Kwasniewski on the Feast of Christ the King

I'm somewhat agnostic on the "best form" of government, when governments seem to always devolve. But on today's feast, Peter K looks at Christianity & Kingship:

Between Christ the King and “We Have No King But Caesar” - OnePeterFive - https://t.co/fCjYptnA69 via @onepeterfive pic.twitter.com/u4zeQCYJv8

— Steve Skojec (@SteveSkojec) October 25, 2020

1P5

Kwasniewski:

The month of November begins with the great Solemnity of All Saints. But in the traditional Roman calendar, All Saints is preceded shortly before by an even greater feast—that of Christ the King, the One who creates and sanctifies the citizens, ambassadors, and soldiers of His Kingdom.

When Pope Pius XI instituted the feast of Christ the King in 1925, he was, one might say, supplying in the Church’s calendar the missing invisible cause of All Saints, as well as making clear just what the mission of the saints in history is: to be the living members of the Mystical Body under Christ its Head, and to extend this body across the whole earth. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the King of all men, all peoples, all nations, and His saints are those who, taking up their cross and following Him, have conquered their own souls and won over the souls of many others for this Kingdom.

This is close to the justification that Pius XI used in Quas Primas. Note that in the Byzantine rite, the feast of All Saints is celebrated after Pentecost (as it used to be celebrated in the West), and for an appropriate liturgical and theological reason. Otherwise the case could be made that every Sunday is a memorial of Christ who is the Head of His Mystical Body.

As Michael Foley shows in a brilliant article in the latest issue of The Latin Mass magazine, the feast was not merely moved, but transmogrified. It was given a new name, a new date, and new propers, all of which deemphasized the social reign of Christ and put in its place a “cosmic and eschatological Christ.”

But is the Pauline/Consilium's Feast of Christ the King closer in its conception of Christ to the Byzantine representation of Christ Pantocrator? Perhaps.

This leads me back to Pope Paul VI’s suppression of one feast of Christ the King and his creation of another. What is really going on here? It seems to me that the original feast of Christ the King represents the Catholic vision of society as a hierarchy in which lower is subordinated to higher, with the private sphere and the public sphere united in their acknowledgment of the rights of God and of His Church. This vision was put aside in 1969 to make way for a vision in which Christ is a king of my heart and a king of the cosmos—of the most micro level and the most macro level—but not king of anything in between: not king of culture, of society, of industry and trade, of education, of civil government.

Perhaps anything more than this would be pastorally unwise - presumptuous and maybe even blasphemous? Our Lord is not a sports team, and He does not want empty praise coming from the lips of men.

Foley's article was republished at NLM, a link to which I posted here.