On the one hand, why in the world does any pope, then, “pontificate” on matters of the science of economics in an encyclical — the most authoritative document he can issue — if Catholics are free to ignore him? Isn’t it pointless? It is as if someone writing the majority opinion in a Supreme Court decision on the Second Amendment digressed from constitutional issues and included a long discourse on which guns are best suited for particular purposes, with instructions on how to how to use them, clean them, and store them when they are not in use. That is what I see as a problem in your analysis.

On the other, the virtue of it is that it seems to me to be applicable to the Church teaching that abortion must be against the law (which I do not agree with). Every country is different. Every government is different. The Church should not be in the business of telling governments how to deal with the issue of abortion. It should be saying that governments have an obligation to minimize abortion, and leave the strategy to each country and government to determine for itself.

Part 2: Causing the intentional death of a fetus is wrong.

Actually, what the Church says is that abortion is the intentional killing of a human person, and and intentionally killing an innocent person is wrong. Doctors and scientists do not necessarily agree that a fetus is a human person, and philosophers do not necessarily agree, based on the data from scientists, that the fetus is a human person.

Yes, economics is a “science” of human behavior just as criminology is a science of human behavior. However, documenting human behavior under either science does not necessarily mean approving of the behavior.

People talk about economic laws and economic realities all the time as a way of justifying what amounts to their own bad behavior resulting in the advancement of their own interest.

As a practical matter, at times we need to recognize this or that “economic reality” in public policy; people are what they are, after all, i.e., sinful and often self-interested and greedy. On the other hand, as Catholics we can point to and encourage better behavior and also government policies aimed at blunting the bad effects of “economic realities.”

Part 1: Abortions cause the intentional death of a fetus;

Part 2: Causing the intentional death of a fetus is wrong.

Part 1 is a statement made by scientists and doctors, within their field of expertise. Part 2 is a moral teaching, within the Church’s field of expertise (and in fact her charism of infallibility).

Now the Church does not disagree with scientists and doctors about Part 1. But if she did disagree with them, she would be on the same level as they in that debate, for it would be a debate about material observable science.

It is the same with economics.

There are moral concerns in economics: Of course! But when a two-part statement is made, in which the Church is teaching within her charism of infallibility in one part, but is dangerously out of her depth in the other, then one must separate the two parts in order to be faithful to the Truth; that is, to Christ.

For example, any time a bishop says, “We ought to implement universal health coverage at the federal level, to create a more just and compassionate society and alleviate the strain on the poor,” I hear the following two-part statement:

Part 1: Implementing a federal program to provide universal health coverage will (a.) solve the health care problems of the U.S. and (b.) not produce unintended side effects which are worse than doing nothing;

Part 2: It would be wrong of us not to undertake an action which we knew would solve the health care problems of the U.S. and have no deleterious side effects.

Now, Part 2 is a moral judgment and falls within the Church’s charism, and if the Pope utters it I’ll take it as God’s truth, especially since I already believed it anyway. (Who doesn’t?)

But Part 1 is a job for economists, especially those who study the long-term impacts of systems of incentives in decision-making bureaucracies where the decision-makers are isolated from feedback that would hurt them if they made the wrong decision. The Pope is a brilliant man, but that just isn’t his field of study, and as it’s not his ordained authority either, I am free to assume he knows as much about it as every other talented dilettante who proffers an opinion.

Unless, of course, he orders it as a discipline. In that case, I can think he’s wrong (as some do, in the matter of celibate clergy in the Latin Rite) but I am still required to do it because he’s in authority, and it’s a matter of discipline.

But the Pope hasn’t said, as a matter of discipline, that we must support bad economic or labor or health care policy.

So I am free to strongly oppose Federal programs while welcoming local ones and feeling ambivalent about county and state ones, in accordance with Catholic ideals about subsidiarity, not to mention the U.S. Constitution, Amendment 10.

In so doing, I am in accord with the Pope in all his teachings in matters of faith and morals. If I disagree with him on a matter of economics, then perhaps that’s not so different from Copernicus disagreeing with a Pope on a matter of pure astronomy?

The trouble is that this discourse on Truth sounds hopelessly abstract: “She does, however, have a mission of truth to accomplish, in every time and circumstance, for a society that is attuned to man, to his dignity, to his vocation. Without truth, it is easy to fall into an empiricist and sceptical view of life, incapable of rising to the level of praxis because of a lack of interest in grasping the values — sometimes even the meanings — with which to judge and direct it. Fidelity to man requires fidelity to the truth, which alone is the guarantee of freedom (cf. Jn 8:32) and of the possibility of integral human development. For this reason the Church searches for truth, proclaims it tirelessly and recognizes it wherever it is manifested. This mission of truth is something that the Church can never renounce. Her social doctrine is a particular dimension of this proclamation: it is a service to the truth which sets us free. Open to the truth, from whichever branch of knowledge it comes, the Church’s social doctrine receives it, assembles into a unity the fragments in which it is often found, and mediates it within the constantly changing life-patterns of the society of peoples and nations.”

As the NAB points out, Jesus asks the Pharisees to show him the Roman coins, which they are clearly carrying. “[T]heir readiness in producing the money implies their use of it and their acceptance of the financial advantages of the Roman administration in Palestine.”

Also, the image of Caesar on the coin was a “graven image,” forbidden to Jews, and some Jews would not use such coins. So the fact that the Pharisees were carrying the coins would have been a mark against them to some other Jews.

There are many facets to the story, and to reduce it to a command to keep religion and government separate is to misuse the story.

In short, are non Catholic capitalists supporting the Pope’s beloved UN better than Catholic countries are. And shouldn’t he be noticing this and commenting on it. China and Russia…allegedly leftist….pay 2.005% and 1.1% respectively and yet are on the Security Council and Japan is not.

If historian Trevor-Roper was correct, South America is poor partly because two Catholic countries invaded it,robbed it as at Pitosi and left it with Catholicism plus the plantation economy of the encomienda wherein several rich families own the best arable land and the rest are peasants even still in central america.

Non Catholic capitalists may be waiting for us and a Pope to admit that this in part is part of the problem.

As you are probably aware (but some readers may not), the classic key to interpreting that Scripture passage is the often-overlooked question Jesus counter-poses: Whose image is imprinted on the coin? When one remembers from the first chapter of Genesis whose image is imprinted on the soul of each human being, Jesus’ counter-response that follows becomes searingly clear (as it would have been to his intended audience) and much less merely clever.

Indeed.

I like what Dorothy Day said about the passage: When you give to God what belongs to God, there is nothing left for Caesar.

It always amazes me when people take this to be some kind of definitive statement on the relationship between religion and the state. It was, after all, the answer to a trick question (“Then the Pharisees went off and plotted how they might entrap him in speech”). This is not to say there is not a lot to be gleaned from the story. It just seems foolish to me to cite it as the basis for a position about government and religion.