A Brief Theology of Tax Day

I see posts going up for Tax Day which say "Taxes are Theft". I'm proud to pay taxes. I'm proud that my taxes go to benefit the common good in a number of ways, from roads, to water treatment, to education, to veterans, to prisons, to helping the needy, to a thousand other public benefits. Granted, some of my tax money goes to pay for military actions I don't agree with, or welfare for rich corporations, sponsored by corrupt politicians. And of course there are policies I vehemently disagree with the current administration about. But you are never going to agree with others about how every dime is spent. Heck, my wife and I don't always agree about how to spend money. Much less me and a government of, by, and for 350 million people.

Mary Magdalene versus the Patriarchy

So the controversy over who Mary Magdalene was has jumped out of the pulpit and lecture hall, and into the Washington Post. For some on the "Right", Mary is a lowly prostitute who Jesus cast demons out of and saved to be one of the "little women" in the Gospel story. For others on the "Left", Mary is one of the leading Apostles, the patron saint of feminine empowerment, who was unjustly and unfortunately silenced by the growing patriarchy of the early Church. Both sides of the debate paint this as an either-or. Either Mary is a barely redeemable ex-whore, or she is an unjustly maligned Apostle. But perhaps the battle lines have been drawn based upon the logical fallacy of the excluded middle.