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Today, while we mark the Last Sunday after Pentecost, our Novus Ordo brethren celebrate the Feast of Christ the King. In what appears to be the typical understanding of this feast from the perspective of the New Order, Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Birmingham said in a recent letter: “This weekend we mark the end of the Church’s year with the Feast of Christ the King. On this day we celebrate the final victory of Christ, who will bring the whole of creation to His heavenly Father at the end of time.” Thus Christ’s kingship is viewed primarily as an eschatological phenomenon. My fellow author and liege lord, Ambrosius, wrote very well one year ago against this understanding of the feast as marking a primarily eschatological reality. I quote his excellent exposition:
In today’s calendar, the Feast of Christ the King has been moved to the last Sunday of the Christian Year — the ultimate Feast of the Tempus per Annum. This, we are told, is to signify the eschatological nature of Christ’s Kingship: He will reign at the end of time, in saecula saeculorum, all that. But note well that when this Feast was instituted by Pope Pius XI (whose visage, authoritative yet benign, is pictured in the sidebar) in 1925, by means of his great (yet not lengthy) encyclical, Quas Primas, this holy Pontiff did not have the age of ages in mind. His purpose was, rather, to call our attention to our Lord’s kingship over us here and now. Hence, he commanded that the Feast be celebrated on the final Sunday of the month of October — in the midst of the season following Pentecost, when we Christ’s workers are in the field, very much under Christ’s rule. The Social Reign of Christ the King in the here and now is what he was asking Catholics to recall, not some far off and hazy, future state of affairs.
A perusal of Quas Primas makes this point quite clear. Pius XI writes:
When once men recognize, both in private and in public life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony. Our Lord’s regal office invests the human authority of princes and rulers with a religious significance; it ennobles the citizen’s duty of obedience.
And Leo XIII (quoted by Pius XI) had said:
If, therefore, the rulers of nations wish to preserve their authority, to promote and increase the prosperity of their countries, they will not neglect the public duty of reverence and obedience to the rule of Christ.
I challenge the best and most “conservative” of our Novus Ordo brethren to explain to us why such language was heard no more after the Second Vatican Council. What had changed in the world which required a shift in policy, a policy which is now in full support of secular democracy as the best hope for human government in this world?
While I have argued before that secular democracy influenced by the “values” of different Christian so-called denominations will end in disaster for Europe (in particular), my own explanation of Benedict’s policy is that he is trying to make the best of a very bad situation. Even if he were intellectually committed to the bankruptcy of secular democracy - not least because it’s indifferent to the true Faith, which I am going to call a “social sin” for the amusement of my fellow readers - there doesn’t appear to be any realistic way of restoring Catholic monarchies (say) throughout the whole of Europe. The Church has been presented with a fait accompli and she has to make the best of a tough situation. Benedict and Cardinal Ruini seem to be doing just that in Italy: forcing the Church’s way back into the political sphere under cover of the very principles of secular democracy which say that a group of citizens can say what they like and vote as they please, whether they’re Catholics, Mohammedans, sadists, or people who can speak of “Earth, our island home” with a straight face.
What else can Benedict do? one might ask. Short of overthrowing the secular government by force, which is impossible, I think that men like Benedict and Ruini are doing just about all they can. But there is one more thing that they might do, and that in the realm of theology and principle. They might at least say that Leo XIII and Pius XI had it right, even if practically there’s not much we can do to act on their words now. Things didn’t look good for Leo or Pius either; the former stepped into a Vatican held prisoner by the Italian state and the latter was writing after the destruction of World War I and the overthrow certain Catholic monarchies. Yet they affirmed a truth which seems knowable by reason alone: every individual or institution owes homage to the one God and His Church. Why cannot we not say as much today? While acknowledging the plain fact that consciences cannot be forced to assent or dissent, why cannot we not say that error has no public rights?
St. Louis-Marie de Montfort,
Pope St. Pius X,
St. Joseph,
St. Ambrose of Milan,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Francis (and St. Clare),
St. Catherine of Siena,
St. Alphonsus Ligouri,
St. John Chrysostom,
I admire your charity, but based on several of his public statements (e.g. in Without Roots, Principles of Catholic Theology, a 1990 interview with L’Osservatore Romano, a Vatican radio broadcast which was reported by Zenit on November 25, 2004), I’m pretty well convinced that Benedict XVI rejects the idea that it is morally obligatory for the state to profess Catholicism. He likes the American model, which according to the pre-conciliar Popes is merely tolerable, and involves the state shirking its moral duty.
Fr. Brian Harrison, in his article “Vatican II and Religious Liberty: Contradiction or Continuity?” mentions one of the inadequate solutions to the problem of reconciling Dignitatis Humanae with Catholicism as the idea that the pre-conciliar Popes were only concerned to combat religious indifferentism. “The implication, clearly, is that the Church today will not really contradict the earlier popes in approving the same degree of civil liberty which they condemned, provided only that, in doing so, today’s Church clearly dissociates herself from any possible suggestion that indifferentism is the rationale or motivation for this new decision.”
I think Pope Benedict adheres to this thesis. He states in Doctrinal Note on some questions regarding the participation of Catholics in political life, “The teaching on freedom of conscience and on religious freedom does not therefore contradict the condemnation of indifferentism and religious relativism by Catholic doctrine.” He then cites: Pius IX, Encyclical Letter Quanta cura: ASS 3 (1867), 162; Leo XIII, Encyclical Letter Immortale Dei: ASS 18 (1885), 170–171; Pius XI, Encyclical Letter Quas primas: AAS 17 (1925), 604–605
As he told L’Osservatore Romano, so long as the nucleus remains valid, in this case the Church’s condemnation of indifferentism, he feels justified in dispensing with what he regards as mere particulars, such as the Church’s condemnation of liberty of conscience and the separation of Church and state.
Perhaps this was said in the good Ambrosius’ original post, but one aspect of the original day for the Feast of Christ the King that I rarely hear mentioned is that it was meant to be the Sunday immediately preceding All Saints’ Day. One can glean this from the rubrics for the Office. Likewise, the hymns for Christ the King are clearly modelled on those of All Saints’. And this arrangement of the feasts certainly provides for a beautiful, annual celebration of Holy Church: first her King, then the Church Triumphant, then the Church Suffering (on All Souls’ Day), and throughout it all, by implication, the Church Militant, who recall these great mysteries. A Simple Priest.
I did link to Ambrosius’ original, but here it is again.
This is a good point that you make, Simple Priest.