Usually, the Catholic tradition talks about the Nicaea council in 325, as the first “ecumenical” council. This year, we are celebrating the 1700th anniversary of this great council. But the Council of Jerusalem, briefly summarized in our reading of the acts, is a kind of proto-ecumenical advice, showing the apostles and other church leaders gather in Jerusalem, led by Saint-Pierre and Saint-Jacques, to settle a doctrinal dispute. The question was the status of the law in mosaic. Should the disciples of the Gentiles of Jesus be circumcised and practice the whole law? A game said yes; Another said no.
I do not know if it was the intention of those who conceived the current lectionary, but it is interesting to twin this story with the passage of John 14, where Jesus speaks of the sending of the Holy Spirit to the disciples to “teach all things” and to make them “remember” of all that he said to them. When we are talking about the infallibility or the indefectibility of the Church, we say neither that the Church is magic nor that it is not Full of sinful and imperfect men. We simply say that the Holy Spirit will preserve it despite its members. And this is what is exposed to the Council of Jerusalem. We can be convinced that when the apostles agreed, the Lord will use such decisions to preserve his church.
In a part of the acts omitted from today’s selection, Peter gets up in the assembly and says, “Why do you make a test of God by putting a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we could not bear?” This puts the question with an escape characteristic of the kneader. In other words, we, as a people of Israel, have repeatedly failed over several centuries to perfectly respect the law. How would hell be logical to impose this failure on everyone?
In the end, the Council of Jerusalem sets up a tradition of continuous interpretation by Saint -Paul and the broader Catholic tradition, which is to make a distinction in the law of the Old Testament between what reflects universal moral norms – which the subsequent Catholic tradition would call natural law – and what simply reflects the ritual and civic order of Israel as a nation. Although the Council in Acts is not clear, within the same generation, Saint-Paul and Saint-Pierre will both say very explicitly in their epistles: if circumcision was the marker by which we have verified its belonging to the Holy People of God, we can now say the same thing of baptism, which incorporates us into Christ, true Israel.
Often, this adoption of acts was used to insert artificial discontinuities between the old law and the new. In the modern era, certain flows of Protestantism are quick to see in the acts, and in Paul, the rejection of the whole Jew – which is to say, all rules and rituals in general. What is fascinating in this tradition of interpretation, apart from its associations with anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism, is the way in which a supposed rejection of the burden of the law tends to direct, paradoxically, to a new type of legalism. Thus, in so -called “conservative” traditions, the rejection of the law is strangely reflected in a brand new set of often less clear laws, which must be rigorously applied. In the so -called “progressive” versions, the rejection of the law also results in an obsessive escalation of “freedom” to these heights which it must become really coercive. We could label both sides as a kind of puritanism. And I think it goes without saying that these different forms of puritanism are alive in 2025.
But what should we really think and say about the law? The Council of Acts does not reject Moses and the tradition of Jewish law roughly, as if it did not make sense. He simply recognizes that for Really Following the law of God now requires following Jesus. And the Lord speaks in John 14 to follow his commandments. Far from replacing the law with a loose concept of “love”, he insists that love finds his good demonstration in obedience. Such obedience is ultimately possible thanks to the help of the mind, the duvet, which it will send upon his return to the Father.
There is an obvious and concrete way to think of these ideas in relation to current events. For several years now, our bishops have struggled to implement the principle of “Eucharistic coherence”, which is a sophisticated way of saying that they are trying to understand how to follow the rules on which should and which should not receive holy communion, especially with regard to public figures. There remains a bit of a scandal that the bishops do not seem to unite with a common approach. Thus, for example, some famous Catholic politicians who defended deeply non -Catholic and immoral policies have been happily ignored by the relevant diocesan bishops (example: former president Joe Biden). Others, like the former speaker Nancy Pelosireceived a public reprimand from certain bishops but a polite indifference from others.
These two particular situations have withdrawn from the foreground of public life, but many others remain. Indeed, we now have a Catholic vice-president which, although much more Catholic a few Among the elements in question with the previous administration, this always seems sometimes willing to put aside Catholic moral education when it is practical. Whether it is as extreme or significant that others are not really my question today; I only emphasize that this raises the same questions and the same concerns on the premises where politics begins to have religious implications, or where religious education begins to have political implications.
Among the countless commentators in the public square, we always seem to bypass the same basic complaint: people are upset by bishops and priests “politicize” religion. We heard that of the “left” a few years ago, when this nasty bishop prohibited Pelosi from communion, but now we hear a similar complaint of the “right” on the way the bishops must remain in their path and stop talking about politics.
I have no intention of depositing all these chair problems, both because I do not have the best solutions and because I do not think it would be particularly edifying to dwell on it. But I want to respond to the persistent affirmation that we see repeated, especially when someone hears a perspective that he does not like – that Christianity and Catholicism should somehow remain outside politics.
Christianity was “political” from the first day, because Christianity is concerned with human salvation and humanity East Politics, that is to say that it is always involved in decision-making and things together. There are reasons why the first Christians seemed to be a threat to the state. They recognized that their ultimate citizenship came from above, they both respected secular authority and rejected it, according to that it acts in its duty God to promote the common good and moral order. They refused to act as if the only goods were wealth and power. And as many of our modern “political” arguments seem to be coming back to abortion, we must say: the teaching of the Church on abortion was just as controversial in the first century as today. The teaching of the Church on this subject is very clear and has always been: it is the intentional capture of an innocent human life, to never be authorized, even in the service of another good end. It is not the same as to say that the Church has defined and prescribed strategies to promote this moral principle in the political field.
The misunderstanding often at stake on all sides of today’s debates On politicians and communion is the idea that the fact that jumping someone of communion is in a way a punishment. But it is a medication. This is how the tradition of canon law of the Church has always understood this. The main law of the Church is the salvation of souls. The fact that a soul is an audience character does not fundamentally modify the obligation of the Church, nor the obligations of pastoral individuals. If anything, the church’s obligations are reinforced, with additional issues involving the perception of the public and the scandal.
Telling a person, “you cannot receive communion” may feel mean, can feel exclusive or something else. The goal is to shock, shake, attract the person’s attention so that they can repent. It is a mercy, because the Church says: to receive holy communion would be dangerous for your soul. We cannot simply allow someone to continue to publicly submit their soul to corruption and spiritual death as if it did not matter.
So whatever you think of Eucharistic politics and borders – and perhaps you prefer not to think too much, which is probably healthy – the important thing here is that love and justice go together. To love Jesus is to obey his commandments. Show his love in the world is to show his teachings as they are, and not as we could be, not only to comply with the party’s platform that we love, or just as much as we believe them practical.
It is a challenge not only for the Church as a hierarchical institution, but for each of us as an individual. And this is impossible without a constant life of prayer and to offer us to Christ. Because in the end, the law is – it is. It is the new temple and the new law. He is the burden we have to receive, not another. And so we could do worse than to offer, as a kind of daily recall, the prayer of traditional acquisition that the priest says when he puts on the chasuble: o Lord, who said, my yoke is easy, and my burden is light, grant that I can bear it, as if to deserve your grace. Amen.
Image: JD Vance. Credit: Gage Skidmore via Flick,, CC by-SA 2.0.