The re-inauguration of Donald Trump as president of the United States—and his dismissal of Justin Trudeau as Canadian Prime Minister the week before; the apparent slow but certain push in Austria, Germany, and France by parties which the European establishment dubs “Far Right” (and darkly hints are Neo-Nazi, although their own views on the Man and the State are far closer to National Socialism than are those of their “upstart” opponents); and Britain’s vile Sir Keir Starmer’s floundering attempts to label opponents of child rape as racists all point to what appears a given direction: the breaking of the Left.
Far be it from me to rain on anyone’s parade; if you are ecstatic over these developments and smell some kind of success for the forces of good, may all your hopes come true. I myself am very glad that Kamala Harris is not president, that Justin Trudeau resigned, that change seems to be coming on the Continent, and that Sir Keir is increasingly being seen by his countrymen for what he and his minions are. But I would be lying if I told you I believe we are “nigh the Kingdom Comin’ and the Year of Jubilo.”
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This new year of 2025 will mark, in December, the centennial of Pope Pius XI’s extraordinary encyclical Quas Primas. Written at a time when the great “isms” of the 19th and 20th centuries were well-nigh triumphant over the remnants of old Christendom and those who had fought for her, it was a proud battle cry. In the face of a world dominated by varying ideologies who shared, amid their antipathies, mutual hatred of God and His Church, Pius dared to declare that
…the empire of our Redeemer embraces all men. To use the words of Our immortal predecessor, Pope Leo XIII: “His empire includes not only Catholic nations, not only baptized persons who, though of right belonging to the Church, have been led astray by error, or have been cut off from her by schism, but also all those who are outside the Christian faith; so that truly the whole of mankind is subject to the power of Jesus Christ.” Nor is there any difference in this matter between the individual and the family or the State; for all men, whether collectively or individually, are under the dominion of Christ. In him is the salvation of the individual, in him is the salvation of society. “Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given to men whereby we must be saved.” He is the author of happiness and true prosperity for every man and for every nation. “For a nation is happy when its citizens are happy. What else is a nation but a number of men living in concord?” 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. What We said at the beginning of Our Pontificate concerning the decline of public authority, and the lack of respect for the same, is equally true at the present day. “With God and Jesus Christ,” we said, “excluded from political life, with authority derived not from God but from man, the very basis of that authority has been taken away, because the chief reason of the distinction between ruler and subject has been eliminated. The result is that human society is tottering to its fall, because it has no longer a secure and solid foundation.”
As part of the celebration of the centennial, Arouca Press has republished Fr. Joseph Husslein, S.J.’s The Reign of Christ, a 1927 book explaining the teaching in great detail—to which this writer contributed a foreword.
Then, as now, the real division in political as in cultural and religious life was not between the Right and the Left, nor dictatorship and democracy, nor any other apparent-but-false dichotomy the modern world offers. Rather, it is between those who accept that Christ is King over all nations and all men and those who do not; in strictly religious terms, between those who hold that He has given us unchanging Truth and those who deny this. It is a division that actually cuts through every nation and, indeed, through the Church herself.
Of course, since Christ united His Davidic Kingship with the Communio of the Church at the Last Supper on the first Maundy Thursday, His Kingdom has received unrelenting hatred and opposition. This is true, of course, even within the hearts of those who strive to be His subjects—hence the unending need for Confession! But starting with the conversion of Armenia’s king and people in A.D. 303 and culminating with Emperor Theodosius the Great’s making Baptism entry into citizenship of the Roman Empire as well as the Church in 380, the Kingdom of Christ took on a physical if imperfect shape. For the Empire and the Kingdoms that first grew up on her soil and then were added to as various Christian lands outside the old Imperial borders were founded, the Church was the form and the State, the matter of the res publica Christiana, the Christian body, Christendom.
With the Protestant revolt, the Wars of the Three Kingdoms in the British Isles, and the French and succeeding revolutions, this structure was successively shattered. Under the banner of the Sacred Heart in many places, and the white rose and/or cockade in others, some fought for the Kingship of Christ; others wrote for it—some did both. But by 1925, although these forces were not quite spent, they were nearly so. World War II and the resulting American-Soviet dyarchy pretty much swept them away.
One irony of this is that much of the Resistance to the Nazis, having struggled for the Kingship of Christ before Hitler’s rise to power, were animated by such “outmoded” ideas. This led those who lived in the Soviet half of Europe to further horrible adventure. In the American sector, they were simply doomed to obscurity—their brave fight against the National Socialists being praised and the ideas inspiring that fight denigrated.
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So here we are, a century after Pius wrote that encyclical, in the wake of Mr. Trump’s inauguration. Now, to be sure, there are a lot of devout and informed Catholics around him—and many more who deeply support him and for whom he was the only conceivable choice in the recent election. This, too, is not something I wish to dispute. That the newly restored president deeply loves the United States is, no doubt, true. But he presides over a country whose majority believe in infanticide and accept gay marriage, as do he and his wife. Roe v. Wade gave the American people a huge fig leaf, which allowed many Catholics and conservatives to convince themselves that most of us remained “good.” In a series of ballot measures after it was quashed, we showed God and our neighbor just what we were made of.
To be sure, infanticide is only one—if a deeply indicative one—of a host of things which define us as a people. As in most Western countries, decades of academic, media, and governmental indoctrination have not only created our current mental hellscape, they have made it appear to be the only one there is. Ours is a story of unmitigated progress, from Luther tacking up his 95 Theses on the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church in 1517 to the Supreme Court imposing gay marriage upon the United States with Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015. Neither the oceans of blood and acres of horror on the one side nor the ever-increasing blasphemy on the other are considered—after all, one must indeed break a few eggs to make an omelet, no?
So it is that we have arrived at the best of all possible worlds, a real alternative to which cannot be imagined by the vast majority—and why should it be? As for the economic and cultural things which made us uneasy under president Biden, from mismanagement to gender fluidity, the new regie will stop them. Hurrah!
