+AMDG
TRANSCRIPT
CCRPod S01E02: Is Christ's Kingship yet to come?
Released:  28 April 2024

Hello, and welcome to CCRPod, a podcast of the
Confraternity of Christ the King.  The Confraternity of
Christ the King is an association of lay faithful dedicated
to the teaching and spread of the doctrine of Christ the
King and the service of the poor.  You can learn more at
ccregis.org.

This is Season 01, Episode 02:  Is Christ's Kingship yet to
come?

Many people claim that the Kingship of Christ isn't
something that exists right now.  After all, didn't Christ
say that His kingdom was “not of this world”?  And look
around you, man!  Does this look like a world that is ruled
by a benevolent God-King?  It's a disaster!  No, Christ's
Kingship is something we work for and hope for, but it's not
here.  We must wait for Him to come again for that.

Or so many say.

Fortunately for those who follow Him, though, it isn't so.
Christ is our King, and He is our King *here* and *now*.
Nothing can take that from us.  The defect in Christ's
Kingship in the present day is *not* that He is not King
here; it is that men don't recognize that He is King.  In
other words, the fault is not His; it is ours.

So what are we to make of Christ's words to Pilate, then,
that His kingdom is “not of this world”?

Let's look at the Latin; specifically, the Vulgate,
translated by St. Jerome and the only translation of the
original ever guaranteed by the Church to be without error.
Here is what Our Lord said to Pilate:

	Regnum meum non est de hoc mundo.  Si ex hoc mundo esset
	regnum meum, ministri mei utique decertarent ut non
	traderer Judæis:  nunc autem regnum meum non est hinc.

He says that His kingdom is not “de hoc mundo”, and then
says that if His kingdom were “ex hoc mundo”, things between
Him and Pilate would be different; but that His kingdom is
not “hinc”.

Notably, *none of these statements mean that He has no
kingdom here and now*.  When He says that His kingdom is not
“de hoc mundo”, He says that it is not “about this world” or
“concerning this world”; when He says that His kingdom is
not “ex hoc mundo”, He says that it is not “from this
world”.  He does not say here, and never says anywhere, that
His kingdom is not “in this world” or “at this time”; He
merely says that it's not rooted in it.

Indeed, He says in many other places that He is, in fact, a
King, and that He currently, right now, has all the power in
the world.  He even tells Pilate that he, Pilate, would have
no power at all were it not given to him from above; yet
this is a claim to the superior power of God, and Christ is
God!  Even just a moment before He says that His kingdom is
not “de hoc mundo”, He answers Pilate, “Thou sayest that I
am a king.”  Christ tells us after His Resurrection that
“[a]ll power is given to me in heaven and in earth”, in the
present tense; not “will be”, but ”is”; and not “some
spiritual but absolutely no temporal power“, but “all
power”.

All in all, it is simply not credible to assert that Jesus
Christ claims no power over the here and now, but that He
will come into His kingdom at the end of time, when He comes
again.  He certainly will do that; but at that time all men
will recognize His kingship, and that recognition will be
what has changed.  The fact of His Kingship has always and
will always be true.

It is certainly true that Christ does not currently
*exercise* all the power that He rightly possesses; that
exercise will come when He returns.  But lack of exercise
does not mean that it doesn't exist.

The shortcomings in the world, the disaster that our society
is in, come from our failure to recognize Him as King, our
failure to do Him homage and to follow His lead.  But that
is *our* failing, not His.  The more men recognize that
Christ is the King, the better our society will become.  But
that He is King, even here and now, is not open to
legitimate question.

Consider the three functions of the king:  the legislative,
or law-giving; the executive, or law-enforcing; and the
judicial, or judging, functions.  Which of these does He not
exercise every day for us?

Christ is the lawgiver; He makes rules that we must follow
if we are to live as we should live.  The Ten Commandments;
the commandments of the Church; the requirements of virtue;
these are laws that He has given us, and that we are morally
bound of obey.  Nor are these dusty old laws laid down on
tablets millenia ago; these are current laws that are
currently binding on us, and the dictates of precisely how
we obey these laws binds us over time just as tightly as it
bound the Israelites in the desert so many centuries ago.
There is no question that Christ has a legislative function
in the here and now; therefore, He is at the very least
one-third of a King here and now.

Christ is also, however, the law-enforcer.  When we sin, He
requires that we turn our lives around; He requires our
obedience and, in the final case, compels it when the right
time comes.  He does not compel it with handcuffs and guns
and prisons, as our earthly executives do; but He compels it
all the same.  A life of vice reaps the rewards of vice; a
life of virtue reaps the rewards of virtue.  These are His
doing, and no one else's.  So Christ fulfils the executive
function in the world; He is therefore at the very least
two-thirds of a King here and now.

Lastly, Christ is a judge; indeed, the judge par excellence.
As He Himself told us, “[N]either doth the Father judge any
man, but hath given all judgment to the Son.”  Pius XI, in
Quas Primas, pointed out that He explicitly claimed the
power of judgment when the Jews accused him of breaking the
Sabbath by curing the sick; that is, He determined how the
law (the general case) should be applied to the facts (the
particular case), which is the essence of the judicial
power.  We know, further, that when we die He will be our
judge.  In His ineffable Providence, He judges what will be
the reward of our deeds, whether they be good or wicked.
Christ fulfils a judicial function in the world; He is
therefore three thirds, entirely, a King in the here and
now.

Still, though Christ is unquestionably the King of all
things yesterday, today, and forever, that does not mean
that He has deprived men of all role.  Men also have
authority and power; indeed, some of them are even also
kings, though none like Him.  As the Church's beautiful hymn
in the office of the Epiphany says, “He Who giveth heavenly
kingdoms taketh not away mortal things.”  He allows us to
rule ourselves as we will, even though we often make a
massive mess of it.

Our role, then, is not to abandon all power and rule because
Christ already possesses it.  He does, truly, possess it;
but He does not wish us to abandon ours.  Rather, our role
is to submit our power and rule to His, to conform our own
organizations—families, unions, clubs, teams, even states—to
His, Christ's, great imperium.  When we do this—when we have
restored all things in Christ—we will truly reap the
benefits that Pius XI told us must inevitably follow in the
society that truly and sincerely submits and conforms itself
to Him:  peace; true liberty; well-ordered discipline; and
harmony.

Christus vincit!  Christus regnat!  Christus imperat!