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.

Our Sunday Visitor Press

Huntington, Indiana