WASHINGTON, DC (Catholic online) - The Archbishop of Philadelphia, Charles Chaput, is one of America's great churchmen who has gained an international recognition for his preaching and teaching on the proper understanding of Catholics and their civic duty. His courage and prophetic clarity on the authentic view of faithful citizenship have inspired thousands to a new Catholic Action which is only just beginning.

On the Fourth of July, Archbishop Chaput delivered the closing homily before an overflow crowd gathered at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception on the campus of Catholic University. The Liturgy, along with others in major cities throughout the Nation, was to "close" the "Fortnight for Freedom" called by the US Catholic Bishops. His choice as the homilist was not accidental. Nor can the critical and essential intention of this fortnight, the protection and preservation of religious freedom, actually come to an end. 

This prophetic Archbishop consistently calls all Catholics to live with what Pope Benedict XVI refers to as "moral coherence". This is not easy under the oppressive boot of what the same Pope properly called "the Dictatorship of Relativism." He has long challenged all of us who bear the name Catholic to avoid what the Second Vatican Council called the "greatest error of our age...the separation between faith and life". His book "Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by living our Catholic beliefs in Political Life" is already a classic. His newest EBook "A Heart on Fire: Catholic Witness and the next America" is another extraordinary contribution to promoting a New Catholic Action.

The books both address the duty of integrating our Catholic faith into our obligations of citizenship. They should be read by every Catholic as we enter into the most important Presidential election of our lifetime. They should also be read by all Christians, all people of faith and all people of good will who value the American experiment in ordered liberty and want to see it continue. We offer the following excerpts from the homily for our readers around the globe:

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Archbishop of Philadelphia, Charles Chaput

My dear faithful people of God and people of Good will,

Philadelphia is the place where both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution were written. For more than two centuries, these documents have inspired people around the globe. So as we begin our reflection on today's readings, I have the privilege of greeting everyone here today -- and every person watching or listening from a distance -- in the name of the Church of my home, the Church of Philadelphia, the cradle of our country's liberty and the city of our nation's founding, so greetings to all of you from the people of Philadelphia. May God bless and guide all of us as we settle our hearts and minds on the Word of God.

Paul Claudel, the French poet and diplomat of the last century, once described the Christian as "a man who knows what he is doing and where he is going in a world [that] no longer [knows] the difference between good and evil, between yes and no. He is like a god standing out in a crowd of invalids . . . He alone has liberty in a world of slaves."

Like most of the great writers of his time, Claudel was a mix of gold and clay, flaws and genius. He had a deep and brilliant Catholic faith, and when he wrote that a man "who no longer believes in God, no longer believes in anything," he was simply reporting what he saw all around him. He spoke from a lifetime that witnessed two world wars and the rise of atheist ideologies that murdered tens of millions of innocent people using the vocabulary of science. He knew exactly where forgetting God can lead.

We Americans live in a different country, on a different continent, in a different century. And yet, in speaking of liberty, Claudel leads us to the reason we come together in worship this afternoon.

Most of us know today's passage from the Gospel of Matthew. What we should, or should not, render unto Caesar shapes much of our daily discourse as citizens. But I want to focus on the other and more important point Jesus makes in today's Gospel: the things we should render unto God.

When the Pharisees and Herodians try to trap Jesus, he responds by asking for a coin. Examining it he says, "Whose image is this and whose inscription?" When his enemies say "Caesar's," he tells them to render it to Caesar. In other words, that which bears the image of Caesar belongs to Caesar.

The key word in Christ's answer is "image," or in the Greek, eikon. Our modern meaning of "image" is weaker than the ...