legitimacy of the political institutions. But \u201cCesar is not everything, another sovereignty emerges\u201d born of the truth that God is coming, and thus \u201cis worthy of being heard even…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nHey, Caesar...are you listening? - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/hey-caesarare-you-listening.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Hey, Caesar...are you listening? - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Today’s General Audience: By praying for the civil authorities, even when they are persecuted by them, Christians follow Christ\u2019s teaching on the cross and recognise the legitimacy of the political institutions. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2674\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}