The kingdom of Christ and the crisis of our times


THE CATHOLIC HOUR

THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST AND
THE CRISIS OF OUR TIMES

BY
rev' BEN)AMIN l. masse, S. |.

Associate Editor of America and
Executive Editor of the Catholic Mind

The first in a series of four addresses delivered in the Catholic Hour,
broadcast by the National Broadcasting Company in cooperation with
the National Council of Catholic Men, on October 6, 1946, by l^verend
Benjamin L. Masse, S. J., Associate Editor of America and Executive
Editor of the Catholic Mind. After the series has been concluded on the
radio, it will be made available in one pamphlet.

National Council of Catholic Men
Washington, D. C.



KINGDOM OF CHRIST AND THE CRISIS OF
OUR TIMES

Several weeks ago a widely-

quoted columnist disturbed his

readers by asking: ‘‘Is it pos-

sible that we may be drifting
into a new Dark Ages?’^

He was answered a few days
later by an equally famous col-

league who could not understand
why anyone need have any
doubts.

“We are in a new Dark Ages/^
wrote the latter. “We are in it
up to the neck. The question is

whether there are sufficient

remnants of civilization left to

recreate order and security or

whether the anarchy that has

swallowed most of civilization al-

ready will become universal, to

the point where the whole world

is given over to armed gangs,

and no man’s property or life is

safe anywhere on the globe.”*

Although that is a very harsh

indictment of our postwar world,

it can scarcely be called exag-

gerated. Surely, it is one of the

bitter ironies of the late war
that there is less freedom in the

world today, less respect for the

human person, more purges and
arbitrary arrests and concentra-

tion camps than there were when
the Hitler-Stalin pact signalled

^ Dorothy Thompson, New York
Post, March 20.

the start of hostilities in 1939.

One would have to go far back

into history, perhaps as far back

as the fall of the Roman Em-
pire, to find a comparable crisis

in civilization. The fact is that

modern society is sick unto

death. It is sick unto death be-

cause it has lost its soul.

We sometimes forget that
every society has a soul as well

as a body; that is to say, it has

a vision of the universe, a code

of morals, a religion. Even more

than differences of climate, or

geography or natural resources,

this vision sets bne civilization

off from another and determines

the value of its culture. If the

vision is lost, if the citizens for-

sake the faith of their fathers,

the civilization dies, just as a

man dies when his soul departs
from his body.

This fundamental law of so-

ciety was the burden of what is,

in retrospect, one of the saddest

documents of our age. In 1922,

the late Pope Pius XI wrote an

encyclical on the evils which

plagued the nations after the

first world war. He pointed out
that, although the fighting had

long since ceased and the ink

had dried on the Treaty of Ver-

sailles, there still was no peace.



Class was leagued against class,

nation against nation, and

throughout society life was domi-

nated by a ceaseless search for

pleasure, a greedy pursuit of

wealth,^ an unbridled lust for

power. Yet, he said, people hun-

gered for peace and order and se-

curity, apparently not realizing

that their way of life—their
Godless education, their desecra-

tion of marriage, their bellicose

nationalism, their economic sys-

tems which widened the gulf be-

tween rich and poor—that all
these evils were making peace

impossible. And so with a cry
that came from the bottom of

his father's heart. His Holiness

spoke this message to the world

of the early 1920's: ‘There is

no peace of Christ save in the

Kingdom of Christ: there is no
surer way of seeking to establish
peace than by inaugurating the

reign of Christ."

Looking back now we can see
that the real cause of the dis-

aster which shattered the world

in 1939 was not the exaggerated

nationalism of the Nazis, the

plotting of the Communists, or

the rapacity of the Japanese

militarists. These were only the

surface causes, the effects of an

evil that went much deeper. The
modern world failed to make
peace after World War I, it
failed to avoid a second and more

bloody holocaust, because the

modern world had lost its soul.

It had denied Jesus Christ and

the Kingdom He came to estab-
lish.

One day several years ago,

when our armies were on the de-

fensive and the cause of the

United Nations seemed desper-

ate, the late President of the

United States repeated the

thought of Pope Pius XL “The
speedy and world-wide establish-

ment of the Kingdom of Christ

among men," he told a visiting

dignitary, “not only in word but

in spirit arid in fact, is the only

aim to compensate mankind for

its sorrows."

That was a beautiful expres-

sion of an ideal worthy of a

Christian nation—the truest and
noblest utterance by any states-

man during the entire course of
the late war. But what did it

mean? What did it mean to the
boys who endured a living hell

on Guadalcanal, who died in the

air over Europe, who sank to

their deaths in the South Pacific

and the North Atlantic? What
did it mean to the people back

home who produced the food and

armaments which brought us

victory? What did it mean to our
friends and allies, to the enemies

we fought to. destroy?
The establishment of the

Kingdom of Christ—what does



that mean? It is an appealing-

phrase, no doubt, one of those

romantic phrases which express

an idea too good to be true; the

sort of idea which poets invent

but which has little meaning for

the tough world of reality where

men and women, with bended

back and tired heart, must earn

their daily bread.

Ah, but that is the paradox of

Christianity: it is a fairy tale

too good to be true, but it is

true. The Kingdom of Christ is

not just poetry. It is no more

poetry than the astonishing real-

ity of the coming of the Son of

God to earth, than His dwelling

amongst us, flesh of our flesh and

blood of our blood, for three and

thirty years, than His cruel yet

inspiring death on the cross.

No, the Kingdom of Christ is

a reality that we can recognize,

and more than recognize: it is

a reality that we can live, just as

truly as we live the reality of

our everyday lives. All of us, no

matter how little we are, or how

unimportant we feel, can help to
inaugurate, as Pope Pius XI

said, the reign of Jesus Christ;

we can yet save our tottering

civilization by making the King-

dom of Christ the most vivid

reality in the modern world.

What does it mean, then, to

make Christ rule?

It does not mean what the

enemies of Christ say that it

means, that religion craves po-

litical power and seeks to domi-

nate the State.

When the Roman Governor,
Pontius Pilate, asked Our Lord

during the course of His trial

whether or not He was a king.
He replied: “Thou sayest it: but
My kingdom is not of this
world. . . . My kingdom is not
from hence.’" {John 18: 37-36).

And on another occasion, when
the Pharisees sought to trap

Him, asking “Is it lawful to give

tribute to Caesar?” He took a
coin, showed them imprinted

thereon the image of Caesar and

announced : “Render therefore

to Caesar the things that are

Caesar’s and to God the things
that are God’s.” {Mark 12: 13-

17).

No, to establish the Kingdom
of Christ does not mean to in-
ject the Church into politics. It

means something much purer
and nobler than that. Quite

simply it means to make the
teaching of Christ, the com-

mandments and example of
Christ, the supreme norm of pri-
vate and public life.

It means that for each one of
us Christ must become the king
of our hearts, His teaching the

measure of our actions. His life
the model and inspiration for our
lives.



It means that Christ must rule

over our families, His love sanc-

tifying the love between husband

and wife, the affection between

parents and children; His doct-

rine dictating the duty of par-

ents toward their offspring, the

obedience of children toward

father and mother.

It means that Christ must rule

in public life: that the State re-

spect the rights of the Church

and encourage religion
;

that

elected officials carry out their

duties according to the princi-

ples of Christ and not the shift-

ing rules of expediency; that

educators and doctors and law-

yers judge their professional

conduct in the pure light of the

Gospel; that the leaders of labor

and industry and agriculture ad-

mit that Christ reigns also in

the market-place, and that eco-

nomic activities are not merely

profitable or unprofitable but

likewise morally good or morally

bad.

This is one sense in which

Christ is king of society. And in
this sense every human being,
unless he is ignorant through no

fault of his own, and every gov-

ernment, are obliged to acknowl-

edge the sovereignty of Christ

and to advance His Kingdom.

But in another sense, too,

Christ rules over society. By His
death on the cross He redeemed

all of us. When the gates of
Heaven had been closed by the

sin of our first parents. He it
was Who opened them wide
again. We are His, therefore;
we belong wholly to Him. We be-
long to Him so completely that
apart from Him there is only re-
bellion — life without hope or
peace or joy.

We can, of course, deny the
facts of life. We can refuse, as
a large part of the modern world

has' refused, to acknowledge the

Kingdom of Christ. We can de-
part from the way He has mark-
ed out for us and rebelliously go

our own way.
For we are free agents, and

our King wants the love and
allegiance of free men, not the

cringing submission of slaves.

We must choose once and for all;
and we must choose soon. At
this critical moment in history,
we cannot afford to repeat the
blunders which led to two world
wars and have brought our civili-

zation to the brink of destruc-

tion. Another war, an atomic, a
bacteriological war, would be
sheer catastrophe.

We want peace desperately, at
home and abroad. We want a
real peace, not just the absence

of war and another twenty-year
truce. We want, that is to say,
the Peace of Christ.

My dear friends, we can have



the Peace of Christ, but only, as

Pope Pius XI insisted, in the
Kingdom of Christ. For the soul

of our society, the principle by

which it lives and breathes and

has its being, the principle the

modern world has denied, is

Christ Jesus, Our Lord.





THE CATHOLIC HOUR
1930—Seventeenth Year—1946

The nationwide Catholic Hour was inaugurated on
March 2, 1930, by the National Council of Catholic Men
in cooperation with the National Broadcasting Company
and its associated stations. Radio facilities are provided
by NBC and the stations associated with it; the pro-
gram is arranged and produced by NCCM.

The Catholic Hour was begun on a network of 22
stations, and now carries its message of Catholic truth
on each Sunday of the year through a number of sta-
tions varying from 90 to 110, situated in 40 states, the
District of Columbia, and Hawaii. Consisting usually
of an address, mainly expository, by one or another of
America's leading Catholic preachers—^though some-
times of talks by laymen, sometimes of dramatizations
—and of sacred music provided by a volunteer choir,
the Catholic Hour has distinguished itself as one of the
most popular and extensive religious broadcasts in the
world. An average of 100,000 audience letters a year,
about twenty per cent of which come from listeners of
other faiths, gives some indication of its popularity and
influence.

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