The Feast of Christ the King closes the Church’s liturgical year this Sunday. But do we think enough about what ‘Christ the King’ means? And if we do, are we sure this is a feast we still want to celebrate?
The Feast of Christ the King was instituted relatively recently, in 1925, when Pius XI was laying the way for the Lateran Treaty of 1929. This finally recognised that Rome, minus the Vatican City State, belonged to the Kingdom of Italy – which had been a de facto reality since 1870. Accepting King Victor Emmanuel III as king of territories that used to belong to the papacy must have felt like a surrender of Christendom itself.
The encyclical Quas primas, which established the feast, acknowledged that “King” applied to Jesus is a “metaphorical title” and that his Kingdom is “spiritual”, while continuing a belligerent tone, characteristic of his predecessors’ protests against the loss of the papal states. The Feast of Christ the King, said Pius XI, will “provide an excellent remedy for the plague which now infects society. We refer to the plague of anti-clericalism, its errors and impious activities.” The feast would call to the minds of rulers and princes “the thought of the Last Judgement, wherein Christ, who has been cast out of public life, despised, neglected and ignored, will most severely avenge these insults”, the Pope declared. If we take this militant tone away from the Feast of Christ the King, what are we left with?
