18 21, June, 2020 C omment catholicweekly.com.au pas and was allowed to live in Tiberias. After a quarrel with Anti- pas, he fled to different cities and finally ended up back in Rome, where the emperor Ti- berius received himwarm- ly and entrusted himwith the education of his grandson Ti- berius Gemellus. After the death of Tiberi- us in 37, the new emperor Caligula made Agrippa king of the territories of Gaulani- tis, Auranitis, Batanaea and Trachonitis, formerly held by his uncle Philip the Tetrarch, along with the territory of Abi- la. In 39 Agrippa returned to Rome and brought about the banishment of his uncle Anti- pas, after which Caligula gave The Herods: one very unpleasant family T his is not the same Herod, but his neph- ew Herod Agrippa I. Lest we get hopeless- ly confused, let us recall that it was King Herod the Great who sought to kill Jesus af- ter he was born by having all the boys under the age of two slaughtered. Herod the Great died in 4 BC, leaving his son Archelaus to reign over Judea and anoth- er son Antipas, to be tetrarch of Galilee. It was Herod Antipas who had John the Baptist impris- oned and beheaded and it was he before whom Jesus appeared in his trial before Pilate. In 39 AD Antipas was ac- cused by his nephew Agrip- pa I of conspiracy against the new Roman emperor Caligula, who sent him into exile Spain, where he died. So, thus far we have seen three Herods. There are two more, both named Agrippa. The first is Agrippa I, whom we have just mentioned. A grandson of Herod the Great, he was born to Herod’s son Aristobulus IV and Bernice around 10 BC and died in 44 AD. After Herod the Great exe- cuted his father Aristobulus, Herod sent Agrippa to the im- perial court in Rome, where the emperor Tiberius took a great liking to him and had him educated alongside his son Drusus. There Agrippa also befriended the future em- peror Caligula. Upon the death of Drusus, Agrippa, deeply in debt, fled Rome and went to Idumea, south of Judea, where he mar- ried Cypros. Through the mediation of Cypros and his sister Herodi- as, the wife of Herod Antipas, he was givenmoney by Anti- himAntipas’ territories of Gal- ilee and Peraea. Following the assassina- tion of Caligula in 41, the new emperor Claudius gave Agrip- pa dominion over Judea and Samaria, so that his domain was virtually the whole of Is- rael, approximately equal to that of his grandfather Herod the Great. Herod Agrippa appears in the Acts of the Apostles, where he killed James, the brother of John, and arrested Peter, who was led out of prison by an an- gel (cf. Acts 12:1-11). Later, when the people ac- claimed Herod as a god, “an angel of the Lord struck him, because he did not give God the glory; and he was eaten by worms and died” (Acts 12:23). The year was 44 AD. Herod and his wife Cy- pros had a son, Agrippa II, born around 27 AD, and three daughters: Bernice, Mariamne and Drusilla, who would go on to marry Antonius Felix, the governor of Judea. Agrippa II had been sent to Rome by his father, where he was raised and educated at the imperial court. Because he was only 17 when his father died in 44, the emperor Clau- dius returned Judea to the sta- tus of a province. In 48 Agrippa received au- thority over the temple affairs in Jerusalem and two years later he was made king of Chalcis in southern Lebanon. In 53 he exchanged this land for Philip the Tetrarch’s former territory, over which his father had reigned. In 54 the emper- or Nero added territory near the Sea of Galilee. Like his father Agrippa I, King Agrippa II was an ar- dent collaborator with Rome and he did all in his power to prevent the rupture between Rome and the Jews, but to no avail. In 67 the Roman com- mander Vespasian arrived in Judea and Agrippa assisted him, as he did in 70 when Ves- pasian’s son Titus conquered Jerusalem. Agrippa died in 93 AD. In chapter 24 of the Acts of the Apostles St Paul is brought before governor Felix, married to Herod’s sister Drusilla (cf. Acts 24:24). Two years later, when Felix has been succeed- ed by Porcius Festus, Herod and his sister Bernice arrive in Caesarea and Festus invites Herod to hear the case against Paul. At the end, Herod tells Fes- tus that if Paul had not ap- pealed to Caesar he could have been set free (cf. Acts 26:32). So, all in all, there are five Herods in the New Testa- ment.
[email protected] Evil for ‘the good’ never justified T here is a curious and intriguing passage in the third chapter of St Paul’s letter to the Romans, which in the con- text of themissive seems al- most tossed-off, but which has proven to be a cornerstone of Catholicmoral theology for the past two thousand years. Responding to some of his critics, Paul says, “Andwhy not say (as some people slander us by saying that we say), ‘Let us do evil that goodmay come?’ Their condemnation is de- served” (Rom. 3:8)! Onemight formulate Paul’s somewhat convoluted statement as fol- lows: we should never do evil that goodmight come of it. There are indeed trulywick- ed peoplewho seem to take delight in doing evil for its own sake. Aristotle called themvi- cious, or in extreme cases, “beast-like.” But most of us who do bad things typically can find a justification for our behav- ior through appealing to a good end that wewere hoping through our action to achieve. “I’mnot really proud of what I did,” Imight say tomyself, “but at least it brought about some positive consequences.” But the Church, following the prompt of St Paul, has consis- tently frowned on thismanner of thinking, precisely because A protester in Minneapolis is seen in front of a fire as demonstrations continue after the death of George Floyd by a white police officer. PHOTO: CNS PHOTO/LUCAS JACKSON, REUTERS it opens the door tomoral cha- os. Concomitantly, it has rec- ognised certain acts—slavery, adultery, the sexual abuse of children, the direct killing of the innocent, etc.—as “intrinsical- ly evil”—which is to say, inca- pable of being justified through appeal tomotivation, extenuat- ing circumstances, or conse- quences. So far, so obvious. But this principle has come tomymind recently, not so much in regard to themoral acts of individuals, but to the moral assumptions that seem to be guidingmuch of our so- ciety. Imight suggest that a sea-change occurred in 1995 with the trial of O.J. Simpson. I think it’s fair to say that the overwhelmingmajority of rea- sonable peoplewould concur that Simpson committed the terrible crimes of which hewas accused, and yet hewas exon- erated by a jury of his peers and vehemently supported by large segments in our society. Howcanwe explain this anomaly?The exculpation of O.J. Simpsonwas justified, in theminds of many, because it was seen as contributing to the solution of the great social ill of the racial profiling and perse- cution of AfricanAmericans by the Los Angeles police depart- ment in particular and police officers across the country in general. Allowing a guiltyman to go free and allowing a gross in- justice to remain unaddressed were, at the very least, tolerat- ed, because it appeared they conduced to some greater good. TheO.J. Simpsonisation of our legal thinkingwas on gross displaymuchmore recent- ly in the sad case of Cardinal George Pell. Once again, giv- en thewild implausibility of the charges and the complete lack of any corroborating evi- dence, reasonable peoplewere bound to conclude that Cardi- nal Pell should never have been brought to trial much less con- victed. And yet Pell was found guilty and sentenced to imprison- ment, and a later appeal con- firmed the original conviction. Howcouldwe possibly explain this disconnect? Many inAustralian society, legitimately outraged at the abuse of children by priests and the subsequent cover-up by some in ecclesial authority, felt that the imprisonment of Cardinal Pell would somehow address this overarching issue. So once again, in violation of Paul’s principle, evil was done that goodmight come of it. The same problem is evident in regard to sexual aggression against women. In thewake of theHarveyWeinstein situation and the subsequent #MeToo movement, no serious person doubts that numerous wom- en have been unconscionably mistreated by powerful men and that this abuse is a cancer on the body politic. Therefore, in order to achieve the good of solving this problem, men are sometimes accused, harassed, effectively condemnedwithout investiga- tion or trial. To show that I have no partisan axe to grind here, I will drawattention to the treat- ment of both Justice Brett Kava- naugh and, in recent days, for- mer Vice President Joe Biden. The thinking seems, again, to be that the righting of a gener- al wrong justifiesmorally irre- sponsible behavior in particu- lar cases. The prevalence of thismor- al consequentialism in our so- ciety is supremely dangerous, for themoment we say that evil can be done for the sake of the good, we have effectively de- nied that there are any intrinsi- cally evil acts, and themoment we do that, the intellectual sup- port for ourmoral systemgives way automatically. And then the furies come. A very instructive example of the principle is the Terror that followed the FrenchRev- olution. Since there had been (undoubtedly) tremendous in- justices done to the poor by the aristocratic class in 18thCen- tury France, anyone perceived to be an enemy of the revolu- tionwas, without distinction or discrimination, swept to the guillotine. If innocents died alongside the guilty, so be it—for it served the building of the new society. I believe that it is no exaggera- tion to say thatWestern society has yet fully to recover from the moral chaos visited upon us by the lethal consequentialismof that time. Therefore, even as we legit- imately fight the great social evils of our time, wemust re- member Paul’s simple but tren- chant principle: never do evil that goodmight come of it. Bishop Barron is a Bishop of Los Angeles. www.wordon- fire.org Father Flader Columnist In the Acts of the Apostles, King Herod killed the apostle James and imprisoned Peter. Is this the same Herod, before whom Jesus appeared when Pilate sentenced him to death? Bishop Robert Barron After Herod the Great executed [his own son] he sent Agrippa to ... Rome. In 39 Agrippa returned and brought about the banishment of his uncle Antipas ...