On the great feast of Christ the King we celebrate the universal sovereignty of Our Lord Jesus Christ. These days there is a tendency to soften this doctrine of our holy Catholic religion. We are told that the sovereignty of Christ is something to which our own hearts and consciences, and perhaps also our families and our homes, must be made subject. This is all very true and excellent. But it is only half the story. What we do not hear so much is that as Creator and King of the Universe, Our Lord has the perfect right to rule over nations and over the whole of this world. At His first coming, Our Lord veiled the majesty of His sovereignty in poverty and vulnerability. As He tells Pilate in the Gospel appointed for the feast of Christ the King, “If my Kingdom were of this world, my servants would certainly strive that I should not be delivered to the Jews.” Of course, had He wished to, the King of Kings could easily have established His rule over this world by force. His mission, however, was to win our hearts with His meekness and His teaching, and to die for us on the Cross in order to free us from the power of Satan, so that we might share supernaturally in His Kingship in Heaven, and play our part in extending His Kingdom on earth in the here and now, fed with and strengthened on His most holy Body and Blood in Holy Communion. We also have the promise, from Our Lord’s own lips that the next time He comes His Kingship will display itself not so much in meekness but rather in power and majesty, as His Presence fills the skies from East to West, and the sounding of the angelic trumpets divides the saved from those who have separated themselves from His rule. The former will enjoy the Beatific vision in Heaven, the latter will be cast into the everlasting fires of hell.
The message of the feast of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King is that we Catholics must not fall into the trap of privatising our religion. Certainly, we are to ensure that our homes and churches are havens of piety and modesty in which our families are nourished in the life of grace. But we also have to be missionaries in a society which is in many ways in open rebellion against the laws which God Himself has written into nature. This might mean writing to our MPs urging them to protect the life of the unborn or to defend the sanctity of family life when such basic principles are under attack from anti-Christian lobbying and legislation. For some young Catholics it will mean biting the bullet and involving themselves in politics with a view to keeping the Christian voice alive in Parliament. This requires nerves of steel in an environment in which unfashionable views are likely to encounter barrages of obstruction, mockery and even hatred, but Our Lord never promised us that building the Kingdom of God on earth was going to be a walk in the park.
One way in which most of us will participate in extending, or defending, Christ’s Kingship is, of course, by exercising our franchise in elections. It is usually a sign of gross conceit when clergymen tell their flock how to vote, and people in this country have a healthy instinct to do the exact opposite of what they are told to at the ballot box by men of the cloth. Priests are in the business of saving souls, and are wise to avoid involvement in party politics as far as possible. At the same time, it is the duty of all of us to inform ourselves about the policies of the various parties asking for our votes, and to ask ourselves which manifesto, on balance, contributes best to the building of the Kingdom of Christ on earth, and to discern which policies constitute contraventions of the Divine and Natural Law.
As this letter rolls of the press, the United States of America will be on the verge of one of the most contentious general elections that the western world has ever seen. It has been said that what happens over there comes here, and so the outcome is obviously interesting for us. A journal Stateside recently suggested that the rise of Catholics in pursuit of high office these days might pose a threat to the secular status of the American Constitution. The first thing that needs to be said in answer to this is that separation of church and state in America means that no denomination is to be given preference, and that religious tests for public office are prohibited. It does not mean that one’s faith and convictions are not allowed to inform policy. Certainly anyone who is Catholic (or Christian) in a meaningful sense of the word could never separate the pursuit of the common good from the conviction that God has sovereign rights over the whole of His Creation, and that the administration of government and justice have to be conducted in accordance with the Natural Law in order to have legitimacy, and indeed to lay claim to being rational. It must also be born in mind, however, that many of the Catholics active in public life in America today have been nurtured in the Uncle Ted school of Catholicism, named after its unofficial but highly influential president of recent decades, Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, who until his degradation from the clerical state in the summer of 2018 on a list of indictments which did not include heterodoxy, was greatly revered and feted by the Washington elite. The motto on the badge of this academy is “Relativize and Prevaricate”, and rather than posing a threat to the secularist Roe v. Wade status quo, its alumni tend to be fellow travellers, if not zealous apostles, of the Culture of Death.
Come election time, thoughtful Christians on both sides of the Atlantic will investigate the voting records and opinions of all candidates seeking their votes. On close examination, alas, some of the candidates who are most keen to trumpet their Catholic credentials, and even rattle their Rosary beads on camera, will turn out to be unelectable. There are many “issues” which concern us as Catholics, but high among them must be freedom to practise our religion, the sanctity of marriage and, of course, protection of the unborn child. As the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops emphasised in its 2019 document Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, published to help Catholics in their choice in this year’s election, “The threat of abortion remains our preeminent priority because it directly attacks life itself.” No country can claim to be a champion of the vulnerable and needy, or indeed civilised, if it allows the murder of innocent children.
Ultimately, of course, no human agency will solve all the problems of this world, or be successful in creating a perfectly just society. Only Our Lord can do this, which is why we must always be solicitous for His interests, and be willing to sacrifice ourselves in the establishment of His Kingdom on earth. May His Mother, the Queen of Heaven, intercede for the best possible outcome in the American election.
Father Julian Large