In the opening lines of his letter to the Roman Christians, St. Paul reveals to them how the wrath of God is being revealed in the decadent Roman society in which they are immersed. It is not through powerful astronomical events, famines or plagues (although it could be) but instead God “gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error…They were filled with all manner of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity, they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s decree that those who do such things deserve to die, they not only do them but approve those who practice them “(Romans 1:26-32). Sometimes the punishment for sin is, put simply, the sin itself.
Only the man who willingly choses to wear blinders would miss the obvious parallels to our own day. The punishments listed by St. Paul match up perfectly with the primary social ills that plague us today. The fact that these act as punishment for sin might explain why so many are enslaved and very little headway is made towards eradicating their widespread practice through moral reasoning. These are the grounds upon which the so-called “culture wars” are fought. Thus it is especially important to pay attention to the root sin that causes it all. St. Paul says that the Gentiles were being punished “since they did not see fit to acknowledge God” (Romans 1:28).
At the heart of culture, is cult. Liturgy both forms and redeems culture. This seems to have been forgotten, but it was something that Pope Pius XI was keenly aware of. In his 1925 encyclical Quas Primas, the Pope acknowledged that “the chief causes of the difficulties under which mankind was laboring and the manifold evils in the world were due to the fact that the majority of men had thrust Jesus Christ and his holy law out of their lives; that these had no place either in private affairs or in politics: and we said further, that as long as individuals and states refused to submit to the rule of our Savior, there would be no really hopeful prospect of a lasting peace among nations” (Pope Pius XI, Quas Primas, 1). By instituting a solemn feast, the Pope was calling down from heaven particular graces upon the Church in order to help her fulfill her mission in today’s world.
Christ the King and the Mission of the Church
And what exactly is that mission? To keep clear the path for the reign of Christ. But this mission is often eclipsed by an irrational fear of creating a “theocracy”. A theocracy is exactly what must be created. Or, perhaps to use a word less charged with meaning, a confessional state. The delegation of the authority, because it is given to fallen, yet presumably redeemed men, will be diffused between Church and State, but there should be absolutely no opposition between the two. Christ is both king of Church and State because all power in heaven and on earth was given Him (c.f. Mt. 28:18). It is His power that the Church wields, and it is that same authority by which the State draws its legitimacy.
That Christ must rule even the State has been forgotten so immersed have we become in the error of “Separation of Church and State”. Unaware of the waters we are swimming in, Pius XI thought it helpful to develop the “logic” of Christ’s Kingship.
Within an ethos of individualism, we often think of Christ as ruling individual men. While that is true, it does not go far enough. Man is by nature a social animal and thus you cannot rule over individual men while not also ruling over those individual men when they come together in society. One might concede this to be true and then say “that is why we have the Church.” Again, true, but again, not far enough. While his spiritual reign has a certain primacy, His reign is also temporal.
Likewise, when we speak of the Kingship of Christ, we often refer to Him ruling over the hearts of mankind. It impossible to rule over the hearts of men without ruling over their worldly affairs. We are not disembodied angels, but men, body and soul composites. Finally, while the consummation of His reign will not reach fruition until the end of time, all of time should see it growth in that direction. Once the Feast was moved to the end of the Liturgical Year, rather than in October as Pius XI first promulgated it, there was a tendency to associate His Kingship with the end of the world. This led to a lowering of the bar so that the goal became for Christ only to rule over the hearts of men.
What Separation of Church and State Has Wrought
It is the separation of Church and State that has led to society’s forgetting God. In other words, the separation of Church and State is a denial of Christ’s Kingship. The only way to win the culture war then is to restore the rightful King to His throne. Again, there should be a separation of powers, but they must be pulling in the same direction. In this model the State becomes a means to the salvation of mankind as it removes every temporal impediment within its sphere of influence. By recognizing His Kingship, a Kinship that is His by right as Redeemer, He acts upon those temporal things that positively aid men’s salvation and sanctifies them. By sharing in His temporal Kingship, the temporal leaders earn a grace of state that empowers them to rule more justly.
The Church, with Christ as King, rules the spiritual realm, answering only to Christ Himself. The civil authority is subject to the Church but only insofar as the Church issues judgment upon those temporal things that could hinder the progress in the supernatural realm. This is the basis of what was called the “indirect power of the pope” by which the Church can intervene in temporal affairs in order to safeguard the interests of the divine life.
In short, recognition of Christ’s kingship means that Church and State have a unified goal—the salvation of men. When a wall of separation is erected, the State, because it has rejected the True King and is governed solely by men, will always attempt to keep the Church out. It does this by offering salvation to its citizens through utopic solutions. Short of that it will offer them “bread and circuses” to but a wall of separation between their bodies and spirits.
Pius XI was not the only Pontiff to recognize this problem. In his Encyclical on the Constitution of Christian States, Leo XIII said “The authority of God is passed over in silence, just as if there were no God; or as if He cared nothing for human society; or as if men, whether in their individual capacity or bound together in social relations, owed nothing to God; or as if there could be a government of which the whole origin and power and authority did not reside in God Himself… it follows that the State does not consider itself bound by any kind of duty toward God ”(Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, 24-25). And his solution? “The people have heard quite enough about what are called the ‘rights of man’. Let them hear about the rights of God for once” (Pope Leo XIII Tamesti Future). The Feast of Christ the King is the constant reminder of that exhortation.