Romans 13, 1-7 a Catholic Priest's reply

Father Angel Sotelo replied on Tumblir to my query about the above passage from St Paul: 

If you understand the context in which St. Paul is writing, you will understand that ancient peoples could rarely count on long periods of stability in government, and law and order. They never knew when they might be attacked and killed on the highway, or suffer a home invasion and be left for dead after a robbery. 

The Roman government provided swift justice, if brutal, and due process of law in a highly advanced court system. St. Paul, being a Roman citizen, is stating that when government is doing its job of provided law and order for the flourishing of its citizens, then it is acting in the place of God’s authority and should be obeyed for the common good of society.

Even if this verse were a later form of editing and were not written by St. Paul, that would be irrelevant for the Church, for the words were confirmed as part of canonical and divinely inspired text.

However, you made a leap from confirming the authority of government to confirming the authority of “evil government.” That is the premise which is giving you difficulty.

However, that is a premise which is not in St. Paul’s teaching. Let’s look at Romans 13:3-4 to clarify that St. Paul is not saying all government is always at all times to be upheld as legitimate government:

For rulers are not a cause of fear to good conduct, but to evil. Do you wish to have no fear of authority? Then do what is good and you will receive approval from it, for it is a servant of God for your good. But if you do evil, be afraid, for it does not bear the sword without purpose; it is the servant of God to inflict wrath on the evildoer.

St. Paul does not spell it out, but he alludes here to the fact that he is speaking of respect for law and order when it is a moral or ethical type of law and order. It exists to punish “evil.” If, however, the governing authority itself is an evildoer, it also will come under the wrath of God. 

Notice in the book of Revelations that when Nero and the emperors of Rome used their power to murder Christians without rhyme or reason, they are referred to as “the beast” of Satan, branded with the number “666” (total evil) and called “Babylon the great, mother of harlots” and of the abominations of the earth.

Revelations states that God is so angry at the injustice of illegitimate government and its political repression of the righteous that He takes terrifying revenge upon “the great whore.” The Scripture goes on to say that God has her encircled by her enemies, who pillage and burn her:

“For true and just are his judgments, who hath judged the great harlot which corrupted the earth with her fornication, and hath revenged the blood of his servants, at her hands” (Revelations 19:2).

This is why we must always judge whether a command or an order from governmental authority is righteous or unjust, whether it leads to virtue or is sinful, for God will judge us for blind obedience to worldly government. If we look at the context of Scripture quotes, we can read them as they should be read.

WHERE ARE YOU COMING FROM?

Before the last war Peter Drucker heard in Germany a nazi party official explaining to a crowd in the street, "We don't want high bread prices. We don't want low bread prices. We don't want the same bread prices. We want national socialist bread prices."

Mad? Certainly, but for me understandably mad.

A wise African is said to have remarked to a Christian missionary, "How can I hear what you say, when what you are is deafening me?"

Not mad, but perfectly understandable.

St Paul exhorted the early Christians to be submissive to the magistrates, because their authority is ultimately derived from God. (Somebody please give me the reference, because I'm temporarily without a New Testament in English.)

Maybe I'm a leetle bit heretical, but I have never been able to accept what St Paul said here. After all, Jesus described Satan as the prince of this world. I will obey wise and just laws, made by a wise, just, and good government (in a sense acceptable to my Catholic conscience). Laws made by moral aliens are facts, like gravity, to be circumvented, frustrated, subverted, overcome.

If I were to live in a future Caliphate of Europe, I would regard it as a duty to eat pork, drink alcohol, and do anything else I safely could to undermine the government.

As I have already said, I admire devout Muslims, but not their religion.

I have a great affection for Jews I have known, but if I were forced (yes, highly unlikely) to live in a future Hassidic state, I would spend much of my time drinking pork and lobster milk-shakes. And being outrageously Catholic.

Prim parliamentary killjoys in the UK make normal people (like me) want to be drunk as owls and smoke like chimneys.

The UK is not just a secular state - it countenances religions only insofar as it may be a useful tool of control, viz Blair's 'Faith Foundation'. It is in effect anti-religious. Those of a religious persuasion who live under it should, like Hotspur, "cavil at the ninth part of a hair".

His Holiness has called for us Catholics to be a creative minority, and I hope many of us are.

I would add to that, we should be a disruptive minority, and endeavour to make sure that anti-Catholic, anti-life, evil government cannot work.

We should not be following the example of the English Hierarchy in cosying up to those powerful and prestigious interests which are seeking the destruction of the family, childhood innocence, authentic religion (by describing it as culture), and all inconvenient morality.

Thank God I have the good fortune to live in Poland, where abortion is almost non-existent, and both Church and family are strong and resilient. Here I can be that bizarre creature - a patriotic non-Pole. I can comfortably respect the law, police, and judges.

Ultimately, however, I am a citizen of my own skin, owing allegiance only to God, to the Church, to those I love, and to the Truth.