Book Recommendation: The Art Of Principled Entrepreneurship By Andreas Widmer

Aligning Business, Graced Creativity, Capitalism and the Common Good

Last week I wrote about the ‘graced imagination’ and its role in human supernatural creativity, based upon Thomas Aquinas’ description of the imagination. This week, I am discussing a book that describes one the most important human activities to which that supernatural creativity can contribute, the work of entrepreneurship.

The author of The Art of Principled Entrepreneurship, Andreas Widmer, teaches at the Catholic University of America business school, and is himself an experienced entrepreneur. This is not a dense book on business theory, but a readable description of a set of principles that govern good business, written to inspire entrepreneurs to follow their calling and contribute positively to society. It is well thought out and the writer clearly understands how what he describes is rooted in Catholic social teaching, and so, I suggest, a few open-minded intellectuals might learn something by reading this book.

This should be distinguished, incidentally, from the ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) movement which is all the rage at the moment, and is presented a way of making business just, but in fact promotes the values of destructive revolutionary Marxism, destroying lives and the profitability of business. Principled entrepreneurship, in contrast, genuinely benefits all involved because it is directed to the common good.

Widmer first defines Principled Entrepreneurship, as that which maximizes the long term profitability of the business by creating superior value for customers while consuming fewer resources and always acting lawfully and with integrity. (Principled Entrepreneurship is a trade mark)

Then he sets out and explains the principles by which this ideal is achieved. These are his ‘Five Pillars’ :

• The economy exists for people, not people for the economy
• To work is to create, to create is to be human
• Culture eats strategy for breakfast
• Principled business creates win-win solutions
• Always think like an entrepreneur.

These are understandable statements in themselves, but it is not apparent immediately to someone like myself who is not a natural businessman how they apply to business. Widmer does a good job of explaining their meanings and their application in real situations, so that we can relate the abstract principles to particular concrete situations. No one should be fooled, however, by the approachable, chatty style of writing that he is treating the subject superficially. On the contrary, his descriptions reflect a deep understanding of Catholic social teaching and years of experience in business.

The practice of doing business does not always receive good press (to put it mildly). While many recognise that without it we’d all be impoverished, those who are good at business are often assumed to be so because they are greedier than their competitors, and that their success is at the expense of others.

Consequently, the images that the words capitalism, business, industrialization, corporate culture, for example, conjure for many people are influenced by hundreds of years of Romantic, Socialist and Marxist critiques and false propaganda, which paints these activities as necessarily exploitative and destructive. So while the small-businessman, such as the street vendor, might be viewed positively, it is often assumed that the business executive or owner of a large business, must be resorting to exploitation and inducing misery for others, because they are assumed to be making more money. Bosses are by definition callous and smug crooks or fat cats, living comfortable lives separated from their workers or customers.

The Board Room, 1900, by Ferdinand Brutt

It is a human activity therefore that is intrinsically, at least partly evil. It must therefore be regulated by government, so the argument runs, to stop the more greedy and unprincipled from dominating the market, and from pushing competition from the principled and virtuous small businessman out of the market. If the businessman can redeem himself, it is only by being a philanthropist who gives his money to charity afterwards, or lowers prices out of charity to reduce profits.

This is a false picture. While it is certainly the case that there are bad people in business, the actual practice of creating and establishing a business is not an intrinsically evil pursuit, I would contend, and so would Andreas Widmer. Rather, it is more accurate to say that the ends to which it is directed reflect directly the intentions of those who run the business, for good or ill.

In that sense business is just like art - the artist can exercise his skill well or badly, but the practice of creating art does not naturally incline him in either direction. We might observe, for example, that most of the art schools in the country promote one or other iteration of Marxist ideology with their art, but that doesn’t make art intrinsically bad. It just makes for bad art. It is still worth becoming an artist and directing that calling to a Christian end.

Once we accept this premise, that doing business is an intrinsically good pursuit, this changes everything. Rather than being a necessary evil to be controlled by regulation, it becomes - as with any other natural human activity - one that might be a personal vocation and open to guidance by the grace of God. Supernatural creativity and the graced imagination can potentially guide its practice.

Considered in this way, the actual practice of doing business can be a virtue, just as the creation of fine art is a virtue. As a virtue, its practice can lead to joy and fulfillment in life as part of the Christian vocation. It is not a moral virtue, although it is a given that one cannot be virtuous if the moral law is broken. The principle of choice in this virtue is not the moral law, but rather the recognition of the greatest good, which is the most beautiful route forward. The more we become sensitive to the beauty around us and to beauty as a sign of the divine, the more we are inclined to take the more beautiful choices before us. This applies to businessmen as much as it does to fine artists, for all are called to the Way of Beauty.

This idea that the interests of business ( and capitalism in general) are in conflict with the good of society and ordinary people arises, it seems to me from what I would say are flawed conceptions of the common good and the love of self, that lead to the idea that the two are necessarily in conflict with each other. The question then is how to reconcile them in practice?. Some argue that the interests of the individual person must be subordinated to those of the common good, while others argue the reverse. Both are in error. Societies that are structured around these assumptions, I would argue, tend to either Godless tyranny or Godless anarchy (which in turn leads to tyranny) respectively.

A similar tension exists in the minds of many also between the right to private property and the common good, and this too is seen by some as two irreconcilable principles that require one to be compromised in order for any practical route forward to be attained. In this case private property is usually viewed as a necessary evil at best which must be restricted so that the common good is not compromised.

As a consequence of these errors of understanding, business is seen as an intrinsically selfish pursuit, at best a necessary evil and a bi-product of the Fall. The grasping businessman who is successful can only redeem himself by giving away his profits as a philanthropist.

Portrait of a Businessman, by Mikhael Vrubel; Russian, 19th century.

I hold to the view that there is no conflict between self interest, private property rights and the common good. In fact when each is understood properly (this is a topic too long for this blog today) all are perfectly aligned in God and for the good of all both collectively and personally. So in my understanding, what is in accord with the common good is best for me personally; and the right to private property is a necessary condition of a just society in which people are free to move to the common good. The common good, incidentally, is a metaphysical principle which is attained when we seek God.

This book by Andreas Widmer is grounded in what I believe is the correct understanding of the patterns of the relationships between private property rights, self-interest and the common good. The principled entrepreneur will, he explains, actually lead to a more successful business that is profitable and affects those who encounter it (whether as investor, worker or customer) spiritually and materially for the good.

It will, I hope, inspire those who have a vocation of work to adopt an entrepreneurial approach that is a graced, innovative and imaginative in their daily work. Even a cog in a corporate machine, can, in the vision of Widmer, become an entrepreneurially minded, creative influence for the good, inspired by God, who draws people to God.

One of the five pillars that he describes as being essential to the principled entrepreneurial mindset is: ‘to work is to create, and to create is to be human’. In the opening paragraph of the chapter he says:

When we work, we do not only make more, but we become more. The Principled Entrepreneur is primarily a creator - someone who pursues their excellence by creating value for others profitably. That value entails supporting others on the team in their pursuit of excellence and appropriately rewarding all stakeholders physically, mentally and spiritually. (p57)

Beautiful mass production! Wedgewood pottery in their factory in England

It is clear that for Widmer, being an entrepreneur is as much a creative pursuit for him as painting is for me. In fact, it might be even more so - I suspect that he is probably more successful as an entrepreneur than I am as an artist!

Port Sunlight in northern England. This is the workers village created for workers for the Lever Bros. Sunlight Soap factory, complete with the Lady Lever Art Gallery which contains the best collection of pre-Raphaelite art in the country.

Cardinal Pell and Bishop Strickland at Catholic Family Conference, May 1, Irving, Texas (and Online)

The 2nd annual Catholic Family Conference, presented by Regina Caeli Academy and Carmel Communications, will be held on Saturday, May 1, 2021 at the Westin Irving Convention Center, located at 400 West Las Colinas Blvd in Irving, Texas.

Cardinal George Pell and Bishop Joseph Strickland headline this year’s conference. Last year’s fully virtual event attracted over 40,000 people; the 2021 conference offers attendance virtually or in-person. Dr. Ralph Martin, Noelle Mering, Trent Horn, and Steve Ray are among the impressive lineup of speakers.

The purpose of the conference is “to inspire, strengthen and enlighten families with the truths of the Faith.” In this year of St Joseph, the Catholic Family Conference will consider in a special way this patron of the Universal Church and head of the Holy Family. The speakers, both lay leaders and prelates of the Church, will address the concerns, struggles, and joys facing today’s Catholic families in a world and culture that are rapidly changing.

Visit the website to register and learn more about this exciting event!

The Facelessness of Tyranny, and the Tyranny of Facelessness

Christian Anthropology, Mask Mandates, and V is for Vendetta

In yesterday’s post, I described how in the oldest forms of traditional sacred art, which conform to the iconographic tradition, Christ and the Saints are always represented full-faced or in three-quarter profile, so that two eyes are visible. This is because looking at people face-to-face is the mark of loving interaction and characterizes Christian interpersonal relationships. The less of a full face we reveal to others, and the less receptive we are to those who wish to reveal themselves to us, the less loving we are.

A wise priest once described to me the difference between friendship and romantic love. Friendship, he said, can be likened to people in each other’s company enjoying and sharing together the experience of looking in wonder at the same sunset.

Romantic love incorporates friendship, of course, but in addition, lovers are fascinated by each other. This would be characterized by two people staring into each other’s eyes.

When we stand in front of an icon of Our Lord, for example, who looks us in the eye, it is inviting us to look back at Him and receive Him in a love that is greater than both friendship and romantic love. These lesser loves participate in the fullest expression of love, which is between the persons of the Trinity, a love into which we enter through Christ.

In sacred art, those who are not saints, for example, the devil are shown hiding an aspect of themselves from us through facelessness. They are painted in profile or with distorted or obscured facial features, and even trying to hide the faces of saints.

Scripture tells us that in heaven we will see God’s face. For example, in his famous passage on love (so often read at marriages), St Paul says, “At present, we are looking at a confused reflection in a mirror; then we shall see face to face; now I have only a glimpse of knowledge; then, I shall recognize God as he has recognized me.” (1 Cor. 13, 12-13)

This, then, is why wearing masks when we deal with people is profoundly damaging to our personal relationships and destroys loving interaction. To impose the use of masks, therefore, compromises human freedom and undermines the human spirit, the highest aspect of the soul, and our connection to the source of our capacity to love, God. When our spirit is undermined, we are cast adrift spiritually, and become malleable and manipulable by the forces of evil, for we are miserable and detached from the love that supports and binds us to God and others. This ultimately has additional on our mental and physical health, and introduces a greater risk of inappropriate authoritarian rule or even tyranny in society from “faceless” bureaucrats.

Very often, the spiritual dimension of man is not taken into account in the current debate about face-mask mandates and their impact on our health. Those who do not believe in a spiritual soul or understand or accept Christian anthropology are always likely to focus on the reduced risk of contracting physical illness by mask-wearing (putting aside for a moment the debate as to whether there really is any benefit) at the expense of the spiritual costs to the human person and to society as a whole.

It is no surprise therefore that the political left, generally more in harmony with the neo-Marxist worldview and anthropology, which is atheist and materialist in its premises, is more enthusiastic about masks than the political right in the current Covid situation. I am not suggesting that the goal of all left-leaning people is tyranny, or that they are unconcerned for the well-being of the people. Rather, that it is that their reduced view of man means that they cannot bring into their consideration the well-being of the whole person into public policy.

It is not as simple as saying that all mask-wearing causes more harm than good. But it is saying that in every human interaction the capacity to love has been severely curtailed by the use of masks. No centrally imposed policy that mandates mask-wearing can possibly anticipate what any pair of people ought to do, balancing bodily and spiritual needs, in a given interaction in accordance with the common good. So, mask mandates will inevitably fail to serve society.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

A Reflection on the Fate of the Feast of Christ the King

Andrei Rublev, Christ Enthroned in Glory

Note: The following article appeared in the Fall 2017 issue of The Latin Mass magazine on pages 38-42 (vol. 26, issue 3). Many thanks to the editors of TLM for allowing its publication here.

The first time that the Feast of Christ the King was celebrated was October 31, 1926. In Mexico, 200,000 faithful went to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, among whom was the Jesuit priest and future martyr José Ramón Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez, S.J., better known as Blessed Miguel Pro. The faithful had come on pilgrimage, but they were also protesting the repressive anti-Catholic “Calles Law.” Pro writes:

On October 31^st, the Feast of Christ the King, we had the biggest, most sublime demonstration that the entire world has seen in the last four centuries. The pilgrimage to the Basilica started at four in the morning and ended at 7:30 at night… It was around five p.m., when I was about to return home with Mendez Med, when we saw a resolute group of housemaids who arrived with some one hundred industrial workers. They approached, singing along the streets leading to La Villa; but the singing was a little bit of a mumble. Then I told my partner, “C’mon buddy, now is the time,” and pushed my way into the group using my elbows. Then, following the leading voice of my partner I sang “Thou Shalt Reign” at the top of my lungs. [1]

It is difficult to imagine a more dramatic inauguration to a liturgical feast.

Blessed Miguel Pro

To understand how a mere Sunday in the Church calendar could have such an impact, it is necessary to turn to the feast as it was originally conceived by Pope Pius XI.

Quas Primas

In December 1925, Pope Pius XI announced a new Feast of Christ the King in his encyclical Quas Primas. The Supreme Pontiff makes it clear that the purpose of the new celebration is not merely to honor Christ’s Kingship, but to encourage individuals, families, and entire societies to submit to the yoke of Christ the King (17). After a beautiful reflection on how Jesus Christ exercises full judiciary, executive, and legislative power over all of mankind, he adds, “It would be a grave error…to say that Christ has no authority whatever in civil affairs, since, by virtue of the absolute empire over all creatures committed to Him by the Father, all things are in His power” (17).

According to Quas Primas, the “pest of our age” is secularism (laicismus), the attempt to build society without God (24). Secularism began with a political curtailment of the Church’s ability to govern her flock with respect to their eternal salvation and escalated into either the subordination of the Church to a powerful State or outright persecution. The result of the secular marginalization of “Jesus Christ and His holy law,” the Pope argues, is constant war between nations, an assault on the family, domestic strife, insatiable greed, and a blind and immoderate selfishness—“in a word, society shaken to its foundations and on the way to ruin” (24).

According to the teaching of Pius XI, the solution to this plague is to “look for the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ” (1) by recognizing, “both in private and in public life, that Christ is King” (19). When this happens, “society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony. Our Lord’s regal office invests the human authority of princes and rulers with a religious significance; it ennobles the citizen’s duty of obedience” (19). It was to facilitate this solution to modernity’s ills that Pius XI instituted a feast in honor of Christ the King, “that the kingship of our Savior should be as widely as possible recognized and understood” (21).

The Feast of Christ the King, then, is designed to instruct the minds of the faithful about the social reign of Jesus Christ and to warn them of the errors of secularism. But it is also designed to move and strengthen their hearts. Without saying it in so many words, the Pope is just as concerned about the silence of the good as he is about the ideological delusions of the bad. Secularism thrives on the pusillanimity of the pious; it sets a public tone of silence about God and then twists that silence into a form of acquiescence and even apostasy. Pius XI’s response to this hostile silent treatment is not the further privatization of religion or more “dialogue.” It is a rebel yell:

While nations insult the beloved name of our Redeemer by suppressing all mention of it in their conferences and parliaments, we must all the more loudly proclaim His kingly dignity and power, all the more universally affirm His rights (25).

The Feast of Christ the King is designed not to recover an ancien régime or to establish a theocracy or even necessarily a Catholic confessional state, but to embolden Catholics to march into whatever public square in which they find themselves a part and declare Christ’s gentle but firm sovereignty over their society, as Blessed Miguel Pro literally did on that first feast day in Mexico City. Pius’ vision is aptly captured in the following verses from Te Saeculorum Principem, the Vespers hymn for this Sunday:

The wicked mob screams out:
“We don’t want Christ to reign!”
But we rejoice and say:
“Thou art the Supreme King of all.”

May the leaders of nations publicly honor and extol Thee;
May teachers and judges reverence Thee;
May the laws and the arts
Be a reflection of Thee.

May the insignias of kings shine forth
In their submission and dedication to Thee.
And bring under Thy gentle rule
Our country and the homes of its citizens.

In sum, the exhortatory goal of the Feast of Christ the King is the renewal of a Christian public spiritedness that can meet the political and social challenges of the age and work manfully towards the inner transformation of contemporary society.

The Original Date

Pius assigned the Feast of Christ the King to the last Sunday of October. [2] The Holy Father wanted it to fall on a Sunday so that not only the clergy but the laity could fully participate in it (29). And he wanted it on the last Sunday of October for two reasons. First, by being near the end of the liturgical year, the feast “sets the crowning glory upon the mysteries of the life of Christ already commemorated during the year” (29). Second, by celebrating it before All Saints’ Day on November 1, “we proclaim and extol the glory of Him who triumphs in all the Saints and in all the Elect” (29).

Pope Pius XI

It has also been speculated that Pius XI chose the last Sunday of October because several Protestant churches observe on that day Reformation Sunday. The first Protestant reformers were hardly champions of secularism (Calvin’s Geneva and Zwingli’s Zurich leaned more towards theocracy); nevertheless, the secularization of the West was one of the unintended consequences of the Reformation. Either way, the last Sunday of October is an ideal choice. As Pius XI mentioned, there is a fitting transition from the triumph of Christ in His Headship to the triumph of Christ in His members—the Communion of Saints (November 1) and the Holy Souls in Purgatory (November 2). The Church Triumphant and Church Suffering follow on the flowing trains of their King.

Second, celebrating the feast near the end of the liturgical year gives it an eschatological note. The final Sundays of the Church calendar become increasingly focused on the End Times until the year culminates with the Last Sunday after Pentecost, known in some quarters as “the Sunday of Doom” because of its Gospel on the destruction of the Temple and the world. [3] Then, the Church year begins anew with Advent, which is likewise about the Last Day, for in preparing for the celebration of Christ’s First Coming in Bethlehem we are also to prepare for His Second Coming in glory. [4] Thanks to the pairing of Christ the King and All Saints, we can therefore trace a shift from a sense of wonder and awe at heavenly glory to a holy fear about if we will ever reach such a stage. This shift, in turn, conditions the faithful to convert this holy fear into actual preparedness during Advent, so that we may greet Christ our Judge “without dread” when the time comes (see the December 24 Collect). Paradoxically and ingeniously, the period from late October to Christmastide uses a fear of Doomsday to help us appropriate and properly move beyond it.

Although this holy fear reaches its height on the “Sunday of Doom,” it is present in ovo in the Feast of Christ the King. The Pope hoped that as a result of this annual celebration, nations will recall “the thought of the Last Judgment, wherein Christ, who has been cast out of public life, despised, neglected and ignored, will most severely avenge these insults” (32). Pius XI also expressed the wish that it would encourage the faithful to live their lives in such a way that Christ will count them among the good and faithful servants (33).

Third, by having it near but not at the very end of the liturgical year, the feast teaches that the social reign of Christ the King has already begun and that we are subject to it now. Such a placement also fits in nicely with the current season in the Roman Breviary, which in October includes passages from II Maccabees, which chronicles Jewish defiance of the pagan ruler Antiochus IV. One such reading, proclaimed on the Fifth Sunday of October, recounts the story of ninety-year-old Eleazar, who chose to be flogged to death by public officials rather than eat a piece of pork and defy the law of the Lord. Here was a man who had a sense of God’s social reign avant la lettre.

Customs

Pius XI ordained only one custom on the new feast: that the Dedication of the Human Race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which Pope Leo XIII inaugurated and Pope St. Pius X commanded to be renewed yearly, be recited on this day (28). Given the historic ties between devotion to the Sacred Heart and Christ the King, the association is appropriate. The Church continues to grant a plenary indulgence, under the usual conditions, for the devout recitation of this prayer on the feast.

In his encyclical the Pope also praised Adoration and procession of the Blessed Sacrament by which “men unite in paying homage to Christ, whom God has given them for their King” (26). Because they are public, processions make precisely the kind of assertion that Quas Primas seeks to promote. “It is by a divine inspiration that the people of Christ bring forth Jesus from His silent hiding-place in the church and carry Him in triumph through the streets of the city,” the Pope muses, “so that He whom men refused to receive when He came unto his own, may now receive in full His kingly rights” (26). Consequently, many parishes using the 1962 Missal have a Eucharistic procession on this feast similar to that of Corpus Christi.

New Name

The post-Vatican-II calendar makes three changes to the original feast: a new name, a new date, and new propers.

First, the title has been modified from the Feast of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King to the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ King of the Universe. Theoretically, the addition could signify that as Lord of the universe, Jesus Christ has dominion over all things and all men, thereby reinforcing His social reign. But the intention of the architects of the new calendar was the opposite: instead of highlighting Christ’s social reign they sought to deemphasize it.

Pierre Jounel was the priest in charge of the subcommittee that revised the calendar. After summarizing the feast’s original purpose (and implicitly pooh-poohing Pius XI for still dreaming “of a possible Christendom”), Jounel explained the new rationale:

The compilers’ aim was to emphasize more the cosmic and eschatological character of Christ’s kingship. The feast is now the feast of Christ “King of the universe” and is assigned to the last Sunday in Ordinary Time. [5]

In other words, Christ Pantokrator is being replaced by cosmic Jesus.

Pantokrator, Monreale, Sicily

New Date

As Jounel’s statement indicates, changing the date was likewise meant to emphasize the “cosmic and eschatological” at the expense of the social. In 1968, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was allowed to review the proposed new calendar. Writing back in June of that year, the CDF stated that “The feast of Christ the King ought to keep its social dimension and be celebrated in October as in the past.” [6] Note the reasoning: the October date bespeaks the feast’s “social dimension,” that is, its promulgation of the social kingship of Jesus Christ.

To iron out their differences, members of the CDF met with Archbishop Bugnini’s Consilium in charge of reforming the liturgy. Bugnini states that the CDF, despite their “nostalgia” and “fears,” were dazzled by his committee’s “expertise and care,” and so the two groups soon came to an agreement “even though in the process many requests of the Congregation were effectively denied,”[7] including retaining the original date of Christ the King.

New Propers

The new propers for the Mass and Divine Office also make clear that Christ’s social reign is no longer the reason for the feast. The inspirational hymn verses cited above were removed, as were various references to Christ’s rule and the world’s opposition to it (for a full analysis of these liturgical changes, see Fr. Dylan Schrader’s fine article [8]).

And it is expected that the pulpit now be used to reinforce this new emphasis. The Congregation for Divine Worship’s 21015 Homiletic Directory [9] recommends that for the solemnity preachers consult seventeen different paragraphs of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, only one of which, citing Quas Primas, explicitly affirms Christ’s kingship over human societies (2105). The rest teach that Christ is the “Lord of the cosmos and of history” (668-672) and that we participate in Christ’s Kingship not by making our laws reflect God’s order (to paraphrase the afore-mentioned hymn) but by serving the poor (786) and exercising self-control (908). Similarly, in his influential The Liturgical Year, Father Adrian Nocent, O.S.B. (one of the periti who revised the Lectionary) avoids the concept of Christ’s social reign and writes instead of the folly of the Church wanting “political authority in the world,” an assertion that is true so far as it goes but prone to secularist misinterpretation without proper qualification. [10]

New Feast

Moreover, according to no less an authority than Pope Paul VI, the Feast of Christ the King was not merely changed or moved; it was replaced. In Calendarium Romanum, the document announcing and explaining the new calendar, the Pope writes:

The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ King of the Universe occurs on the last Sunday of the liturgical year in place of the feast instituted by Pope Pius XI in 1925 and assigned to the last Sunday of October. By this reasoning, the eschatological significance of this Sunday is placed in a clearer light. [11]

The key word is loco, which means “in place of” or “instead of.” The Pope could have simply stated that the Feast occurs on a different date (as he did with the Feast of the Holy Family) or that it is being moved (transfertur) as he did with Corpus Christi, but he did not. The Novus Ordo’s Solemnity of Christ the King, he writes, is the replacement of Pius XI’s feast.

Assessment

We can draw three conclusions about the new solemnity.

First, it changes the liturgical year. On the positive side, the date of the new feast affirms the triumph of Christ the King over all things at the end of time and serves as a fitting capstone to the season of Ordinary Time, which began in January after the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord. Thus configured, Ordinary Time is bookended by the beginning and end of Christ’s ministry (of course, whether Ordinary Time is itself a good idea is another matter). [12]

On the other hand, because of the new location the feast loses its link to All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days, and without this link there is no mini-season celebrating the relationship between the Head and its members. Consequently, the progression from glorious awe to a righteous fear of the Lord to Advent’s joyfully penitential preparation for the Second Coming is weakened.  Instead, the last Sunday of the liturgical year is now expected to carry a rather overwhelming list of themes (Christ’s kingship, the Last Judgment, and the Kingdom of God), the risk being that justice is done to none of them.

Second, the new feast guts the original of its intended meaning. Pius XI instituted Christ the King to proclaim Christ’s social reign; its eschatological dimension was subordinate to this goal. The new feast, by contrast, uses the eschatological in order to replace the social. By doing so and by dropping all critical references to godless societies, it gives the overwhelming impression that the new eschatology, as Peter Kwasniewski puts it,

Betrays weak knees before the challenge of modern secularization, as well as hesitation about the perceived “triumphalism” of the earlier papal social teaching. In other words, the kingship of Christ is palatable and proclaimable so long as its realization comes at the end of time, and does not impinge too much on the political and social order right now—or on the Church’s responsibility to convert the nations, invigorate their cultures, and transform their laws by the light of the Faith. [13]

Or to put it more cynically, the liturgical innovators kicked the can of Christ’s reign down the road to the end of time so that it will no longer interfere with an easygoing accommodation to secularism.

Although vestiges of a social element remain in the new solemnity (such as the Gospel for Year A), these are usually manifested in the form of social justice rather than Christ’s social reign. The USCCB uses this Sunday to collect donations for the Campaign for Human Development and to defend religious liberty. [14]

Certainly, conforming to Christ’s reign includes caring for the poor, but it is also much more than that. The reduction of Christ’s social kingship to social justice is a betrayal of its meaning. And while the erosion of religious liberty in the United States is a very serious concern, one cannot help note the irony of using Pius XI’s feast to defend it, since the Pontiff ostensibly rejected the American model of religious freedom when he deplored the legal practice of “ignominiously placing” the true religion of Christ on the same level as false religions. [15]

Third, the feast has lost its strong exhortatory character. Pius XI wanted this day to be a spiritual call to arms, emboldening Catholics with a courageous public spiritedness unashamed of Jesus Christ, zealous of sound morality, and fearless in applying the high standards of the Gospel. We may even say that the old feast aimed at reanimating a kind of Catholic chivalry that channeled manly assertiveness into publicly defending God’s honor. The new feast has none of these rousing elements; it is, quite frankly, wimpy by comparison. One can hardly imagine the current solemnity inspiring the same kind of muscular civil disobedience exhibited by Miguel Pro and his coreligionists. 

Father Miguel Pro’s Martyrdom

Conclusion

Blessed Miguel Pro only lived to celebrate two Feasts of Christ the King before giving his life for the Lord. After being arrested in November 1927 on the bogus charge of conspiring to assassinate the president of Mexico, Pro was executed without trial on the 23rd of that month. As he faced the firing squad, the holy priest extended his arms cruciform and shouted ¡Viva Cristo Rey!—“Long Live Christ the King!” Pius XI’s feast had become the inspiration for the battle cry of the Cristeros rebellion against atheistic tyranny and the motto of martyrs.

Now that Blessed Pro is part of the Church Triumphant, we pray that through his intercession the Church Militant may never forget the true meaning of this powerful feast and never fail to put it into practice. And in times such as ours, when the Barque of St. Peter “is taking on the waters [of secularism] to the point of capsizing,”[16] it is good to remember the words of Quas Primas:

We may well admire in this the admirable wisdom of the Providence of God, who, ever bringing good out of evil, has from time to time suffered the faith and piety of men to grow weak, and allowed Catholic truth to be attacked by false doctrines, but always with the result that truth has afterwards shone out with greater splendor, and that men’s faith, aroused from its lethargy, has shown itself more vigorous than before (22).

[1] Marisol López-Menéndez, Miguel Pro: Martyrdom, Politics, and Society in Twentieth-Century Mexico (Lexington Books, 2016), 4.

[2] Quas Primas 28. During its first year in 1926, however, it was held on October 31.

[3] The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Sweden, which more or less retained the traditional readings of the Roman Rite, uses this sobriquet.

[4] See my “The End and Beginning of the Church Year: Interlocking Clasps in the Hidden Season,” TLM 22:3 (Fall 2013), 46-50.

[5] Pierre Jounel, “The Feasts of the Lord in Ordinary Time,” in The Church at Prayer, vol. 4, The Liturgy and Time, ed. Aimé Georges Martimort, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell (Liturgical Press, 1986), 107.

[6] Annibale Bugnini, Reform of the Liturgy (Liturgical Press, 1990), 311.

[7] Ibid.

[8] “The Revision of the Feast of Christ the King,” Antiphon 18.3 (2014), 227-253.

[9] Congregation for Divine Worship, “Homiletic Directory,” Prot. N. 531/14 (2015).

[10] Adrien, Nocent, OSB, Liturgical Year: The Liturgical Year: Sundays Two to Thirty-Four in Ordinary Time, vol. 4 (Liturgical Press, 1977), 298.

[11] Calendarium Romanum (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1969), 63.

[12] See my “The Time after Pentecost vs. Ordinary Time,” TLM 26:2 (Summer 2017), 46-50, or my essays in New Liturgical Movement here and here.

[13] “Should the Feast of Christ the King Be Celebrated in October or November?” 

[14] See“Our First, Most Cherished Liberty.”

[15] Quas Primas, 24.

[16] Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, Funeral Message for the late Joachim Card. Meisner.

Book Review: Reason, Faith and the Struggle for Western Civilization, by Samuel Gregg

Over the years, I have engaged with many Christians who despair at the situation in the West today. The ugliness of modern culture, the decline in the numbers of Christians, especially those who are part of the Church, and the erosion of traditional values that arise from it are a legitimate cause of concern - I am certainly not happy about much of what we see in the contemporary culture either - but we do not always agree on how we might change the situation.

A large proportion of these generally conservative, orthodox and pious Christians (and I use these adjectives positively) consider the leading cause of our troubles today to be the Enlightenment of the 18th century, which set in motion all the errors we see in the philosophical conglomerate that governs the pattern of modern living.

It is to these conservative critics of the Enlightenment that Gregg speaks, and he offers an alternative to the conventional narrative of those Catholics who are unreasonably critical of the Enlightenment on the one hand, and have a misplaced romantic nostalgia of the medieval period in the West on the other.

If one were to characterize simply the conservative critique of the Enlightenment which I have in mind, it relates to a false understanding of three fundamental concepts that, they believe, arose in this period, namely, the human person, personal freedom, and the nature of the society that emerges when free people interact. Identifying the American constitution and free-market capitalism as arising from political and economic thought rooted in these errors, and which are therefore part of the problem, they can be almost as critical of the right as they are of the socialism and big government.

In this small volume, Samuel Gregg has written a sober analysis of the streams of thought that have arisen in the last 400 years, and placed them in the context of all Christian thought. Without ever ignoring what has gone wrong in the recent period, Gregg paints a different picture. Written in his characteristically clear and engaging prose, it is concise, but immensely rich in its content. His is a thesis that looks at the historical evidence, at the words of the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment writers themselves, and the assessment of them by respected modern commentators, such as Pope Benedict XVI.

It is clear from this that it is as wrong to blame the Enlightenment for all that has gone wrong in the world today, as it is wrong to paint a picture of our medieval past as the only source of what is right. Even critics of the Enlightenment would concede that there is some good, at least, in the development of modern science and modern medicine, and the increased material prosperity that began in the “Age of Reason.” However, fewer of those who occupy the conservative Christian world would say, with Gregg, that Enlightenment thought has enriched orthodox Catholic teaching, and has brought great cultural as well as material benefits that society enjoys today.

Gregg’s thesis is that the philosophical roots of modernity are in the medieval period, and that it is not helpful to consider the period that we call the Enlightenment today to be distinct from this. Instead, it is better looked upon as a development of ideas, some good and some very bad, that for the most part originated in the pre-Enlightenment period.

For Gregg, the source of all that is good in the West is a unique synthesis of faith and reason which arises directly from the Jewish and Christian faiths. It is where faith and reason work together that human freedom, just society, and prosperity occur. As he points out, many modern commentators ignore the fact that most of the Enlightenment thinkers, even if not explicitly Christian, worked within the philosophical and theological paradigm that arose from it. Adam Smith, for example, and many of the figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, as well as Edmund Burke and the framers of the US constitution, come into this category. While their language is not necessarily that used by someone who has a Catholic scholastic formation, the underlying concepts are often consistent with it.

Building on this, Gregg makes a case for the market economy and the American constitution as absolutely consistent with the Catholic social teaching and the writings of Benedict XVI. These contributors to the modern age might talk of the individual, but they clearly do not understand those individuals as isolated, autonomous beings, but as persons who are by nature in relation with each other and the world around them. Similarly, their concept of human freedom is not limited to the simple idea of a lack of constraint or compulsion, but includes the additional and necessary component of a firm grasp of how to exercise it well. Moreover, they understand that society is not defined simply by the vector sum of individual actions, but also incorporates the effects of a complex network of personal relationships and interactions.

Make no mistake: there were, and still are, problems. Gregg does not gloss over any of these, or hesitate to analyze the catastrophic effect on the world of the thought of figures such as Rousseau, Marx, Mill, and Nietzsche. He also explains the reasons why so much Islamic thought is incompatible with Western society. Anyone who wants to understand why we see growing intolerance and sometimes violent and bloody opposition to freedom today from the left and radical Islam should read this book for this reason alone.

Overall, this book offers cause for hope, and a way forward that does not involve a retreat from modernity. It is unlikely to be an easy road, but at least there is one. If you are pessimistic about the direction of Western Civilization today, then perhaps you might take a look at this book too.

Samuel Gregg is Director of Research of the Acton Institute. You can buy his book here.

Exclusive NLM Interview with Archbishop Sample: Why Young People Are Attracted to Traditional Liturgy

Archbishop Sample offering the Holy Sacrifice at the National Shrine

NLM is pleased to present the following transcription of an interview conducted by Julian Kwasniewski with the Most Reverend Alexander K. Sample, Archbishop of Portland, in connection with the Sacred Liturgy Conference in Salem, Oregon, June 27–30, 2018. Much of what his Excellency says is highly pertinent to the Youth Synod taking place at the Vatican this month. This interview is published here for the first time.


Julian Kwasniewski: First off, I just have to say thank you for agreeing to this interview.

Archbishop Sample: I want to encourage you young people, and especially young people who are serious about their faith and about the sacred liturgy. I want to do everything I can to encourage you.

JK: The first question I want to start with is very simple. What is a priest?

AS: It is a simple question and it might strike someone as kind of an odd question — we all “know” what a priest is because we see them. But do we really understand who the priest is?

I think over time, perhaps particularly since the Council, there has been a reduction, if you will, in people’s understanding of the nature of the priesthood and its place within the Church. A lot of people have come to see the priest as what he does. The focus is what the priest does. Even that has changed a lot, but I think the average person might say the priest celebrates Mass, he hears confessions, he supervises the parish, he administers things. They see his functions; they don’t see his identity. That is key: his priestly identity. Who is he? It’s not so much what he does; it’s who he is, because everything he does flows from who he is.

So who is he? He is a man chosen by God, called to this order and through the sacrament of Holy Orders, through the laying on of hands and the prayer of the church; he is sacramentally configured to Christ the High Priest. There is that an ontological change that takes place in him, change on the very level of his being. He becomes something new, since his soul is forever marked with the character of the priesthood, so that he can minister in the Church in the person of Christ the head, in persona Christi capitis. So there is a close identification between the ordained priest and the High Priest, Jesus Christ; he is called to be an alter Christus, another Christ. All Christians are by our baptism called to be other Christs, but the priest in a particular way represents Christ in the Catholic Church.

He participates in the tria munera, the threefold office of Jesus Christ, as Priest, Prophet, and King. The priest is ordained to teach, to sanctify, and to rule or govern God’s people in the name and person of Christ. He is to teach the doctrine of the Church, always according to the mind of the Church and in harmony with the magisterium. He is a sanctifier; he is the one who sanctifies God’s people, especially through the sacraments, and most especially through the celebration of Holy Mass and the hearing of Confession. He is a shepherd, the guide of the community, he points the way to eternal life.

If we understand who the priest is in this sense — the sense in which the Church understands who the priest is — then we see that all the functions that he does and all the things he does flow from this essential identity.

Celebrating a pontifical Mass in Rolduc

JK: I wonder if you could tie that in with the recent Corpus Christi procession that you did, since it seems to manifest the three gifts you were talking about: it is a witness to the Church’s teaching; it publicly witnesses to the ruling position of the Faith in society; and it is a practice that can sanctify us who participate in it.

AS: Right. As I was processing with Our Blessed Lord in the Holy Eucharist through the streets of Portland — and we went through a part that is a very secular area — all I kept thinking to myself was, “Lord Jesus, take possession of these streets, these streets belong to you. Reclaim them, Lord Jesus.” And when we were in the park for the Rosary and Benediction before we turned around, and headed back to the Cathedral, that was my prayer. People were walking by and amazed at this group of people marching and praying. I’m sure many of them were thinking “what is this thing you have on the altar there,” and of course, it was Our Blessed Lord. But I kept thinking to myself, “Lord, these streets belong to you. Reclaim and sanctify them.”

JK: How would you relate this experience of Eucharistic adoration to your episcopal motto: Vultum Christi Contemplari. What does your motto tell us about what you just said?

AS: I took my motto from the writings of St. John Paul II, who I consider my patron saint, quite honestly. I have no connection to him by name, but I really do consider him my patron saint now. He has been a great inspiration to me; I’m not sure I would be a priest today if it was not for him.

This idea of contemplating Christ’s face was something that John Paul II wrote a lot about. In Novo Millenio Ineunte, he recalls the scene in the Gospels where the Greeks come to Philip and they say, “We want to see Jesus.” The Holy Father picks up on that idea and says that this question, “we want to see Jesus,” is a question that is really in the heart of every person in the world today. Even if they don’t know it, they want to see the face of Jesus. He said they don’t want Christians just to talk about Christ — the world wants us to show them Christ. That’s our job: to let the light of Christ’s face shine before the generations of the new millennium. But, he goes on to say, our task would be hopelessly inadequate had we not first contemplated His face.

So he said we must contemplate the face of Christ. We must know Him intimately and deeply, we must cultivate that close personal relationship with the Lord, in order for us to show Him to the world. It’s very close to my own spirituality of prayer and being in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament and just contemplating Christ’s presence in His Face. This is where my motto came from.

Later, in his last encyclical, Ecclesia Dei Eucharistia, John Paul II put it very bluntly: This is the task that I have set before the Church at the beginning of the new millennium, Vultum Christi contemplatri, to contemplate the face of Christ. And then he also speaks of the Marian dimension which he develops in his pastoral letter on the Rosary, that we contemplate the Face of Christ through Mary in the praying of the Rosary.

JK: Do you think the pope’s emphasis on contemplation is related to the problem of activism in our times?

AS: Yes. John Paul II is saying, “Church: This is your task. To first contemplate the face of Christ ourselves so that we may then let it shine before the nations.” Since we cannot give to the world what we do not have, we must first know Christ before we bring Him to others. For a Catholic in the world (not a contemplative religious), there must be a balance between contemplation and work, knowing Christ deeply and intimately, adoring him in prayer, in order for one to effectively carry on the apostolic works of the Church.

JK: It seems that many young people these days are rediscovering contemplation and an ability to give themselves joyfully to Christ through loving the Latin Mass and the old liturgical prayer of the Church.

AS: That’s a very good point, and it’s a point I made in the homily I gave at the Solemn Pontifical Mass at the National Shrine in Washington D.C. You know, the Church was filled with young people!

A lot of times, priests expect that if you go to a Traditional Latin Mass according to the 1962 missal, the church will be filled with grey hair, old people filled with nostalgia for days gone by, and that they have a sort of emotional attachment to the liturgy they grew up with.

But more and more, the majority of the people in the church at these masses are people who never lived during the time when this was the ordinary liturgy, that is, before the Council. If you are under a certain age (and that age is getting higher and higher), you never experienced this liturgy growing up. And yet young people — which is something Pope Benedict XVI said in his letter to the world’s bishops when he issued Summorum Pontificum — have discovered this [form] too, and have found it very spiritually nourishing and satisfying. They have come to love and appreciate it.

That is amazing to me: young people who have never experienced this growing up in the postconciliar Church, with the Ordinary Form (sometimes celebrated well, sometimes very poorly with all kinds of aberrations and abuses), have still discovered the Latin Mass and are attracted to it.

JK: What, in your view, accounts for that attraction?

AS: I would say its beauty, its solemnity, the sense of transcendence, of mystery. Not mystery in the sense of “Oh, we don’t know what’s going on,” but rather, that there is a mysterium tremendum celebrated here, a tremendous mystery. The liturgy in the old rite really conveys the essential nature and meaning of the Mass, which is to represent the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ which he offered on the Cross and now sacramentally, in an unbloody manner, in the Holy Mass.

I think young people are drawn to it because it feeds a spiritual need that they have. There is something to this form of the liturgy, in and of itself, that speaks to the heart of youth. Young people will continue to discover this, and they will be the ones who carry forward the Extraordinary Form when the older generation goes to their reward. Certainly this will be young people of your generation, but ... I’m 57. I was baptized in the old rite, but by the time I was aware and cognizant of Mass, we had already come to the new liturgy. So everybody younger than me has no experience really of this liturgy. Anyone under my age could be considered “young” in discovering this beautiful liturgy!

JK: Your Excellency, what would you say is the most important element of tradition for the Catholic youth to hold and cherish at this time?

AS: I think what young people need to do first is to discover — and many have — the Church’s tradition. Many young people have been deprived, in a certain way, of our Catholic heritage, of the great tradition which is ours in the Catholic Church. I know for myself I feel I was ... I don’t want to say cheated because that sounds like someone did it intentionally out of ill will for me ... but I feel like I was deprived of real teaching and appreciation and contact with my Catholic culture and my Catholic tradition and where we come from. I lived in and grew up in an age when there was this attitude that the Church had, in some way, hit a reset button at Vatican II, and that we could let go of all the past, as if the Church needed a new beginning and a fresh start.

You are far too young to have lived through that experience, and you are very blessed to live in the time that you do, because there was nothing like this for me when I was growing up. I grew up in a time when all of those things in the past had to be cast aside. Even something as simple as the Rosary, it was kind of discouraged — or if not discouraged, it was certainly not encouraged. I never saw Eucharistic Exposition and Benediction until I was a college student. I never knew such a thing existed. I grew up when there was a lot of experimentation with the Mass, always trying to make it “fresh and new.” There was a period of time growing up when you came to Mass on Sunday, and you just didn’t know what was going to happen next! The changes were coming so fast, and not just changes but experimentation and aberrations. So I was deprived of any contact with my tradition; I discovered it, on my own, as a college student.

JK: Was the liturgy the only area in which you felt deprived of contact with tradition, or are you speaking more broadly?

AS: In ‘tradition’ I would certainly also include the teachings of the Church that I never learned. I never understood what the Mass was — and I went to 12 years of Catholic school. If you has asked me what the Mass meant, I would probably have told you that it was a reenactment of the Last Supper, the last meal which Jesus shared with His disciples and in which He gave them His Body and Blood ... which is part of the truth. But the idea that the Mass was in any way a sacramental re-presentation of the paschal mystery, that Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary was made truly, sacramentally present at the altar — and that it is an altar, and not just a table! — that would have been a foreign idea to me.

So certainly part of the tradition is that young people need to be deeply in touch with the Faith, what we believe, what the Catechism teaches. Young people must not take it for granted that what they have received in education (whether in a Catholic school or a religious education program) is an adequate formation in the Faith. They need to really delve into the teachings of the Church, the Catechism, they need to read good, solid books and articles, and other media forms, whether internet or movies. So that is part of it.

But of course, a big part of our tradition is our liturgical tradition. It’s in our DNA — and that’s why many are attracted to the traditional forms of the liturgy — because it’s in our Catholic DNA. Young people need to acquaint themselves with the richer, deeper tradition. Vatican II did not hit a reset button. Although, perhaps, the tradition needed to be renewed and refreshed, it never was meant to be destroyed or cast aside.

Pontifical Mass at Rolduc

JK: Would you put sacred music into this category, too?

AS: The rich liturgical tradition of the Church includes her sacred music. We don’t have to have pop music at Mass. The first time I heard Gregorian chant was when I was a college student. I’d never heard of chant before. When I heard it in a music appreciation class at a secular university, I hadn’t a clue what it meant, but it instantly spoke to my heart—instantly. The first time I heard it I was moved, really moved. So there is this rich liturgical, sacred music tradition that we need to recapture, recover, that young people need to learn about.

Moreover, we should all have devotions in our life. Devotions extend what the liturgy begins. Things like the Rosary, the chaplet of Divine Mercy, Eucharistic Adoration, other devotions to the Blessed Virgin, having favorite saints, patron saints that you pray to, Stations of the Cross…All these rich parts of our Catholic devotional tradition feed the life of faith and extend what we experience in the sacred liturgy, but also lead us back to it.

JK: Do you have any additional advice for young traditional Catholics trying to recover their tradition? 

AS: I’d say there is a tendency sometimes to see these things — doctrine, liturgy, devotions — in opposition to things like works of charity, works of mercy. I would emphasize that we must not get to a place where all we are concerned about is being of right doctrine (orthodoxy), having right liturgy (orthopraxy), good sacred music, that we are doing all the right devotions. If we are not doing works of mercy, the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, if we are not taking care of the poor and disadvantaged, then we are not living fully our Catholic faith. That’s part of our tradition too!

I think traditional-minded Catholics should not let, perhaps, the more liberal elements in the church co-opt the works of justice and mercy as being “something of the new Church.” Catholics have always been steeped in the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. The Church of the ages is the one that built hospitals and took care of the sick and the poor and the dying, built schools to educate poor children without opportunities.

The works of justice and mercy are also very much a part of our tradition, and I would caution young people not to get so focused on the other elements we spoke of that they forget that Jesus teaches us to love, to serve those who are in need. Remember the parable He gives us on the Last Judgment, when he separates the sheep from the goats. He does not separate them based on whether they are praying the traditional prayers or not. He separates them based on “when I was hungry did you feed me, when I was thirsty did you give me to drink, when I was homeless, did you shelter me, when I was sick and in prison did you visit me?” This is the basis of the judgment… it’s not an either/or!

This is a tendency I see: if you are a “progressive Catholic,” you are all about the social justice issues, taking care of the poor, working for justice and everything, but your liturgical worship tends to be a bit off and maybe you reject other moral teachings of the Church, while sometimes traditionally-minded Catholics are characterized as being all about the Mass, and right worship, right music, right devotions, the right vestments, orthodox teaching, and don’t care so much about the poor and works of mercy.

We’ve got to pull this together: it is not an either/or, it is a both/and in the Church. The works of mercy go back to the apostolic times, go back to the Acts of the Apostles; as St. Paul says, we must always take care of the poor. This is deeply traditional in our Church.

Archbishop Sample with prison inmates