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King Edward the Confessor] enshrined in himself and exhibited to the world the two essential elements of right authority—the truths that all authority descends ultimately from God; and that all government exists for the wellbeing of the governed, not of itself. Christianity commits the Christian to no form of government as essentially better than any other . . . the Christian, objecting as indeed he must to anarchy, demands government, but not (save by reason of purely personal preference) this sort or that. On the other hand, he knows that political life, like social, artistic, moral, familiar—every kind or department of life—has to recognize God as sole ultimate source of Power, and the Christian must be able to be obeying God when obeying the mandates of his prince. To fail to remember this is to begin to offer to Caesar what belongs to God, and to worship the Beast and his Image, to adore what is fain to set itself up (as the Scriptures so often say) in the Holy Place itself above all that can deserve the Name of God. No State, no Government, is Absolute over Conscience.

—C. C. Martindale, S.J.
from a homily on St. Edward published in Saints Are Not Sad, Frank J. Sheed, ed. (1949)

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— Politics — Commonplaces #196 — Jan/Feb 2024 —