CHRIST THE KING AND THE POLITICAL APOSTASIES. IMPORTANCE AND NEED TO WELL UNDERSTAND THIS SUBJECT.

 

Note. Nothing interests us as much as highlighting and reminding our readers of the great importance of talking about such an exciting topic as CHRIST THE KING, due to the virulent attacks on his universal royalty. Attacks that arise both from outside the Church and from within it, about the first Our Lady of La Salette says: "The civil rulers will all have the same plan, which will be to abolish and make all religious principles disappear, giving way to materialism, atheism, spiritualism and all kinds of vices”. I believe that this does not need to be demonstrated, at present we are seeing it with our own eyes, all the governments of the world have laicized themselves and shaken off the soft and light yoke of the royal sovereignty of Our Lord Jesus Christ and have openly launched the ungrateful satanic cry: “No servant”. It is up to us little flock to come out in defense of this spiritual and social reign of Our Savior

  6. Refutation of the second apostasy.

The second apostasy consists of The apostasy from the spirituality of the Kingdom reaches the point of making the Word of God a King for certain things and not for others, a King at certain times and not at others, because it is the end of the institutions but not of all.

As Luther said: "because his kingdom is not of the earth or on the earth, but he is king of spiritual goods such as truth, wisdom, peace, joy, bliss, etc. […] From which it follows that his government is spiritual and invisible»

But this is a mistake, it is heresy.   Because the titles of King are held by Our Lord Jesus Christ by reason of his divinity, in such a way that the origin or beginning of his Kingdom and his royalty are not earthly but supernatural, divine in essence. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre once said that “if Our Lord Jesus Christ is God, he is consequently the owner of all things, elements, individuals, families and society. He is the Creator and the end of all things» (12).

Santo Tomás (13), confirms the reasoning stopping at its scope: because the power of Christ is general, universal, over all creatures (Mt. 26, 18); however, it is an especially spiritual power over the saints (in the present life by grace and in the future by glory), since the saints are not of this world ( Jn 18, 36). Therefore, the kingdom of Christ begins here below and is consummated in the future life when everything is submitted to him as a footstool for his feet ( Ps . 109, 1).

Is this theological principle subject to human historicity? No. It is not a point of view that changes as times change; Those who believe so produce a break in the concept and a break in the doctrine that teaches it. Because it must be agreed that, if Christ is only the spiritual King, if he only reigns in the interior of man, in his soul, nothing external to it, be it the family, society, the State or the Church, have reason to exist in order to salvation: this is the Protestant logic to which the spiritualist argument for the kingdom of Christ necessarily leads.

Protestant logic that also leads to the affirmation of His “part-time” or “socially segmented” royalty.

This is a form of apostasy in which the Catholic intellectual frequently falls, as if it were possible to divide into a Catholic for questions of faith and a philosopher, scientist, professional or teacher for our particular activities.

But it is not like that: first, because we cannot establish natural ends that contradict the end of man, which is supernatural, happiness.

Second, because the order of goods established by Our Lord cannot be changed, we cannot invert it: we must first seek the Kingdom of God and His justice and the rest will be given to us for granted (Mt. 6-33). Saint Thomas Aquinas has explained in reference to I Cor. 10, 11, that in time of grace there are no temporary promises, as there were in times of the Law, nor is there an alliance in the new time that contains such promises (Is. 1, 19) (14).

Third, because, as we well know, one cannot serve two masters (Mt. 6, 24), and to maintain that Jesus is King in some cases or moments and not in others, is the same as becoming servants of that “no”.

Therefore, we must serve the Reign of Christ with our intelligence and all of our being, because in this field there is no neutrality since the Truth is not neutral (15).

Let us remember that the lukewarm will be vomited out of the mouth of God (Rev. 3, 16). On the feasts of the Virgin Mary, the Church places in the mouth of Our Lady the words of Wisdom: "Those who make me known will obtain eternal life" (Eccl . 24, 31). That is why Our Lord can sentence that "whoever denies me before men, I will also deny before my heavenly Father" (Mt. 10, 33).

7. Third apostasy: ¿is he really King?

We could call it "the apostasy of imactuality."

I have told this anecdote on other occasions, but it is worth repeating it to get on the subject. I once heard an old Jesuit priest say, in his sermon on the Feast of Christ the King, that it was a celebration that belonged to the time when the Church was monarchical, thereby disavowing it.

He failed to say that, being the Church today democratic, Christ would be one more citizen, with the right to vote, with the option of being president, if you will, but not king. The net presentism sanctions the outdated!

The strange thing about this is that if you delve into the democratization of the Kingdom, you can take the heresy to terms

truly absurd (even more heretical), making democracy the crux of the matter and displacing the monarchy of divine right, which corresponds to Christ, for a cosmic utopia similar to that of the great Masonic architect who entrusts us to build a humanitarian mansion.

Thus, a priest has been able to affirm: «Pablo Suess has been proposing the expression “participatory democracy of the RD [Kingdom of God]” to correct the evocation that the classic term implies. We already know that one cannot simply substitute one expression for another, but it is evident that it is good to frequently allude to this insufficiency of the classical expression, to make the listeners realize it, and to liberate the content (the kingdom itself, the signified), of the limitations of the signifier (the word not completely adequate). To speak of the Kingdom it may be better to speak of the Project, of God's Utopia... which we make our own: we want“build the Democracy of God, cosmic, pluralistic and inclusive, and therefore, loving, living incarnation of the God of a thousand faces, colors, genders, cultures, ethnic groups, senses”» (16). Speechless.

8. Refutation of the third apostasy

Every Catholic knows or should know that Christ is King of creation as stated in the Old and New Testaments. That is why Cardinal Pie said that «There is not a prophet, nor an evangelist, nor one of the apostles who does not assure him of his quality and his kingly attributes» (17). And Fr. Castellani has summed it up thus: “Christ is King, by three titles, each one of them more than enough to confer on him true power over men. He is King by birth title, for being the True Son of Almighty God, Creator of all things; he is King by title of merit, for being the most excellent Man that has existed or will exist; and he is King by title of conquest,for having saved with his doctrine and his blood humanity from the slavery of sin and hell» (18).

The title makes the person, in this case the divine Word who is King and not a citizen, like it or not. But there is more: Our Lord Jesus Christ is not a facultative king in the sense that his reign depends on our will; his royalty does not depend on consensus or human pacts. Saint Paul says it categorically: oportet illum regnare (I Cor ., 15, 25).

Christ must reign because He is already king; it is not a possibility, it is a necessity that engenders an obligation on our part. He is not a potential King, he is an act in his very divine essence; and we must make him reign in everything that depends on us.

9. Practicality of the kingship of Christ

The meaning of the kingship of Christ is also practical, it consists in the adoption of a directive principle, mounted on the perennial foundations of every upright Christian political order, which as a Christian is crowned in and by Christ the King; guiding principle that does not freeze the means and instruments – thus, for example, the political systems or regimes –, but rather opens itself to the consideration of particular situations in accordance with prudence. It is a here and now that is taken as a starting point and that will be a point of arrival due to the work of our collaboration.

It seems to me that the Social Reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ is fundamentally expressed in two ways or dimensions that end up being synthesized in a third. First, it is the “discreet reign of Our Lord”, preached by, among others, Garrigou-Lagrange (19), which is the reign in the human heart and which, by such means, subtly permeates all of society; it is the empire of faith in Christ that is projected in our conduct and leads us to “convert society”, to transform it in the manner of Christ.

Second, it is the "express reign of Our Lord," which is the manifest rule through the laws of society, thereby reaching the heart of man. It is the establishment of a Christian society, that natural order wanted by God.

The affirmation of the Social, temporal, political Kingship of Our Lord results from the traditional Catholic affirmation of the ends of man or, better said, from the ordering of temporal ends to the supernatural and ultimate end. It is the doctrine of Saint Thomas: life on earth is preparation for eternal life, so that the temporal order must serve the ultimate and supreme end of man. Then, as Fr. Phillippe insists, “all divine or human institutions have as their ultimate goal the glory of God and the salvation of souls. Thus all social institutions, all political actions and directives must take account of this fundamental truth, that man was not made for this world, but for Eternity.It is not unfounded, then, that the concrete order of societies, in their political, legal, moral, economic, cultural dimensions, etc., should consider "first and before anything else, the ultimate goal of all human existence"; and, if he does so, he will affirm the kingship of Jesus Christ (20). I will return to this point in the final part because it is highly topical.

These two forms, which interpenetrate mutually helping each other to the same order and purpose, come together in a third:  the "public worship of Our Lord, King of hearts and societies."

We must remember with Pius XI that the social Reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ does not impose itself, rather, on the contrary, it requires that men acknowledge, publicly and privately, "the royal power of Christ" (21). Because Christ reigns in society through men, which requires, as Fr. Phillippe affirms, that "all politics must be submissive to God", that is, "it must be recognized in what expresses a reality dependent on God”, especially in attention to the ultimate goal of man and of all Creation (22).

Thus, the reasons are seen to deny a purely intimate and spiritual Kingdom, a “moral” royalty that escapes society, and even – as we have been exposing – a royalty that is not such because it has become a pluralist democratic principle.

The royalty of the Incarnate Word is spiritual and social, and because it is so, it is also public in the sense indicated by Pius XI: it demands and claims public recognition by the rulers through the cult that is due to Him.

Quotes.

(14) SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS, Expositio super Primam Epistolam S. Pauli Apostoli ad Corinthios , bilingual version in French: Commentaires sur la Première Épitre de S. Paul aux Corinthiens , t. II, Paris, Louis Vivès, 1870, c. X, read. 2, pp. 347-348. San AGUSTÍN pronounces in the same sense in his commentary on verse 2 of Psalm 73: Enarraciones sobre los Salmos (2nd) , Madrid, BAC, 1955 (volume XX of the Works of San Agustín ), p. 931.

(15) See the wonderful little book by Étienne GILSON, Le philosophe et la théologie (1960), Paris, Vrin, 2005 (there is a Spanish edition), especially chaps. IV and V.

(16) On the priest Pablo Suess, see http://paulosuess. blogspot. com.ar The quote is taken from Fr. Felipe SANTOS CAMPAÑA, at http://www.autorescatolicos.org/felipesantosmeditaciondiaria0385.htm

(17) P. Théotime DE SAINT-JUST , La royauté sociale de NS Jésus-Christ d'après le Cardinal Pie , 2nd ed., Paris, Société et Librairie S. François d'Assise-Librairie G. Beauchesne, 1925, p. . 31.

(18) Leonardo CASTELLANI, «Christ the King», loc. cit., p. 164.

(19) Reginald GARRIGOU-LAGRANGE, OP, «La Royauté universelle de Notre-Seigneur Jésus-Christ», La Vie Spirituelle (Paris), no. 73 (1925), pp. 5-21.

(20) PA PHILLIPPE, Catechism of the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ , 1926, question 15; at http://ar.geocities.com/doctrina_catolica/catecismos/

catechism_royalty.html

(21) Quas premiums , no. 17.

(22) Catechism of the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ , question 15.