Latest / The Catholic Current / Christ Reigns Now! (Dr. Peter Kwasniewski) 1/29/26

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Christ Reigns Now! (Dr. Peter Kwasniewski) 1/29/26 · The Catholic Current

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This is The Catholic Current with Fr. Robert McTague
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This is starting to sound familiar, almost 30 years later, that we don't have anything
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really specific and concrete to say to the world, but the world might have a few ideas
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for us.
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That can't be the Church's mission, can it?
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It's not the Church's mission.
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Jesus told the apostles, go out and baptize all nations.
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Catholicism is not a suggestion.
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Catholicism is God's truth, which liberates you from the twin evils of sin and ignorance.
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Praise be Jesus Christ.
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This is Fr.
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Robert McTague of The Society of Jesus, your daily host for The Catholic Current, where
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we bring Christ to the world, and the world to Christ.
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You're listening to us from the station of The Cross Studios, your local radio station,
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and the iCatholic Radio mobile app, where we proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity
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and charity.
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As always, let's start with a prayer.
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Name of the Father, Son of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
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May God, through the intercession of St. Ignatius Solo, we ask that you pour forth
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your Holy Spirit upon us, a spirit of discernment that might hear your voice and obey your command.
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In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.
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Well, friends, this April, it'll be 30 years that I was redeemed a deacon and received
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the commission to preach the Gospel with authority.
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As a Jesuit, I made the spiritual exercise of St. Ignatius.
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I always spoke about Christ the King, our crucified and risen King.
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Later on, I refer to our crucified, risen, and returning King.
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Several years ago, I started adding something I should have added from the beginning, that
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Christ is our crucified, risen, and reigning King right now.
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One of my hobby horses is that we think that since the Ascension, Christ is our absentee
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landlord and only come back at the end of days to collect the rent.
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That's just wrong.
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Our topic today is Christ Reigns Now.
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I just finished a book.
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I practically read it in one sitting.
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I ate it up with a spoon.
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It was called His Reign Shall Have No End, Catholic Social Teaching for the Lionhearted.
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It is written by, gosh, one of my favorite contemporary writers right now.
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He is such a prolific scholar, I have despaired of ever keeping up with him.
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I just grab whatever I can and devour it.
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Dr. Peter Krushnefsky, welcome back to The Catholic Current.
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Thank you so much, Father.
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It's always a pleasure to be with you.
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Dr. Krushnefsky, when we talk about Christ the King or Christ is King, there are people
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who are going to clutch at their pearls, retire to their fainting couches, scream about anti-Semitism,
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white supremacy, Christian nationalism.
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Why is Christ the King such an alarming concept for so many people?
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Well, I mean, I think it comes down to something very simple, and that is, you know, there's
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a line in sacred scripture.
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We will not have this man to reign over us.
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In other words, there's a deep-seated inclination in fallen man against submitting to righteous
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authority, to rightful authority, I should say.
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And it comes from our desire to be ourselves the center of attention, the center of gravity.
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You know, we want to be kings.
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Ultimately, that's a way of describing the fall and the state of original sin is that
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we think the world should center on us and should revolve around us.
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And when we profess the kingship of the Lord, really, what we're doing is humbling ourselves
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to say, you are God, I am your creature.
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You know, as Catherine of Siena heard, you know, you are he who is and I am she who is
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not, in a sense, right?
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And I need, therefore, to accept the law from God and to embrace, you know, what he's giving
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to me for my own good.
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And that is going to be hard, but it's also going to be liberating, as you said.
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You know, recently, there's been a movement in public Catholic art and statue in particular.
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I forget the sculptor's name, but I've seen this statue replicated in many places.
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It's Christ asleep on a park bench.
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And he's an object of pity and an object of compassion.
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But I don't see the urgency to worship he who sleeps on the park bench.
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And I don't see him giving commands, and I don't see him leading an army.
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It's one of the reasons why Christ the King is eschewed, even in Catholic circles, is
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because, you know, a king still means something.
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We owe something to a king that we don't owe to anyone else.
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And that makes us not the center of our story, not the main character of our story.
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Is that part of what's going on today?
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Sure.
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I mean, you know, when you look at the early church, the early church was born into a world
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of all kinds of chaos and disorder and immorality.
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But there was a basic appreciation on the part of every nation, every people, that society
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is hierarchical.
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There's a leader, you know, the father is the head of the household, the king or the
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chieftain, or the prince or whoever it is, is in charge of the people.
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He leads them into battle, you know, he gives the law to them, he adjudicates wrongs.
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And so there was a kind of built in just recognition that reality does have this hierarchical
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structure.
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And therefore, it wasn't surprising that when the Christians started building basilicas,
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you know, they put beautiful mosaics of Christ Pantocrator, you know, the glorious judge
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and reigning king, you know, in the apses of their churches, they wanted to be reminded
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that he was in charge.
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It was actually a consoling message.
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It wasn't really a terrifying message.
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It was, he's the ultimate king before whom all the kings of the earth have to have to
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bend the knee.
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So he put a check on the arbitrariness of earthly authority.
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If you don't have Christ as king, then earthly authority is simply just a sort of anything
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goes, right?
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There's no law anymore.
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Right.
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You know, I think if Chairman Mao said, you know, political legitimacy stems from the
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barrel of a gun, if you don't have the logos as sovereign of all creation, then someone
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else, something else who's not divine and not full of grace is going to try to exercise
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the imperium, going to try to exercise sovereignty.
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And one of the things that I found in reading your book is not only Pope Leo XIII, Pius
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X, of course, you know, there's so many.
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I think one of the things they had in common is many of them wrote about this prior to
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1958 for one reason or another.
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I hesitate to speculate.
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But they were in an agreement that, you know, without the logos, there is literally nothing
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but God.
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Without the logos, there can't be creation.
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And if we have any awareness of meaning, value, purpose, order, good, evil, that has to be
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rooted in a divine source.
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And we cooperate with that divine source to our benefit or rebel against it at our
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peril.
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This is so intuitively obvious to me.
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I think a five-year-old could understand it.
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Is it really just as banal as we don't wanna?
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I don't want you to be God.
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I want some – is it really – we're still petulant brats in the garden?
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Is that where we are?
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I mean, it does seem to me that, you know, when the church in her wisdom talks about
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the different wounds of original sin, you know, one of them is the darkening of the
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intellect.
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And, you know, man has this wonderful likeness to God that consists in the power of his intellect
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to know the truth, to know reality, ultimately, and the power of his will to choose the good,
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to incline towards the good by nature, and then to choose particular goods that can lead
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us to happiness.
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So all of this is, in a sense, hardwired into us, though I hate to use that kind of
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mechanized image, but it's part of our very nature.
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And yet, because of disordered concupiscence, you know, we tend towards lesser goods very
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eagerly.
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As C.S. Lewis said, we are too easily satisfied with cheap goods, you know, when we could
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aspire to something that is noble and truly fulfilling.
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And similarly, with our intellects, you know, we can turn them this way and that, and we
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can latch on to partial truths.
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You know, I agree with St. Thomas that the intellect can't adhere to falsehood as such,
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but it can look at a partial truth and then cling to that for, you know, for dear life
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and miss the bigger picture.
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So really, we are weak and foolish creatures.
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And that's why, you know, in the intro, I heard Fr.
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Gerald Murray saying, you know, the Church exists to proclaim to us God's mercy in showing
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us who we really are and what we really need in order to be happy.
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And if we look to the saints, we see that they actually embrace that message.
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And they discovered, you know, a love and a life that the world cannot give.
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Jeffrey Amen.
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You know, just recently, I read an encyclical from Benedict XV about preaching, and he's
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very clear that the proclamation of Christ authoritatively from the clergy and especially
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the bishops is an absolutely indispensable act of charity on our part and mercy on God's
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part because it illumines our intellect and heals our heart, and it makes us aware of
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our dignity as creatures of God, and then also the exalted dignity of our status as
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sons and heirs of God through baptism.
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And the idea that that should be put aside now and Christ at most maybe would just be
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one voice among many, one claimant for our time and our attention and our very busy day,
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I find that shocking.
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I find that disgraceful.
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I find it—I can't countenance it.
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I can't sit still when I see that anymore.
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And as a Jesuit who is steeped in the imagery of Christ the King, the spiritual exercises,
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I just can't abide by it.
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So that's why I've made a public promise that 2026 is the year I'm really going to
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be tub-thumping for the kingship of Christ.
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Dr., I discovered tradition really seriously about 12 years ago, and there was a lot of
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things that I didn't know and that I didn't know that I didn't know, and one of them
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was moving the solemnity of Christ the King from October to November.
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Now, one of the things that I perceived before I know that the feast was moved was, okay,
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it's the end of the liturgical year, you've got eschatological readings, Christ the King
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returns in glory after the Ascension.
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He's not really here.
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But that was not the intention when the solemnity was promulgated.
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And you address this directly in the book.
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Fill us in on this, please.
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Oh, sure.
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This is a fascinating and somewhat horrifying topic, actually.
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So when Pius XI instituted the Feast of Christ the King in 1925 in his encyclical
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Quas Primas, he said explicitly that the reason he was instituting the feast was to remind
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all Catholics, all men, all nations, all rulers of the earth, that Christ is the King,
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is the Lord of heaven and earth, and that he has—or rather, I should say, societies
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and nations and rulers have obligations to him and to the true religion, here and now,
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here on earth.
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So it was really leaning very heavily into the reign of Christ through the Church on
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earth, and the way in which that has ramifications and implications for civil law, for law and
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marriage and family, for how we use property and money, how we organize ourselves socially,
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what our culture looks like, what kind of arts we have.
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All of these things are supposed to be permeated with the Catholic faith.
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And to the extent that they are, they're healed and elevated, and to the extent that
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they're not, as we can see all around us, they go haywire, and they go berserk, and
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they become ugly and hideous, right?
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And so that was his intention.
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And to cement that idea in the minds of all Catholics, he said, let's have a new feast
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in honor of the Kingship of Christ on the last Sunday of October, which, by the way,
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happened to be Reformation Sunday, as the Protestants celebrated it.
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So there was a kind of anti-Protestant element there, but we won't go into that right now.
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But more importantly, it's because it's the last Sunday before the Feast of All Saints
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on November 1st.
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So there's always going to be a very close proximity between first celebrating Christ
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and then celebrating his whole saintly entourage, his court, the court of the King, as it were.
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And the importance of this is that what Christ begins by his incarnation, by his passion
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and death and resurrection and ascension, what he begins, the saints are the ones who
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carry on in history what he begins.
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So in a sense, the incarnation, it's not, you know, once done and irrelevant.
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But it's the insertion into human history and human society and human politics of a
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certain principle that's supposed to bear fruit through all the ages until Christ returns.
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And anyway, the saints then are the ambassadors and the ministers of Christ and of his Kingship
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in time, in history.
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So that was really what Pius XI was getting at, what some people nowadays call integralism.
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That is the idea that the Catholic faith is supposed to permeate society, including government,
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and that there should be a kind of cooperation and harmony, not a collapse, obviously, but
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a cooperation and harmony between church and state.
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So that's the vision of Pius XI.
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This, by the time 1969 came around, or we could also say by the time Vatican II came
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around, made certain progressive ecclesiastics very uncomfortable, because they had been
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sold, you know, this bill of goods about democracy, secular democracy, you know, we can have a
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sort of neutral public sphere, all different religions can get together as long as they
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agree to disagree, and not to beat each other up.
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And so the idea of, you know, Christ, in a sense, Christ was pushed aside, he had to
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be hidden in the churches.
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You know, you meet Christ in the church building, but in the public square, there's nothing
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to do with religion there.
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And that was just in the air.
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And so the Feast of the Kingship of Christ was an embarrassment, I would say, was a kind
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of anachronism by that point, in those people's eyes.
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So what Paul VI did is he didn't just move the feast, he changed the feast, he changed
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the texts of the feast, he edited out, or not he personally, but the people that he
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entrusted with the liturgical reform, they edited out references to Christ reigning here
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and now, in civil society, and they moved the feast, or they transplanted it to the
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last Sunday of the liturgical year, which, as you said, kind of emphasized that Christ
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is the king in heaven, and he'll be king at the end of time, but not really right here
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and right now, in the thick of our, you know, social and political life.
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Right.
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And I saw, too, if I remember correctly, Spain was still considered constitutionally
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a Catholic kingdom.
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Did I read correctly that the post-conciliar Vatican asked Spain to change that?
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Did I read that correctly?
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Yes, yes, yes.
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It's actually really, I would say really scandalous what happened after Dignitatis
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Humanae in 1965.
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That was the document on religious liberty.
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There was an effort made by the Secretary of State, by that department of the Vatican
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to ensure that the constitutions of remaining Catholic countries were modified in order
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to reflect the teaching of Dignitatis Humanae.
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And what they understood that to mean—by the way, I think this is a controversial,
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a controversial question—but what they understood that to mean is that the Catholic
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Church and the Catholic religion could not be given special constitutional protection
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or acknowledgement anymore.
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That somehow all governments had to be neutral, had to embrace this principle of laicity from
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the French Revolution, you know, that there's this wall of separation between church and
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state.
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And I say it's scandalous because it was exactly right for countries with massive majorities
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of Catholics, like Spain and Italy, to have a special place and acknowledgement for the
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Catholic Church in those countries.
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Gosh, where to begin?
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And the prayers were changed, and it seemed that in a certain sense that Christ the King
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wasn't very interesting anymore.
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I want to draw a point of contrast.
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Saint Anselm of Canterbury said that without the Son of God, there's no creation.
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Without the Son of Mary, there's no salvation.
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I want to go back to the idea of without the Son of God, there is no creation.
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The second person of the Blessed Trinity, the only begotten Son of the Father, is the
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eternal Word of the Father through whom all things were made.
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As Christians, must we not absolutely insist that any order in creation or the scientific
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method, the fact that one plus one equals two, this is all because of Christ, isn't
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it?
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He himself is the giver of all order, of all – he is the meaning and measure of every
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aspect of creation.
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So understood, isn't it absolutely insane and, candidly, not in our best interest to
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denigrate the kingship of Christ?
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Isn't he the fount of all wisdom for how we should be living?
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Exactly, exactly.
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Well, and in fact, when you read Scripture, you know, it emphasizes again and again in
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both Testaments that it is through me that kings reign, as the Lord says in the Old
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Testament.
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And in particular, it's through Christ that all rulers reign, that all authorities have
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their authority.
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It's because of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Logos, the Word of God, that we have reason
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and free will.
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We are made into his image and likeness, specifically to the image and likeness of the
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Son.
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You know, that's why when we're in a state of grace, God sees us, he sees his Son, you
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know, reflected in us.
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And so, yeah, I mean, to move further away from the kingship of Christ, or to etherealize
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it, and to postpone it, and to, you know, as I put it in the book, to view it in the
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way that Teilhard de Chardin views the Omega Point, you know, where, you know, someday
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everything is going to converge and coalesce around Christ.
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But meanwhile, we're all left to our own resources, you know, in this dog-eat-dog world
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of evolution or whatever, you know, that this is, I mean, this seems extremely, not only
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unwise, but actually impious.
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It's offensive to God to do these things.
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Jeffery Oh, no, it is pernicious.
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I mean, speaking as a Jesuit, as a confessor, as a spiritual director, one of the most
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common and effective tricks of the devil is to tell people, you're an orphan.
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You're unprovided for in this world.
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But have I got a deal for you.
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This denigration of the kingship of Christ, doesn't that open our ears to that seductive
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lie?
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Yes, yes, of course.
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Yeah, and I mean, in general, I think, you know, we could, I mean, this conversation
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could go in all kinds of directions.
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But I think that most of the isms of modernity, you know, modernity is a sort of nest, hornet's
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nest of isms.
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Most of them can be traced back to some form of rejection of God or of Christ or of the
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church, one form or another.
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So, for example, the, you know, feminism, I would describe as a fundamental revolt against
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the fatherhood of God, after whom all fatherhood in heaven and our earth is named.
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You know, and, you know, materialism is to sin against God, the creator, you know, and
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the one who imbues everything with meaning, with being and meaning and motion.
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You know, it's so every sin, every ideology we can fall into is a sort of rejection of
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one or another point of the Christian creed.
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Right, right.
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And I think to reject Christ as king, it's not only suicidal, it's a form of blasphemy.
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And, you know, we've been trying to live without Christ the king at least since the
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French Revolution.
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And as I said in my own book on Christendom, we ended up with a lot of bad art and mounds
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and mounds of dead bodies.
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And Cardinal Pierre, who's become a new literary hero of mine, he told, I think, Napoleon III,
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oh, you are not ready for the reign of Christ and you are not ready for nations to endure.
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I mean, when we look at what's taking place in the world in our own nation right now,
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we can't say, yeah, this is working just fine.
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This is what winning looks like.
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We are in a fit of madness because we have rejected the sovereignty of Christ.
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And I think we should do something about it.
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Dr., let's summarize.
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What is the perennial wisdom of the Church regarding the kingship of Christ?
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Because I think most people who are hearing our voices right now really haven't had access
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to that at all.
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Fill us in, please.
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I think what the Church is teaching about the kingship of Christ is that He is the font
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and apex of all of reality, and therefore also of the social and political order.
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That is, He is the one from whom all rulership comes, all fatherhood comes, and all authority
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comes.
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And ultimately, then, authority is based on truth, is based on justice.
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And these are the qualities that should shine forth in any society.
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And so, what we do see, in fact, I mean, there's no such thing as a perfect society in the sense
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of a sinless society.
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That would be impossible for a fallen man.
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But we can see what a society looks like when it's well-ordered, when the laws are grounded
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in the natural law, when they're grounded in the divine law, what God has revealed for
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our good.
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We know what a culture looks like, or a civilization, when the arts and the crafts are full of beauty
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and nobility, and they elevate the mind and heart.
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You know, they bring some solace to us in this valley of tears.
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You know, we know.
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So, this is what ultimately the kingship of Christ is.
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It's not just about politics.
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I would say it's about the whole of human culture.
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It has to do with how we go about doing whatever we do in our work, in our family life, in
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our recreation, our leisure, you know, in our prayer, right?
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We want him to reign in us and through us in every dimension and every domain.
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I've done a lot of reading and thinking about what some authors call the icons of the male
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soul.
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And one of them is that of king.
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And the king is not just a leader.
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He is a warrior.
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And in traditional depictions of a king, the king has a sword.
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So, he uses the sword, first of all, to draw the line in the sand and to say to the enemies
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of his people, this far and no farther, but also to point to the horizon and say, follow
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me.
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You know, for all this talk about the pilgrim church and the church on the move, there seems
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to be a lot of urging of sitting in circles and listening to people opine and then turning
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to each other and asking, how was it for you?
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I don't see the kingship of Christ in this.
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Am I misreading the signs of the times?
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Am I just a bitter clinger, a backwardist?
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Jeremy Yeah.
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Well, you are for sure, Father, but that's all right.
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So am I.
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And so are probably most people listening to us.
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Yes.
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No, I mean, we're not backwardists.
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We're eternalists.
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We think about what is eternally true and good and beautiful, and we want to see it
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reflected and embodied in the world around us.
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And no, I think what's, you know, the human soul is, I would say, inherently vertical.
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What I mean by that is like a Gothic cathedral.
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You know, we were made with a longing for God.
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We were made to point upwards.
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That's St. Thomas's.
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That's even reflected in our upright stature.
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You know, all the other animals go around on the ground on their four limbs, but we
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stand erect, able to look up at the sky, up at the stars, you know.
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And so we are, you know, we are vertical beings, and we need purpose.
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We need direction.
27:35
We need, you know, our actions to be fulfilling, our actions need to be for an end.
27:41
And that end needs to be good.
27:42
And the means to the end, you know, need to be good as well.
27:46
And, you know, this whole, you described synodality earlier, you didn't use the S
27:50
word, but I'm going to use the S word.
27:52
So, you know, sitting around in a circle, you know, and just sort of is a very horizontal,
27:58
sort of enclosed and confined and ultimately circular process.
28:04
It's something that it's a dead end.
28:06
It has no end outside of itself.
28:08
It's like the Ouroboros, you know, the serpent that eats its own tail.
28:13
And this, you know, this is exactly, I mean, I'm sorry to say it, but this is a reflection
28:18
of late modernity.
28:19
It's a reflection of a kind of nihilism, a kind of despair.
28:24
Not that it looks that way.
28:24
I mean, they use the sort of cartoon font, and they have lots of bright colors, and they,
28:29
you know, they package it in a way that looks like a Hallmark card.
28:32
But in reality, it's an expression, I would say, of despair, of despair at achieving transcendent
28:38
meaning and nobility and, you know, really a despair of achieving a Catholic and Christian
28:45
civilization, because that's what we had.
28:47
And that's what we ought to be striving for.
28:50
And it seems to me that we have lost the vocabulary for that sort of thing.
28:57
When I was a new priest, I was asked to go to an international meeting of Catholic ecumenists.
29:03
And the people who were leading the conference said, the most urgent thing we need to do
29:08
right now is to have the church sit in silence at the feet of the world's religions.
29:16
Yeah.
29:17
I, yeah, I said, gosh, I said, and this was in Italy, and I said, my Italian isn't good
29:23
enough for me to call a cab and get me to the airport.
29:26
I want to go home.
29:27
I mean, at least they were serving Nutella for breakfast.
29:30
So I had that consolation for a week.
29:31
But it was that kind of blathering nonsense that Christ is just one voice among many.
29:39
And, you know, we've been dominating the conversation for far too long.
29:44
And, you know, we want to hear from the people who marry children and set their widows on fire
29:50
and see what we can learn from them.
29:53
I find it unbearable at this point.
29:59
Let's point to our favorite hobby horse and also say, let's relate Christ the King to
30:05
worship and the primacy of worship.
30:08
My claim for all the social justice warriors out there, if justice is to give to each his due,
30:14
the primary obligation is to offer the Creator worthy worship.
30:21
And because we're fallen, that can only be done in union with a sacrifice on Christ,
30:27
on Calvary.
30:28
Am I reading Catholic tradition correctly here?
30:31
Yes, yes, absolutely.
30:33
The St. Thomas says that of all of the virtues comprised under the heading of justice,
30:39
the virtue of religion is the most important of all of the moral virtues,
30:43
because it concerns the worship of God, who is the one to whom we owe the most.
30:48
Right.
30:48
And, I mean, you know, St. Thomas is very subtle.
30:51
So he says that because we can never give God what we owe him, there's something sort of
30:56
always deficient about that virtue.
30:58
It doesn't exemplify justice in its purest form, because that would be just when we have
31:03
an equal exchange between two people who can fully pay and repay one another.
31:07
We can't do that with God.
31:08
But because of who God is, and because of our relationship to him, in fact,
31:11
our worship of God is the most important moral action that we do.
31:15
The only virtues that are more important than religion, says St. Thomas, are faith,
31:19
hope and charity, the theological virtues which govern everything.
31:22
Right.
31:23
And so I think, of course, that's right.
31:26
And I would add, you know, a point that C.S. Lewis liked to make.
31:29
He made it in many different contexts.
31:32
You know, he said, so far from religious people in history, being dreamy pie-in-the-sky types
31:38
who do nothing for the poor and the suffering in this world, it's precisely those people
31:44
who, because they're looking to God, because they're in love with him, they end up turning
31:50
around and having a zeal to do the works of justice in this world.
31:54
We see that over and over again.
31:56
You have to be completely ignorant of history not to recognize that that's exactly the case.
32:01
Right, right.
32:02
And, you know, we take a look at the great religious founders, and I was reading recently,
32:07
you know, St. Angela Maris, who was the founder of the Ursulines, etc.
32:12
I mean, her zeal for the poor and educating girls and women and so on
32:18
was rooted in her love for Christ, whom she worshipped.
32:24
And I don't understand why.
32:28
Maybe I'm wrong.
32:29
Maybe I'm just looking in the wrong direction.
32:30
It seems to me that urgency and necessity of Christ-centered worship
32:37
seems to be not emphasized today.
32:42
Your thoughts on that, please?
32:43
Yes, yes.
32:44
Well, and in fact, it's worse than that, because the social justice warriors, as you call them,
32:49
the people who tend to neglect the centrality of worship and liturgy and adoration and the
32:55
whole vertical dimension of life that I talked about, those people are not actually the ones
33:00
who are doing what's best for the poor.
33:03
They're often either glorified social workers, or they hand the poor over to secular social
33:09
workers funded by the Democrats, you know, in favor of contraception and abortion or
33:14
all kinds of other things that one could object to.
33:18
In other words, even if you don't put God first, you're also going to get everything
33:24
wrong when it comes to how to love your neighbor, right?
33:27
It's not like you can choose, oh, I'm just going to concentrate on loving my neighbor
33:31
and let other people concentrate on worshipping God.
33:34
No, if you don't do the worship well, you can't do the loving your neighbor well either.
33:40
And, you know, again, I think the burden of proof is on those who want to argue to the
33:44
contrary.
33:44
Right.
33:45
And let's not forget that those who are most enthusiastic about redistributing other people's
33:51
wealth at gunpoint tend to have very little to say about the poorest and most vulnerable
33:58
who are, of course, children in the womb.
34:01
There's not a lot of discussion there as well.
34:05
So we've got about three minutes left in this segment, and then we come up to the last segment.
34:10
How do we begin to turn this around?
34:13
What do we do to make this right?
34:16
Well, you know, I think one of the points I make in my book is that we need to be realistic.
34:23
We need to be humble and modest and understand what is within our power and what is not within
34:28
our power.
34:29
It's not within our power to recreate Christendom.
34:31
That's not something we can immediately do.
34:33
That's the result of many centuries of faithful people doing what they're supposed to do.
34:38
So what should we do?
34:40
We need to live very seriously the particular obligations that the Lord gives us, whether as
34:46
a priest, as a religious, as a married man or woman, you know, as a parent, as a child.
34:52
You know, it seems to me that there is such a richness in Catholic life, in all of these
34:59
different vocations, to tap into and to understand that by living it well, we are actually becoming
35:07
conduits for the grace, the healing and elevating grace of God to enter into the world and to
35:13
rebuild the ruins of society all around us.
35:17
So we have to just concentrate on, you know, it sounds a little bit narrow, but we need
35:22
to concentrate on our immediate environment, on ourselves and on those right around us,
35:27
and do that as well as we can, and not maybe worry so much about what's happening 5,000
35:32
miles away.
35:33
I know that's very hard to do in a social media age, but I think that we need to make
35:37
the effort.
35:38
No, I think you're onto something.
35:40
As I said, I am, I've said very many times, I am a dark, brooding, melancholic Irishman
35:44
with an apocalyptic imagination.
35:46
And because of my work in media, I have to be very well informed.
35:51
I mean, I've been a news junkie since I was reading newspapers in high school.
35:57
But I don't think the human psyche is meant to be caught in a worldwide 24-7 news cycle.
36:05
And eventually, we have to step back and say, what is the best thing that I can do here
36:13
and now?
36:14
And it's usually, okay, Bob McTague, sit down and work on your next sermon.
36:19
That's always the right thing to do.
36:22
And, you know, we need to love our kids, and we need to love our spouses, and we need to
36:25
teach our students to the best of our abilities.
36:28
And I think we need to form small communities to begin to piece together a faithful remnant,
36:35
because God has a really great history of working with such communities.
36:40
Episodes like this need the support of listeners like you.
36:43
If you want to hear more of The Catholic Current,
36:45
please make a donation at thestationofthecross.com.
36:49
Thank you.
36:50
My returning guest today is the prolific author, Dr. Peter Korczewski.
36:54
We're talking about his book called His Reign Shall Have No End.
36:58
Doctor, I'm looking at some of the epigrams you have here from Pius X,
37:06
who's talking about the Catholic city, the new city.
37:09
It says, it has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks
37:15
of insane dreamers, rebels, and miscreants.
37:19
Oh, that should be set to music.
37:22
They don't write like that anymore, do they, Doctor?
37:26
No.
37:27
Actually, I'll tell you something very interesting.
37:29
When I was in college, I was part of a seminar that was an extracurricular seminar put on by
37:36
a couple of professors, where we read through a huge number of papal encyclicals, because they
37:42
just wanted to introduce students to those wonderful documents.
37:46
And they were all encyclicals from, let's say, from the pre-conciliar period,
37:49
so going back to Leo XIII.
37:51
And I remember just being blown away by the language, by the clarity, by the fortitude,
38:00
by the rhetoric.
38:02
I mean, these were men, these were on fire.
38:04
They were like John the Baptist, you know, I mean, there was no milquetoast preaching.
38:09
And I have to say that I would love to see someday, you know, well, first of all, I'd
38:16
love to see about one hundredth of the number of documents coming out from church authorities,
38:21
because they're just drowning in paper all the time, just endless, endless verbiage.
38:26
But I'd love to see the documents be short and crisp and clear and strong and manly, you know,
38:32
this is, I mean, people would respond to that.
38:35
St. Paul says no soldier responds to an uncertain trumpet, you know, the battle cry has to ring out
38:46
and there has to be somebody courageous leading.
38:48
And I think we just, we have a lot of kind of limp-wristed leadership right now.
38:52
It's really unfortunate.
38:53
Well, I think having a rallying cry of something like for dialogue and paperless offices,
39:05
that doesn't inspire anyone.
39:12
You know, God wills it, God wills it.
39:15
Put those chairs in a circle now.
39:18
And then, you know, people banging their swords on shields in small groups, in small groups.
39:24
So I think we've kind of...
39:25
Socially distanced, too.
39:32
You know, ready, aim, listen.
39:34
So I can get up on my hobby horse about, you know, why do we have to listen when the primary
39:40
mission is to teach?
39:41
But that's another topic for another time.
39:44
But, you know, folks like you and me and the people who are listening to me and to
39:49
you and our readers and so on, we're not people with big thumbs on the big scales.
39:55
We're not going to move the needle on our own.
39:58
The best we can do is the best we can do within our own here and now.
40:03
What should we be aiming for?
40:05
As an ordinary Catholic family man, how do you know when you're doing right by Christ
40:12
the King?
40:12
What does that look like?
40:14
Yes, well, I would put this in three points.
40:20
The first and most important point, following on what we talked about earlier, is that we
40:24
need to put our spiritual life in order.
40:27
We need, first of all, to acclaim Christ as King spiritually.
40:30
What does that look like?
40:32
That means not just going to Mass for an hour on Sunday, or even an hour and a half or two
40:38
hours, maybe if it's a solemn liturgy.
40:40
That is the crown of the week.
40:43
That's the pinnacle.
40:44
But if possible, we need to go to Mass more frequently, go to confession, pray the rosary,
40:51
do some spiritual reading, maybe read the Bible more often.
40:55
The Bible is an incredible remedy for the nonsense that is surrounding us on all sides.
41:00
The Word of God is that double-edged sword that St. Paul talks about.
41:06
So, in other words, to take our spiritual responsibilities seriously enough to prioritize
41:10
them, to put aside some of the movies, or the media, or whatever it might be, or the
41:17
endless scrolling, whatever it might be, taking up our time, and devote those 15 minutes in
41:22
the morning to mental prayer, or to reading the scriptures, or to doing the divine office.
41:29
I mean, there are a lot of different things that people can do.
41:31
And this is not the program to sort of give a detailed list.
41:35
But it is to say, you know, seek first the Kingdom of God, and all of these things will
41:41
be added unto you.
41:42
This is what the Lord says, and we have to take him at his word.
41:44
And he is faithful to his promises.
41:48
And I've certainly experienced that in my own life.
41:50
You know, some of the most difficult times I've gone through have been solved only by
41:55
prayer, and only by repeated and intense prayer.
41:59
We, you know, we are inveterate do-gooders, I like to say.
42:02
We think we can fix every problem ourselves.
42:05
And we can't, actually.
42:07
Most of the most important things in life need God.
42:11
Well, the worst problems we will face in life can only be solved by God, and not by us,
42:17
you know, and by us only in as much as we pray.
42:20
So I think putting our spiritual life first is the number one point.
42:25
The second point I would make, I have a chapter in this book called Self-Entanglement Enriches.
42:30
And, you know, it's a chapter that's meant to be a kind of wake-up call or an examination
42:35
of conscience.
42:36
You know, it's addressed primarily to affluent Western readers.
42:41
I mean, we are, most of us in this country, affluent beyond the wildest dreams of people
42:46
in almost any other century of the human race.
42:49
We are very comfortable.
42:50
We're very cozy.
42:51
We're actually very lazy.
42:53
Many of us are overweight.
42:54
You know, I mean, there are many respects in which we live in a very indulgent
42:58
culture or, you know, let's say, set of habits.
43:03
And so in this chapter, my appeal to readers is to do a kind of, to take stock of one's
43:12
way of life.
43:12
You know, how are we living?
43:13
What are our priorities?
43:15
And I actually go through, you know, eight different ways in which people can disentangle
43:21
themselves from riches in the bad sense of riches, the sense in which Scripture speaks
43:26
against them.
43:28
So again, I'm not going to go into those details, but that's something I would say
43:31
is very important as a discernment.
43:33
And then the final thing is, you know, one thing that we can all do, no matter how insane
43:38
the world is around us, no matter how many dreamers, rebels and miscreants are running
43:44
the show, we can inform our minds and form our souls according to the truth so that we
43:51
don't either drink in errors, the poison of errors from other people or inadvertently
44:00
propagate errors and support them.
44:02
You know, I point out in the book that for American readers, for people from the United
44:08
States, we have had a tendency to drink in a certain amount of liberalism with our mother's
44:14
milk, so to speak.
44:14
And there are ways in which we think wrongly about very important questions.
44:19
And I think it's, you know, again, we tend to be materialistic and think that the only
44:24
thing that matters is brawn and muscle.
44:27
But actually what matters is knowing the truth.
44:30
The truth is what sets us free.
44:31
If only if there were some divinely instituted organization that would promote this liberating
44:39
truth and guide us in the way of living a life that is pleasing to God.
44:44
I can't figure out why that hasn't happened.
44:46
Oh, wait.
44:47
Yes, there is.
44:48
It is the Catholic Church.
44:50
It is the one church Christ founded.
44:52
And we have to proclaim that absolutely unabashedly because the honor of God, the integrity of
45:01
the church, and our own salvation and that of our neighbor absolutely demands it.
45:06
Dr. Peter Kroszewski, thank you for a fascinating conversation.
45:09
God bless you.
45:10
Very good work.
45:11
And I do look forward to next time.
45:13
Thank you so much, Father.
45:14
I'm Jesus with Father Robert McTagg, your host every day at The Catholic Current.
45:18
You want to join us tomorrow, Friday, another round of Let's Talk About This.
45:21
We're going to do part two of the inconsistent consistory.
45:25
What was said at the consistory about preaching?
45:28
I'm kind of fired up about it.
45:30
You don't want to miss that.
45:31
After the broadcast today, go to thestationofthecross.com, get our resources list, download our audio
45:36
as podcast, where if you can find audio, you can find us.
45:40
Take us to your family and friends.
45:41
Together, we'll take it to the whole world.
45:44
Through the intercession of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, may Almighty God bless you, Father,
45:48
Son, and Holy Spirit.
45:49
Go in peace, and please do pray for me, for I am a sinner.
46:13
Amen.