Have you ever thought about the "social kingship of Christ" in terms of the Prisoner of the Vatican? The cult of "Christ the King" was posited during an era of increasing faithlessness, much like the feast of Joe the Worker, so one might well question its value even for this reason alone. Why look to a devotion wholly shallow and alien to Tradition when the mystery of Christ's Kingship is best seen from a Rood on Good Friday or read in the Invitatory of Paschal Mattins? But there is another, more sinister, aspect to this cult. In mediaeval times, when the popes claimed feudal lordship over all the kings of Europe, they really were, in a sense, "king of the world." With the gradual loss of their secular influence during the Reformation and Counter Reformation periods, the Napoleonic Wars and finally the Unification of Italy, the popes sought ever to claw back their waning power by whatever means necessary. Then Pius IX, a complete megalomaniac, shews up; uses the French against his own people; loses; finds that his dominion is circumscribed to a space no bigger than Hyde Park; then summons an "Œcumenical Council" to proclaim himself incapable of the possibility of error! With sour grapes and the hubris of a defeated imperialist he confines himself to the Vatican, excommunicates the entire Italian peninsula and died bitter, a vast bloated bag of a man and despised by the people of Rome. Half a century later pope Pius XI proclaims a new doctrine with the encyclical Quas Primas on the "social kingship of Christ," in which he laments:
The right which the Church has from Christ himself, to teach mankind, to make laws, to govern peoples in all that pertains to their eternal salvation, that right was denied. Then gradually the religion of Christ came to be likened to false religions and to be placed ignominiously on the same level with them. It was then put under the power of the state and tolerated more or less at the whim of princes and rulers. Some men went even further, and wished to set up in the place of God's religion a natural religion consisting in some instinctive affection of the heart. There were even some nations who thought they could dispense with God, and that their religion should consist in impiety and the neglect of God. The rebellion of individuals and states against the authority of Christ has produced deplorable consequences. (24).
Which is but to say, "my right to teach mankind, to make laws, to govern...was denied; then gradually the religion of popery came to be seen as a false religion and was rejected." As I understand the tendency of popes, they themselves are the subject. The pope, then still Prisoner of the Vatican, can hardly posit himself as the subject of this new devotion. Who would take him seriously? Why not then become the high priest of a new cult and claim the kingship of men's lives? Thus did Sauron ensnare the King of Númenor and brought about the downfall of that realm! So do not trouble to ascribe this "social kingship" to Our Lord, whose Kingdom is not of this world, but to your master, the old man in white, who bides his time, secure in his pride and exalting himself in his pagan basilica in Rome.
And years ago I just thought the feast was tacky and modern!
The 19th Sunday after Trinity with memories of the Trinity and Our Lady were fine for me. On the 23rd November it will be the Sunday Last before Advent.
ReplyDeleteOnce again using Tolkien's writings to attack something Tolkien himself believed in. Surely you can leave the poor man out of these screeds?
ReplyDeleteI have never found any reference to Christ the King in any of Tolkien's writings...
ReplyDeleteHe was an orthodox Roman Catholic who derided his friend CS Lewis's proposal for two-track Christian and non-Christian marriages in contemporary British society precisely because of the social reign of Christ the King. Where is your evidence that this devote Roman Catholic disbelieved in it?
ReplyDeleteWell, the letter to C.S Lewis (49 in The Letters of J.R.R Tolkien) to which you refer makes no mention whatever of the "social kingship of Christ."
DeleteTolkien's faith was highly personal, as you know. It was inextricably bound up with the death of his mother and, while he remained faithful to the Papal Communion to his death (in another letter, written in 1968), he complained that the Church felt more like a trap than a refuge and that there was nowhere else to go. I believe, based on my knowledge of his life and writings, that were he alive to-day he would not remain a member of the Roman church.
If the edifice was irretrievably rotten long ago and not just in the last 40 years, then why was a man as erudite as Tolkien too thick to recognise this? Indeed he was alarmed at trends in the Church in the 1960s, but he concluded that the only thing to do is remain loyal to the See of Peter. Loyalty, he said, shows itself most truly when one is pressured to desert it. In fact Tolkien would be quite relieved to be able to worship in Latin again at his parish in Oxford today, and he would remain a Roman Catholic not for the sentimental reasons you propose. I know it is difficult for you to admit, considering your hatred for your former Church, but Tolkien fully and unreservedly believed in that Church's claims until his death at 81.
ReplyDeleteWell, "thick" is the word you choose. Tolkien was, in all ways, a lot wiser than I am and I am not worthy to tie his boot laces. I would say, however, that convincing alternatives to either Roman Catholicism or Anglicanism were little known in his time. The same thing can be said of John Henry Newman. My Church History tutor told me once that were Newman alive to-day he would undoubtedly join the Orthodox Church. I would say the same thing about Tolkien.
DeleteConvincing alternatives? Tolkien's fellow Oxfordian and EO convert since 1958, Met. Kallistos Ware---Spalding Lecturer in EO Studies at Oxford since 1966---might disagree with you! Recently the same man advised Tolkien's church to go soft on divorce and remarriage like his. We know how kindly Tolkien took to his friend Lewis's wedding to a divorcée! Your assumption that Tolkien would jump ship to Orthodoxy is based on nothing but wishful thinking. Do you think the good professor would appreciate being patronised like this? How can you love Tolkien and yet hate his faith? Something has to give.
DeleteWill you desist this grotesque charade? I can't believe you hang this whole issue on the subject of divorce and re-marriage. There was a time when all Christian confessions taught the same thing! I would say, following your reason, that unlike the rest of Christianity the Roman communion denied the Chalice to the laity for a thousand years, completely at variance with Christ's ordinances and the universal praxis of the Church! But what of it? It's completely immaterial. And yet you would say that it takes one man with a special charism to keep the integrity and purity of the faith in tact? I say "bollocks."
DeleteI do not hate Tolkien's faith. It was highly personal and its influence can be read into much of his work (though not all). Tolkien said the Rosary, went to Mass every morning. I do not object to either the Rosary or daily Mass...where these two can be seen to compliment a thriving liturgical life. In 99% of cases this is not so and they are cheap substitutes.
The last thing I will say on this subject to you is what I have said before. Tolkien was a man of his time. He saw every stage of 20th century liturgical reform and lamented it all. This only increases my conviction that were he alive to-day, to witness "Summorum Pontificum," and the liturgical fancies of pope Benedict, and then to watch the pendulum of power swing back the other way in the direction of pope Francis...I think that this would have shaken the foundations of his belief in Rome but not, I would say (like me), his belief in a Christocentric, hollistic tradition. Funny as this may sound but I have always believed in the same thing. Just because my opinion of the Papacy has changed does not mean that anything else significant has. Why? Because who is the pope?
Is there anything in _the pope's actual text_ that is offensive to Orthodoxy? The laws of Russia, the largest Orthodox polity to this day, required priests to report felonies heard in confession to the authorities at the time when this was written, so weigh your response carefully.
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