“But Jesus remained silent”— Matthew 26:63
Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical Quas Primas (1925), affirmed the doctrine of the social kingship of Christ. He thereby kicked back against the tide of the modern political world with its emphasis upon religion as merely a private affair of individuals, wherein religious truth is viewed as just a subjective choice similar to one’s taste in food and drink.
Pius XI criticized this trend toward the complete privatization of the faith and emphasized that, as far as the Catholic Church is concerned, Jesus Christ is to be affirmed as the king, not just of individual souls, but of all of society, up to and including civil authority. Issued on the Feast of Christ the King (December 11th), Pope Pius wanted to remind the world that Christ is the ruler of all, and not just of the few devotees of a single “religion”.
The Cross and the Hammer
Pius makes his intent clear in the opening paragraph:
… 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. Men must look for the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ; and that We promised to do as far as lay in Our power. In the Kingdom of Christ, that is, it seemed to Us that peace could not be more effectually restored nor fixed upon a firmer basis than through the restoration of the Empire of Our Lord.
This was, of course, the theological vision that animated the reality of European Christendom, with its organic social unity grounded in the theological conceptualization of a single sacral order that united throne and altar for the sake of promoting Christ and his Kingdom. It is no exaggeration to say that it was this vision created modern Europe. And let us thank God for, without it, Europe after the fall of Rome to the Germanic tribes would have remained pagan and evolved into a far different socio-cultural reality, and one most likely characterized by a fractious tribalism oriented around an altogether different notion of the relationship between power and true authority. After all, Thor is not Christ, and his hammer represents a different ordo than that of the cross.
It is that cross, and not the hammer, under which Europe evolved, which, among other things, at the very least placed European culture under the banner of charity and love for all. Charity is the queen of the virtues, guiding all human endeavors toward the true, the good, and the beautiful. Therefore, it was no accident or mere quirk of history that it was the culture of the cross, the culture of kenotic charity, that gave us the Church’s invention of hospitals, orphanages, schools, and an intellectual life permeated with a love for philosophy culminating in the grand intellectual synthesis of the medieval scholastics.
And in so doing, and despite falsehoods to the contrary, it provided the foundations for the modern natural sciences. It also gave us the literary genius of Dante, the polymath humanism of Nicholas of Cusa and Erasmus, and the unsurpassed architecture (in my view, at least) of the grand Gothic Churches.
Christendom was truly an impressive achievement, and despite the downside to the Church’s embracing of the Constantinian order, there is no denying that Europe was better off with the Church as her spiritual guide rather than any other religious worldview.
But Christendom, as a socio-cultural project, did eventually fail. And by the beginning of the 18th century, Christendom was dying on a cultural level, and its death rattle was heard on a political level. By the early 19th century, after the French Revolution in particular, we see the inexorable and seemingly unstoppable rise of secularism, militant atheism and anti-clericalism, followed closely by reductionistic scientism, the vague ideology of a formless and directionless “progress” guided only by market forces and concepts of “power”, and the naturalization of religion as the mere epiphenomenal flotsam and jetsam of ignorant early humans who projected “divinity” onto natural powers that are now easily explained scientifically.
This new cultural reality was a witch’s brew of toxins, an elixir of atheistic negation, and a form of cultural arsenic laced with honey. Its allure was powerful and totalizing. This is the context in which, I think, it is best to read the condemnations by 19th-century popes of false notions of religious freedom. Notions that were most often forms of anti-Christian ideology masquerading as the triumph of newly manufactured “rights” of society over and against an “oppressive” Church. The fear of the reign of a nihilistic religious indifferentism, and/or hostility to religion, was very real.
In other words, given the reality and context, the popes were not wrong to flag it as a threat to Christ’s kingdom.
A Christendom built on kenotic love
Nevertheless, the fact remained that Christendom was dead or dying. Furthermore, only a naïve and superficial triumphalism could continue to pretend that Humpty Dumpty could be put back together again if only we could get new concordats to shore up the crumbling religious infrastructure of the confessional states. Absent such arrangements, many in the Church focused not on a diagnosis of the true crisis but on how best to guarantee the Church’s freedom within this new reality.
Of course, the freedom of the Church is profoundly important, and I don’t minimize that fact. My point is that the deeper need was an honest appraisal, both theological and pragmatic, of the factors that led to the end of Christendom.
The historian Brad Gregory, in his exceptional book, The Unintended Reformation, gives a granular historical rendering of just how this came about. Space precludes a detailed review of the text. Suffice it to say that one of the key factors, according to Gregory, which led to the demise of Christendom was precisely the Church’s repeated violations of the rule of charity. In other words, the very triumph of the religion of the crucified Lord, the religion of the kenotic Christ, the religion of the cross, too often fell back into the reign of Thor’s hammer. The Church too often thought that the “public order” needed to maintain Christendom required the use of civil power as the coercive tool the Church used to keep things in line.
Again, these are complicated historical matters, and one can hardly fault various popes for finding grave danger to the public order in groups such as the Albigensians and the Cathars, or in itinerant intellectual rogues, including Giordano Bruno. Again, all haughty anachronisms must be avoided. Nevertheless, the emerging humanism of the Renaissance, even amongst Catholics, grew weary of things like the Avignon papacy, the era of three popes, the corruption of the Roman curia into a copy of the culture of the royal court of kings and their sycophants, the sexual and financial degradations of Rome, and the general tendency to hold the entire rotten edifice together with the glue and balsam wood of coercive repression.
These historical memories became fodder for the anti-Catholic animus of the emerging culture of modernity and were quickly turned into forms of useful social propaganda that created a narrative about Catholicism as the enemy of freedom that persists with us even today. Even many Catholics today speak of the medieval world, falsely, as “the dark ages” and share the same broad consensus that the Church was the enemy of science, freedom, and democracy.
Therefore, beginning in the 19th century, many in the Church began to recognize that they had entered an entirely new cultural reality wherein resort to the old ways of Christendom in order to “restore” them was a doomed and therefore foolish project. They realized that if Christendom in some form was to be restored, it had to be of a different kind with a deepened and chastised self-awareness that the “Empire of Christ” was that of kenotic love grounded in the cruciform reality of the Lamb who was slain.
The social kingship of Christ
We must indeed fight for the Empire of Christ and his social kingship. But the question is: in what form?
Must the Church’s pursuit of Christ’s rule over everything always manifest as a strong integralist union of throne and altar, complete with grandiose privileges for prelates and the use of laws to impose from above what the Church has not been able to persuade from below? Law has a proper place, of course, in the moral and spiritual regulation of the public square. But in what swimming pool do those laws swim? In the waters of the crucified Christ? The waters of charity? Or the waters of coercion and punitive sanction?
The Notre Dame theologian John Betz summarizes this point beautifully. Discussing the Church’s mandate to make Christ the King of all things, he states:
But if the Church is to serve this glorious end, of which the sacrum imperium was only a passing type, what must it do? … one thing is clear: the Church must give up all coneitedness and self-centeredness, indeed it must be prepared to lose itself and to die to itself if it is to find its destiny. … but this is to say nothing other than it must follow the way of its Lord.
And he follows up with the following conclusion worthy of a lengthy citation:
But if the Church gives up the form of godliness, does this not mean that the Church ceases to be the Church? No, no more than the Son of God ceases to be the Son of God in leaving behind the prerogatives of divinity. Rather, precisely in letting go of the form of godliness it shows itself to be the Church, in the way that God shows who he really is in the Son’s self-emptying love. … Needless to say, this does not mean that the Church is called to give up its claim to the truth; rather, it means that its claim to represent the truth of Christ requires the Church to give up the form of godliness and all the trappings thereof … which have kept the world from seeing the humility of Christ in it, and its own desperate need for the forgiveness and mercy of Christ. ((559, n. 48)
This was the animating project of Vatican II, which, of course, had only mixed success. In some ways, to borrow a culinary metaphor, there were not only too many cooks in the kitchen, but cooks who were often at odds about the menu. Therefore, the Council had flaws and cracks that can be criticized. But the tendency today, in some very conservative circles (sometimes loosely referred to as “traditionalists”) to focus on those flaws as reasons for dismissing the entire project in order to restore the old order, is deeply unfortunate and regrettable.
This rejection of the Council, often on the grounds that it was “merely pastoral”, ignores the fact that this pastoral focus, despite having elements of a time-bound analysis of “modern man”, was an absolutely necessary first step in the direction of forging a new vision for what we mean by the social kingship of Christ and his “Empire.”
And it is in that light that I think Dignitatis Humanae is to be read. It does not anachronistically condemn the past, and it does not condemn the notion of a confessional state as such. But it does call into question the all too easy equating of the Empire of Christ with the horizontal plane of a sacral order conceived along the lines of civil power imposed from above. It is asking us, in other words, to think more Christologically in terms of the actual economy of salvation, where the model of “kingship” is radically subverted as a kingship of kenotic humility to the point of death.
The image of the crucified king, crowned with thorns and nailed to the tree of Roman kingly power, is an image to which we must return repeatedly, in order to properly understand our new cultural reality and what it is demanding from the Church by way of a response to modern forms of power.
The silence of Christ
The epigraphic quote from Matthew’s Gospel with which I began is not just instructive in a pragmatic sense, but a deep theological prompting to our conscience as a Church: Jesus autem tacebat. This prompting in no way implies a literal application as if we must remain silent in the face of modern provocations. But it does denote a posture, a mystique, an admonishment to an inner form of kenotic humility whose sole aim is the vicarious taking on of the world’s false notion of power and transforming it from within into a truly spiritual reality.
Henri de Lubac, in The Drama of Atheist Humanism, speaks of Ivan Karamazov’s tale of the Grand Inquisitor, whose denunciations of Christ’s freighting of human freedom with too much eternal baggage are met with nothing but silence from Christ. In this context, de Lubac quotes Nicholas Berdyaev:
The artistic method that Dostoevsky adopts in his narrative is admirable: his Christ is silent all the time and remains in the shadow. The effective religious idea is not expressed in any words. The truth about freedom is inexpressible. But the truth about constraint is easily expressed. (p. 306)
Again, the point here is not the pragmatic preference for silence as a rhetorical device. It is rather on the spiritual power of a love that expresses itself most persuasively in suffering compassion, as symbolized at the end of Ivan’s tale when the only response Christ gives is to kiss the Inquisitor on his “bloodless aged lips”. And here notice too that the lips are not only bloodless and therefore expressive of the lifelessness of a cadaver, but also “aged,” which evokes a sense of a hopelessly impotent and out of touch jadedness.
De Lubac concludes his analysis with a sharpening of the point:
Thus behind the aesthetic device there is a conviction. So long as we talk and argue and busy ourselves on the plane of this world, “evil seems the stronger”. More than that: whether evil distresses us or whether we exalt it … it alone seems real. The thing is to enter upon another plane , to find that fourth dimension that represents the kingdom of the Spirit. Then Freedom is queen, then God triumphs and man with him.
And God triumphs and reigns as King precisely as a King who creates us to live in a regime of engraced freedom–a freedom oriented to a supernatural fulfillment that does not, for all that, negate its truly free character. But also more than that: As Ratzinger noted, truth has an intrinsic orientation to freedom as much as freedom is oriented to truth. Indeed, as de Lubac notes, “what is God indeed, but the creator of freedoms?”
Therefore, what I am claiming is that what DH gives to us is not a rejection or an affirmation of this or that political theory. It is not giving us a detailed program for Church-State relations and is content to leave it to others to figure out the “mechanics” of the relationship between the Church and civil authority. But yes, it advances the idea–perhaps new, perhaps not so new after all–that given the importance of freedom in the economy of salvation—that our dignity as creatures oriented to the worshipping of the one true God “in Spirit and in Truth”—is something embedded within us by God as a theological “right” oriented to that “duty”.
And I further claim that DH is appealing to the Christocentric core of the Council, best expressed in Gaudium et Spes 22: “The truth is that only in the mystery of the Incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light.” What DH is appealing to, as I think the entire Council is appealing as well, is a hermeneutic of continuity, but now deepened and made radically fecund, by the burning antiseptic of a hermeneutic of kenosis.
And, therein, all that is bloodless and old will be made new again. Jesus autem tacebat.
Related at CWR:
• “Dignitatis Humanae and Social Kingship, Part One” (July 8, 2026) by Larry Chapp
• “Dignitatis Humanae and Social Kingship, Part Two” (July 17, 2026) by Larry Chapp
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Wonderfully written and packed with so many ideas around which the Church should be oriented.
The image of the Church that I hold dear to my heart is the image of Christ standing humbly, meekly but truthfully in front of Pilate. Unfortunately, we too often today have a Church that wants to pull up a chair next to Pilate and “have a meeting.”
Good Deacon Peitler:
I put together a brief response to your most insightful final sentence of your comment, and in my response I point out a few serious problems with Chapp’s article that includes his objectively unjust accusations based on false stereotypes of his own making. Unfortunately, the moderators of CWR would not publish it despite it not violating any rules of commenting, but it does refer to unjust pontificating by Chapp along with another example of his repeated habit of making false accusations in violation of basic Catholic moral principles. However, since he is a regular contributor to CWR, pointing out his unjust behavior toward others is apparently considered taboo even though it adds objective truth to the comments, and also provides a necessary corrective to the lack of truth in the article. In their decision, CWR denies you and others the benefit of the truth along with some additional insights that contribute to your wise final sentence in your comment.
Doubtful that this comment gets published, but it should, as well as my previous comment precisely because it exposes demonstrable unjust elements in the published article.
Michael: I guess we have to defer to those who oversee this site. However, if you have something to say that offers another point of view, there are likely other Catholic sites where you would be free to express your ideas.
“Unfortunately, we too often today have a Church that wants to pull up a chair next to Pilate and “have a meeting.””
That’s a gem, consider it stolen.
Unfortunately, those meetings are often Popes, Cardinal and Bishops on bended knee offering prayers of praise and supplication.
“International organizations, particularly the United Nations, are essential instruments for promoting a civilization of love, for they can foster dialogue among nations and promote the peaceful resolution of conflicts, the integral development of peoples, the protection of the most vulnerable, disarmament and the care of creation.”
MAGNIFICA HUMANITAS
Paragraph 226:
“International organizations, particularly the United Nations, are essential instruments for promoting a civilization of love, for they can foster dialogue among nations and promote the peaceful resolution of conflicts, the integral development of peoples, the protection of the most vulnerable, disarmament and the care of creation.”
As if the U.N. has ever been anything but a cabal.
TPR: Thank you. You see, in my dotage I’ve attended more that my share of meetings that waste time, waste money and are people sitting around trying to justify their existence in the organization. And, worse than that is that meetings lend themselves to floating very dangerous notions for actions that, once begun, are almost impossible to stop.
You’re welcome, Deacon. My experience is similar.
Meeting are how responsibility is diffused in a bureaucracy.
Larry. You have given us a lot of good meat to chew, but it is very hard for the layman to digest. You are writing here as a theologian, and rightly so, but who is the intended audience? I expect that most of us readers on this site are layman who are not equipped to understand your train of thought and all the intricacies of your arguments; thus it would be very helpful for us if you were to write several well written paragraphs summarizing your thoughts and arguments. In other words – “ what are you trying to say” in every day language?
Thanks, Larry for your devotion to Christ the King and His Church and your life work and contributions. You are truly a dear brother in Christ and may He continue to use and bless you.
Chapp writes: “And let us thank God for, without it (this vision), Europe after the fall of Rome to the Germanic tribes would have remained pagan and evolved into a far different socio-cultural reality, and one most likely characterized by a fractious tribalism oriented around an altogether different notion of the relationship between power and true authority. After all, Thor is not Christ, and his hammer represents a different ordo than that of the cross. It is that cross, and not the hammer, under which Europe evolved, which, among other things, at the very least placed European culture under the banner of charity and love for all. Charity is the queen of the virtues, guiding all human endeavors toward the true, the good, and the beautiful. Therefore, it was no accident or mere quirk of history that it was the culture of the cross, the culture of kenotic charity, that gave us the Church’s invention of hospitals, orphanages, schools, and an intellectual life permeated etc.”
An altogether different notion of the relationship between power and true authority? Hmmmm. I’m thinking of the brutal slaughter of the Cathars, a peaceful loving, pacifist, poorly armed people who were not seeking to overthrow secular governments or launch military campaigns, but who protested Catholic corruption. I’m also thinking of Pope Innocent IV’s Ad extirpanda, authorizing secular authorities to use torture to extract confessions from accused heretics. I’m also thinking of King Ashoka’s state-funded medical dispensaries in the 3rd century BC, the Sri Lankan Buddhist monasteries and the institutionalized healthcare facilities, not to mention the highly advanced 9th century monastic hospitals discovered at the ruins of Mihintale. Etc. There’s just something about this article that reeks of Catholic triumphalism, at least at the beginning.
To be fair: Chapp is talking in general, while you are sitting a few isolated, contrary specifics to make your point.
Thomas James,
Adding to your critique, we might notice that the first “university” was not in Christian Europe but in Al Azhar in Islamic Cairo, in A.D. 975. But Chapp’s point might be made more explicit…
Two points and an observation:
FIRST, by “charity” Chapp surely he means the theological virtue and not a lesser and only humanitarian definition. About the European taproot of coherence between this kind of Faith and Reason, Benedict pinpointed the providential event, the narrow path when St. Paul crossed over into the world of the Greeks, in Macedonia. And, later in Europe, the additional turning point (within Chapp’s turning point) was when the Frankish Clovis accepted orthodox Christianity (A.D. 496) as the alternative to advancing and non-Triune Arianism among the disparate Germanic tribes–also a union with the Roman populations, and the beginning of the Merovingian Kingdom including what is now western and southern Germany.
SECOND, it was still another half millennium before marriage became fully established as a sacrament within a graced and sacramental universe. About Christian marriage–rooted in “charity” toward an “other” as also toward “The Other”–Benedict had this to say about this part of the new Christian civilization:
“From the standpoint of creation, eros directs man toward marriage, to a bond which is unique and definitive; thus, and only thus, does it fulfill its deepest purpose. Corresponding to the image of a monotheistic God is monogamous marriage [!]. Marriage based on exclusive [!] and definitive love becomes the icon on the relationship between God and his people and vice versa. This close connection between eros and marriage in the Bible has practically no equivalent [!] in extra-biblical literature” (“God is Love,” 2005, n. 11).
OBSERVATION: We note that 3rd-century BC and pre-Christian Buddhist Ashoka (your reference) had not one wife but five, and today that 21st-century and post-Christian Germania’s der Synodal Weg can no longer distinguish between “marriage” and the blessing of homosexual “couples.”
Chapp is onto something permanent when he invites us to contemplate “charity.”
You write: “…by “charity” Chapp surely he means the theological virtue and not a lesser and only humanitarian definition.”
I see. So if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it isn’t really a duck. It’s humanitarianism, but not a genuine love of God. And if it looks like a hammer, an abuse of authority, oppression, authoritarianism, etc., it’s not really. In fact, because it is a pope who is acting, it is really just charity. It’s like a theological version of Parmenides. Your senses tell you one thing, but reason will lead you to a completely opposite conclusion, and of course you should just trust your reasoning–don’t worry that your reasoning could be off. Just don’t trust appearances.
My point is simply that when a writer uses the word charity that is probably what he means. Thou dost sputter too much.
And then there’s this to remember about our Catholic Church’s involvement with secular figures:
https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/archbishop-vigano-vatican-gave-moral-authority-to-faucis-crimes-against-humanity/?utm_source=daily-2026-07-31
One aspect that must be dealt with but wasn’t, not surprisingly, is the result of the shift that DH and VII brought, which is not positive by any honest assessment. The “old order” was much preferable in its results. In this way the article is odd as the approach Chapp advocates is what has been largely embraced for the last 65 years. Chapp also repeats the standard falsehood that objection to the new approach is reserved to “traditionalist” cranks following the council, when they were voiced during the council by a fair number of bishops. There is a set-up established which rationalizes the resulting diminished role of Catholicism and the Church by telling us we should expect it, by emphasizing the “humble” kingship, so we’re not to expect an outspoken Faith but one which is hidden, passive, silent, in a certain way and degree. There is a strange equivocation there too in which people try to straddle the fence, as we see in this piece- it means silence, but not necessarily an actual one. (One has to ask what other forms of silence there would be in such a context or what kind of kingship there is with less public witness and presence?)
Let’s ask a few questions: Is the Church more or less respected in its voice in society under the “new order?” Do more people, including catholics, care more now what a pope says? Is christianity/catholicism recognized as a Faith more true than others or as just one amongst many equally competing claims? Is there a greater or lesser missionary zeal by the Church and individuals now or is there more of a live and let live approach? Are individual catholics now more proud of their faith or rather prone to silence, passivity, wanting to shy away from public displays? Does there tend to be more of a Christocentric view and approach in the Church or societies in which Christians/Catholics comprise the majority? Do leaders tend to no longer speak of the mandate of proclaiming christ to people and baptizing them versus leaving them to the practice of whatever it may be, or lack thereof? (Leo, Francis, and officials at the holy see have made direct statements with the latter content.) Do leaders seem to have little clue as to the danger that the likes of Islam pose to the Faith, and they are horrified by the idea of limiting its public influence, as would have happened once upon a time, with the Church having taught that this was quite legitimate? Do we have church leaders who are now almost embarrassed to proclaim Christ as King and fearful of offending people if they do? Do we now have Church leaders who do not even mention the concept and phrase christ the king and social kingship of christ, including in social documents; but instead tend to speak of humanistic fraternity and solidarity in its place?
Again, anyone being honest has to admit what we all know to be the answer to such questions. If the new approach has resulted in a diminished empire of Christ and His kingship, it would be madness to want to continue it. Or, are we to be told that this is only coincidence, just like we’re told that the implosion following VII had nothing to do with VII itself; or perhaps that the new approach has yet to be implemented, and thus we’re not seeing the “fruits” of it yet, just like we’re told that VII in general has yet to be truly implemented; or if it weren’t for those “traditional” people who are supposedly blocking its implementation. Anything but to admit that VII may have failed in whatever respect, while we could never resort to what existed before VII, that would never work, that’s outdated, right? Such dynamics also confirm there is rupture and an unhealthy deification of VII- we must follow the approach from VII and onwards, even in practical matters, and despite their not having a good track record, and we simply can’t return to anything prior to 1965. That’s a modernist, un-catholic approach. People would seem to be embarrassed by a “triumphalist” Catholicism and would prefer not to make too much noise and attract to much attention. It reminds one of the trendy idea of preaching through deeds versus words, which is perhaps often used by people to avoid the effort and discomfort of actually saying something to people by telling themselves they don’t have to actually evangelize in word too. Chapp’s next essay should be an attempt to prove that the resulting state of things has nothing to do with the approach that has been adopted and is thus worthy of being contniued.
Thank you, John, for your most excellent insights regarding how to honestly assess both the errors of Vatican II and the many more errors post Vatican II that can trace at least some of their roots to Vatican II. And you have done so most honorably by not wrongly condemning Vatican II as is often maliciously charged against you and others like you who have also honestly assessed both the good and the bad of Vatican II.
And yet, despite the many insights you provide, a favored son of CWR will sooner or later come along and engage in his ongoing cosplay role of Obi Wan Kenobi by applying his forms of Jedi mind tricks to try to persuade all good Catholics like you who point out the many real problems arising from Vatican II and its aftermath that “these aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”
And as we have seen, those in the Church with weaker dispositions happily aquiesce to accepting abject errors against timeless truths because they sadly get duped into believing and even praising the trickster who convinced them that some very harmful errors are indeed “not the droids they’re looking for.”
Still, you and others like you give me renewed confidence in the reality that no matter how long it may take, the truth that makes up all of Sacred Tradition will ultimately prevail.
The first quote from Betz, “coneited” should be conceited?
Pope Francis was looking and at the same time as Pope offering some new insight for the Church likely along the lines being suggested by Chapp. In which Francis, however, seemed to be proposing that “legalizing homosexual civil union” could be validly supported by Christianity. That is, if we go from reports in the media; by which also Francis, subsequent to the passing of Pope Benedict, then pushed it further by saying that Benedict had come to agree with him about it.
Assuming that is all factual, it is wrong and untrue to the faith. And asuming it is factual, Francis keeping at it indicated his desire for its progress and his admission of it not finding a more general acceptance.
What it make to argue, although as far as I know Francis never expounded it explicitly, is that it would be necessary and justifiable to do this in order to be able to mercifully embrace the wayward homosexualists and in order to avoid being merciless and Donatist. To further this Francis would seem to have offered a) the change in the Our Father “do not abandon us” along with b) his contention in a “frankness” about his “own experience” that once he himself had “stood for this”. In b) he perhaps would have been trying to indicate that he had “come out of it” which as a “proof” and a “hope” of “serendipitous outcomes”.
But that is All Wrong. Without even having to say “nonetheless”.
Whatever the purported justifications were to have been, they are nullifying the proclamation of truth and the Gospel and turning mercifulness on its head by sins against the Holy Spirit; since mercy is for the repentant sinner and the proclamation must also involve the calling back from sin as well as the calling forth to truth.
“Only those are to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith, and who have not been so unfortunate as to separate themselves from the unity of the Body, or been excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults committed. (Mystici Coporis 22)” Code of Canon Law(Latin Church)”
First and foremost, Christendom, as a socio-cultural project, has not failed, for Christ Is With us, and He Has not left us orphans. No man is a failure who puts his Trust in The Sacred Heart of Jesus, and thus desires to be A Temple For The Holy Ghost, which is necessary for human flourishing.
Secondly, there are no trappings in “Godliness”, God’s Universal Call to be chaste in our thoughts, in our words, and in our deeds, and thus be Temples Of The Holy Ghost in all our relationships and experiences. Answering God’s Universal Call to Holiness is not a conceited act, unless one desires Salvation for me and not for thee, which would, in essence be a lack of charity due to a deficit of Love for God’s Beloved, which would thus be a denial of God’s Universal Call to Holiness.
Thirdly, The Catholic Church has never been the enemy of science, freedom, and democracy, as Science, Freedom, and Free Will are all Gifts that come from God, The Most Holy Blessed Trinity, The Purpose Of Which God’s Divine Will Intends, we are thus not free to declare apart from God that which is Good for human flourishing as that would make us be temples of an erroneous atheistic humanistic will that is self centered and conceited, making it appear as if “we can be like gods, declaring what is Good and what is evil, which, in essence, is paganism, and certainly not Catholicism.
The Church will not give up God’s Universal Call to Holiness and thus Our Call To Be Temples Of The Holy Ghost, and thus cease to be, in essence, Christ’s One, Holy, Catholic, And Apostolic Church In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, The Spirit Of Perfect Divine Eternal Infinite Love Between The Father And His Only Begotten Son, Jesus The Christ, Who Proceeds From Both The Father And His Only Begotten Son, Jesus The Christ.
Thus the gates of Hell will not prevail for:
“to walk in the freedom of the Spirit, we can perform the Good works that God has willed us to do (Eph 2:10) from the beginning. “
This is not “unity-in-difference” whose perfection is intended to image an even more mysterious and beautiful identity in difference”, but rather, our Call to Holiness, is a Call to affirm This Complementary Essence Of Perfect Divine Eternal Infinite Love Between The Father And His Only Begotten Son, Jesus The Christ, for we can know through both Faith and Reason grounded in our Catholic Faith, that Jesus The Christ Returns To The Father This Self Gift Of Divine Eternal Infinite Love He Receives From His Father , and thus, The Sacrifice Of The Cross, The Sacrament Most Holy, The Sacrament Divine, Is The Sacrifice Of The Most Holy Blessed Trinity, “For God So Loved us, He Sent His Only Son…”
This is, in essence, the “ primordial divine tradition” of Christ’s Church from The Beginning, when God Created every human person, from the moment of conception, equal in Dignity, while being complementary as a beloved son or daughter, and Willed us worth of Redemption.
“The ambiguity of the moment is whether enabling an informal church-within-the-Church, while also affirming formal doctrine, constitutes an actual “public defection” from the Catholic faith.”
It does, indeed, for to claim it is possible to have Sacramental Communion without Ecclesiastical Communion, is to deny The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, and thus deny, in essence, The Divinity Of The Most Holy Blessed Trinity, which is apostasy.
Ambiguity is not of The Holy Ghost🙏✝️💕🌹
Tolerance of ambiguity is correlated with intelligence. God as the author of our intelligence is undoubtedly comfortable with ambiguity. Not all questions are answered.
I just think your formulation basing ambiguity to God, is defective.
“Tolerance of ambiguity is correlated with intelligence.” Sure it is. 🙂
Actually, tolerance of ambiguity is correlated with indolence, because ambiguity is a servant of error, not God, and those who love truth always seek to eliminate as much ambiguity as possible in pursuit of truth as servants of the Truth aka Jesus Christ. Those who are indolent wallow in and accept (woke buzz: ‘tolerate’) ambiguity and proudly praise themselves for doing so.
“I am the way and the ‘ambiguity’. Let’s dialogue about the meaning of sin at the next Synod.”
We need not have to know, in essence, how God Created The World, and that may forever remain a Great Mystery, but that does not change the fact that we can know through both Faith and Reason, that only Perfect Divine Eternal Infinite Love Has The Ability And Desire to take us from death to Life everlasting.
At the heart of Liberty Is Christ,
“4For it is impossible for those who were once illuminated, have tasted also the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, 5Have moreover tasted the Good Word Of God and the powers of the world to come…”, to not believe that Christ’s Sacrifice On The Cross will lead us to Salvation, but we must desire forgiveness for our sins, and accept Salvational Love, God’s Gift Of Grace And Mercy; believe in The Power And The Glory Of Salvation Love, and rejoice in the fact that No Greater Love Is There Than This, To Desire Salvation For One’s Beloved.
Hail The Cross, Our Only Hope.”
“Blessed are those Called to The Wedding Supper Of The Lamb.”
“For where your treasure is there will your heart be also.”
Pray that an imperfect Council will be Called to restore The Papacy, so that Our Blessed Mother’s Immaculate Heart will be Triumphant and Peace will be restored in Christ’s Church.
Editor is that a spelling error in the quote from Betz, “coneitedness” should be conceitedness.
Editor,
Don’t you know that the original document from Betz has the correct spelling, conceitedness.
How could “coneitedness” have entered into the transposition?
“But in what swimming pool do those laws swim? In the waters of the crucified Christ? The waters of charity? Or the waters of coercion and punitive sanction?”
Porque no los dos? The unspoken conviction that punitive sanction is incompatible with charity is, after all, the reason heretical bishops, priests, and theologians run undisciplined in the Church.
I’m with James Connor above (6:06 a.m.).
A more succinct presentation of these ideas would me more suitable and more useful for the non-specialist reader that is, I believe, the intended audience of CWR.
Pius XI and Quas Primas was directly related to the political earthquake in Italian politics, the year 1925 and this Encyclical marked the pivotal turning point when Benito Mussolini transformed from a constitutional prime minister into an absolute dictator, officially establishing Italy’s fascist regime.
Italy was officially ruled by King Victor Emmanuel III, a Catholic regent. Mussolini’s ascendency completely overshadowed any authority possessed by the Italian regent. That included the Catholic Church and its doctrines.
Ironically, Mussolini supported the Church in order to control it – particularly in respect to his own enhanced authority and visions of Italian aggressive foreign policy, the virtual holding hostage of the Church, addressed in the 1929 Concordat.
What might these events contribute to Chapp’s essay? It would be in relation to Chapp’s emphasis on the continuity of religious freedom sans coercion from the State, in whatever elusive form that may take. Here perceived by Chapp as the silent humility of Christ before Pilate. A burning antiseptic of a hermeneutic of kenosis.
One might meditate on this concept regarding the silence of the Church, when faced with the horrors of Nazism’s anti human policies, the excesses of the fascists in Italy and Ethiopia. Did the Church surrender its just power, or was silence a witness to the truth?
Although the kingship of Victor Emmanuel III was symbolic, like the king of England he had no political authority, the Italian government from its conception in 1864 was ruled by a Masonic parliament that was extremely anti Church, and persecuted it severely.
Similar to Napoleon’s restoration of Catholicism in France, so as to restore order and acquire increased influence, Napoleon later assuming the title of emperor, Mussolini as noted supported and financed the Church for his own interests regarding consolidation of power. He would also assume the title of Leader, Il Duce. A title in which he would exercise the absolute power of a medieval king.
Finally, my comment is not intended to overshadow Chapp’s very legitimate, spiritual essay on Christian response to adversity, rather it’s offered as a rationale for various adversities faced by Christians.
I have been a pretty strong critic of Dr. Chapp’s writings before but I commend him for this thoughtful and thorough article. To some of the commentators above the issue of DH does not lend itself to a concise discussion. Unfortunately, I believe that Dr. Chapp downplays disagreement not so much among the usual camps (progressives conservatives and traditionalists) but also among Communio scholars themselves. He urges that we adopt the interpretation of Tracey Rowland yet her interpretation that DH does not amount to the endorsement of the American style religious neutrality has been called into question my critics like Fr. Rhonheimer who can point to numerous statements of post Vatican II Popes praising American style religious neutrality. He could also mention the tension between scholars has cited favorably in the past: David Schindler and Msgr. Guarino. Schindler argued that later adopted the Murrayite view. Even Bishop Barron seems to have adopted much of the Murrayite view. De facto It seems beyond doubt that DH has been received at least in the US as an endorsement of American style religious neutrality. There are other members of the new theology such as Jean Danielou who take a less critical view of the Constantinian settlement. In this book prayer is political problem Danielou praises This form arrangement we’re bringing Christ to the poor. There clearly needs to be some form of intervention in this area, all of these views cannot be right.
I still remain critical of Henri De Lubac. I am not sure we should be accepting Russian Orthodox like Nicholas Berdyaev or Dostoevsky. By definition they are schismatics who were explicitly hostile to Rome in their writings. In other words they are in the exact same position as the SSPX bishops now yet many Catholic thinkers seem to have no problem relying on the Paris Russians as having something to tell the Catholic Church.
The vision of JPII, as I understand him –
‘ It is asking us, in other words, to think more Christologically in terms of the actual economy of salvation ….. ‘ – per Chapp
How logical. The Church is the image of Christ, therefore we should help beat her up? The Christian West’s aspirations can’t “die” because Our Lord is already ruler of the world. The nineteenth-century Popes were only insisting that his empire should be recognised by civil societies. This did not mean coercion; anti-clericalists, like the Lutherans, began as unquiet troublemakers. Where they were given liberty to preach and practice violence against the Church, they thrived. Where they couldn’t, they got nowhere. Let’s not adopt the Enlightenment’s self narrative of inevitability. It triumphed purely through violence and politics, not intellectual superiority over scholasticism. For civil societies to recognise their the lordship of Christ is not coercion. Coercion is to force them not to. No doubt men and women of the Church have made countless mistakes over the ages. Does that mean Christianity should be given up as too hard? Quas Primas is Christianity – never out of date.
Bad things in and around mission that tempt to quench our spirits, synodalizationism would affirm us being quenched and normalize and sanitize the bad things. A saturation dynamic. Also, synodalizationism is offered as “fruit of VATICAN II” yet we see how it controverts DH, mere one chapter. So put yourself in the parish setting with these and see; don’t only focus on “whole Church experience”.