Want to get on God’s good side? Here are two strategies, and you won’t believe what really works!
Most Americans understand that paying taxes is their civic duty. They may not like it, but they do it. They take every tax credit, tax break and deduction they can find, and walk through every available loophole. But, down deep, they know that, like death, there’s no avoiding taxes.
This is a serious matter. Tax evasion and the failure to pay one’s taxes is a crime — witness Al Capone, Willie Nelson, Martha Stewart, Pete Rose, Leona Helmsley, et al.1 This is probably true in most countries. But in Italy, according to one observer, “tax evasion is the country’s most popular sport after soccer, [and] an estimated more than €100 billion a year is lost to tax evasion. ... Officials also estimate that Italy’s underground economy … is worth about €200 billion a year, or about 11% of [Italy’s] gross domestic product (GDP).”2
Perhaps this is why His Holiness Pope Francis recently praised Italy’s much-aligned tax collectors, noting “that while they will never win popularity contests, they were vital for the functioning of a fair society.” He was speaking to an audience of Italy’s version of IRS agents. He argued that “everyone had to pay their fair share of taxes, particularly the wealthy, so that the weakest members of society were not ‘crushed by the most powerful’ people.”3
The pontiff also reminded the revenue agents “that while they may not be showered with affection on earth, they have a patron saint in heaven. St. Matthew the Apostle, he said, was a publican or tax collector before he decided to follow Jesus.4
When the pope praised tax collectors, he was of course relying upon precedent — that being the highest of all possible authorities, Jesus Christ himself.
In today’s reading, Jesus tells a story about two men, a tax man and a wealthy and self-righteous churchgoer, a Pharisee. He had high praise for the former and contempt for the latter.
Since we have a gospel reading that involves a man who earns the adulation of not
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