Mightily impressed at the scholarship, historical detail and the faithful account here. Clearly you know of it's potential as a theme ,and I appreciate it.
But.
My take on it is that it's an ecumenical fig leaf that is now a liability .
There are many descriptors for Christ.
But they count for far more to me if I bin the Christ, King and Messiah notions. Saving them for the likes of BlackRock and Musk etc.
Down here, yesterday was Stir Up Sunday in England.. The day when the nation used to.prepare its Christmas puddings after church services.
In Sweden ,it's known as Judgement Sunday too, another theological theme ,local to what Europe used to think and live by.
Neither of these were " Feasts"...ironic,because no such Feasts are on offer or celebrated are they, by churches? Just coffees and cakes where sermons used to be
So more grandiosity re Christ the King, when He appears to be nothing like that in our cultures is only an empty award ceremony , bit of an effort to colonise time as we used to. When Celery Week or Pride Month seem to be more " celebrated" in our godless cultures
Personally , I'd prefer a Jesus.the Hate Speaking Prophet day to counter the slide to hell we are on today. We have no Kings of meaning any more, unlike 1611 , even 1925 ! So Jesus is far more a threat to Davos or the WHO than He is a rival to Beatrice or Charles!
A true church would know this ,or at least be arguing for it's positions . That we are confined to online screeds only means that truth seeking, theological discourses and cultural prophecy shows we have wolves like Welby and Bergoglio, where Ratzingers and Kolbes used to be
I understand your frustration. My argument is that the church confesses Christ the King, not so much by something like Christendom, now in sorry shards, as by martyrdom, through which Christendom was built in the first place. I agree that the church militant cannot afford to confuse itself with the church triumphant. But the church militant does, and must, confess Christ as King and as High Priest, not as a martyred Prophet only. See Hebrews 12.
"Read thus, §20 is amenable to the reminder in question. While all men ought to receive the gospel and enter the church, neither Jesus nor the apostles taught that they would. Indeed, they taught the opposite."
Right. But the (public and notorious) Bergoglian (papal?) teaching is that there is no need for all men to receive the gospel and enter the church; because 'the gospel' refers to every inchoate inner movement ('entos hemon') towards goodness and truth, something of which is found in all men (excepting perhaps mafiosi?) such that all men of minimally good will willy-nilly are already within the church. A rather serious deviation.
As for the problem of 'Christendom,' are we supposed to outright reject the idea? Or just keep in mind that the earthly growth of Christendom is not the (true and final) end we (as Christians) strive for or expect; although it will be a natural outgrowth, which we should indeed welcome and work for, of the working of the gospel within us (us as a political community), insofar as it does work within us? And naturally, in the case of the crumbling of Christendom, vice versa?
No, indeed, we should not 'outright reject the idea' or the ideal on which it is based. We should be conscious, as you say, that approximations of this ideal are temporary successes at best. We should also be conscious that the task is always primarily a task of evangelism, seeking a just order in which those who desire to live justly are not impeded in doing so.
Okay, and doesn't the same apply to integralism? Certainly there can be distorted ideas of integralism, as of Christendom, but integralism itself (a society which embodies Christian wholeness) is surely an ideal implied by, say, the seeking of a just order in which those who desire to live justly are not impeded in doing so.
How much has changed in Mexico, which tried to airbrush from its history the Cristero conflict? https://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=64183
Mightily impressed at the scholarship, historical detail and the faithful account here. Clearly you know of it's potential as a theme ,and I appreciate it.
But.
My take on it is that it's an ecumenical fig leaf that is now a liability .
There are many descriptors for Christ.
But they count for far more to me if I bin the Christ, King and Messiah notions. Saving them for the likes of BlackRock and Musk etc.
Down here, yesterday was Stir Up Sunday in England.. The day when the nation used to.prepare its Christmas puddings after church services.
In Sweden ,it's known as Judgement Sunday too, another theological theme ,local to what Europe used to think and live by.
Neither of these were " Feasts"...ironic,because no such Feasts are on offer or celebrated are they, by churches? Just coffees and cakes where sermons used to be
So more grandiosity re Christ the King, when He appears to be nothing like that in our cultures is only an empty award ceremony , bit of an effort to colonise time as we used to. When Celery Week or Pride Month seem to be more " celebrated" in our godless cultures
Personally , I'd prefer a Jesus.the Hate Speaking Prophet day to counter the slide to hell we are on today. We have no Kings of meaning any more, unlike 1611 , even 1925 ! So Jesus is far more a threat to Davos or the WHO than He is a rival to Beatrice or Charles!
A true church would know this ,or at least be arguing for it's positions . That we are confined to online screeds only means that truth seeking, theological discourses and cultural prophecy shows we have wolves like Welby and Bergoglio, where Ratzingers and Kolbes used to be
Thank you for your thinking. Learned a lot.
1 Peter 3.15-16
I understand your frustration. My argument is that the church confesses Christ the King, not so much by something like Christendom, now in sorry shards, as by martyrdom, through which Christendom was built in the first place. I agree that the church militant cannot afford to confuse itself with the church triumphant. But the church militant does, and must, confess Christ as King and as High Priest, not as a martyred Prophet only. See Hebrews 12.
"Read thus, §20 is amenable to the reminder in question. While all men ought to receive the gospel and enter the church, neither Jesus nor the apostles taught that they would. Indeed, they taught the opposite."
Right. But the (public and notorious) Bergoglian (papal?) teaching is that there is no need for all men to receive the gospel and enter the church; because 'the gospel' refers to every inchoate inner movement ('entos hemon') towards goodness and truth, something of which is found in all men (excepting perhaps mafiosi?) such that all men of minimally good will willy-nilly are already within the church. A rather serious deviation.
As for the problem of 'Christendom,' are we supposed to outright reject the idea? Or just keep in mind that the earthly growth of Christendom is not the (true and final) end we (as Christians) strive for or expect; although it will be a natural outgrowth, which we should indeed welcome and work for, of the working of the gospel within us (us as a political community), insofar as it does work within us? And naturally, in the case of the crumbling of Christendom, vice versa?
No, indeed, we should not 'outright reject the idea' or the ideal on which it is based. We should be conscious, as you say, that approximations of this ideal are temporary successes at best. We should also be conscious that the task is always primarily a task of evangelism, seeking a just order in which those who desire to live justly are not impeded in doing so.
Okay, and doesn't the same apply to integralism? Certainly there can be distorted ideas of integralism, as of Christendom, but integralism itself (a society which embodies Christian wholeness) is surely an ideal implied by, say, the seeking of a just order in which those who desire to live justly are not impeded in doing so.