The Kingdom of God

            Post-conciliar Church leaders have succeeded in creating new categories that eclipse true categories established by 2000 years of Catholic teaching.
            One such instance is a new dichotomy that distinguishes between the “Civilization of Love” (the good guys) vs. the “Culture of Death” (the bad guys).
            This terminology, and the interreligious ideology that shapes it, is foreign to our Catholic patrimony. It is a rupture with the past, not continuity.
            The true Catholic teaching on this matter is found in the perennial Catholic doctrine of the two Kingdoms: the Kingdom of God vs. the kingdom of satan
            According to the magisterial teaching of Pope Leo XIII, who reiterates the doctrine of Saint Augustine:
            1) The world is divided into two opposing camps: the kingdom of God vs. the kingdom of satan;
            2) every human being belongs to either one or the other of these two camps;
            3) since the fall of Adam, these two kingdoms have been in conflict with one another, and will continue to be in conflict with one another until the end of time.[1]
            The eminent theologian Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton explains that the Kingdom of God is the Catholic Church; for this is what the term “church” actually means. It is the Kingdom of God on earth, the people of the Divine Covenant, the one and only social unit outside of which salvation cannot be found. The word ‘church’ has a distinct definition not applicable to any other religious body.[2]
            The Kingdom of God, Fenton elaborates, is the Church Triumphant in Heaven; the Church suffering in Purgatory; and the Church Militant on earth. This “supernatural kingdom of God” is the Catholic Church, the Mystical Body of Christ.
            Opposed to this Kingdom, Fenton explains, is another kingdom, a kingdom of evil. “We must not lose sight of the fact”, writes Fenton, “that people in the condition of aversion from God, in the state of original or mortal sin, belong in some way to the kingdom or an eccleisa [church] under the leadership of satan, the moving spirit among the enemies of God.”[3]
            It is the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church that those who are not part of the true Church of Christ: heretics, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Jains, Buddhists and all other pagan religions, are not part of the Kingdom of God. Jews and members of pagan religions, speaking in the objective order, are still in the state of original sin. Heretics (Protestants, etc.), in the objective order, are outside the Church of Jesus Christ, as defined infallibly by the Council of Florence. It must be reiterated that everything said here is stated in the objective order.[4]
            All those outside the Kingdom of God stand in need of being saved. The Catholic concept of salvation, explains Msgr. Fenton, “involves necessarily the transfer of an individual from the one social unit to another, from the kingdom of satan to the true and supernatural Kingdom of God.”[5]
            But along comes Vatican II and its new policy of ecumenism and interreligious dialogue. The 2000-year-old Catholic categories of “Kingdom of God” vs. the “kingdom of satan” will no longer do, as they stand in the way of the new social order based on religious pluralism.
            So new categories are invented: the “Civilization of Love” vs. the “Culture of Death”. The Civilization of Love may contain members of all religions provided that each member of this new civilization strives to incorporate moral virtues in themselves and in society. The “Culture of Death” is the work of the baddies, the anti-life forces of abortion and eugenics, the homosexual collective, the purveyors of pornography, and those who advance social injustice and physical evil.
            Yet the “Civilization of Love” is a utopian dream born from the modernist revolution of Vatican II. It eclipses the true dichotomy between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of satan. It wants members of the Kingdom of God and kingdom of satan to downplay the primacy of salvation, of baptism, of sanctifying grace, in order to work together to enhance mutual understanding and to serve society at large.
            The new pan-religious civilization of love stands condemned by the perennial magisterium of the Church. In 1910, Pope St. Pius X condemned the notion of “an inter-denominational association that is to work for the reform of civilization, an undertaking which is above all religious in character; for there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion [the Catholic Faith]: it is a proven truth, a historical fact.”[6]
            By “moral civilization”, Pius does not mean simply the Catholic religion as a dynamic contributor to a secular state, but the establishment of “Christian civilization”, of the “Catholic city”; in other words, the Social Kingship of Christ.
            According to all appearances, Pope Benedict XVI came to the

United States

primarily as an emissary for the Civilization of Love.
            Benedict’s April 17 Address to non-Christian religious leaders encouraged interreligious activity. He also called upon Jews, Muslims, Jains, Hindus, Buddhists and others to join with Catholics to “bear witness to those moral truths which they hold in common with all men and women of good will” so that “religious groups will exert a positive influence on the wider culture, and inspire neighbors, co-workers and fellow citizens to join in the task of strengthening the ties of solidarity.”
            Pope Benedict then said, “In the words of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt: ‘no greater thing could come to our land than a revival of the spirit of Faith’.”[7]
            This is a rallying cry for the pan-religious civilization of love, not the Kingdom of God. Yet the theme of interreligious solidarity was repeated time and time again in his recent US trip, including the Papal Address to interreligious Leaders, the Address to the United Nations, the Address at the Ecumenical Prayer Service, and the visit to the Synagogue.
            Nowhere in any of these speeches did Pope Benedict indicate that members of false religious are in danger of damnation by clinging to their false sects. Nowhere in his speech to the collection of non-Christian religious leader did he quote Jesus Christ. Instead, he chose to quote the Freemason Franklin D. Roosevelt whose definition of the “spirit of Faith” comes straight from the Masonic lodge – a generic spirit of religion allegedly common to practitioners of every opposing creed. In all this, as in most other areas, Benedict XVI showed himself to be first and foremost a man of Vatican II.
            Granted, it is not easy to preach the Social Kingship of Christ. It is not easy to tell non-Catholics they can only save their souls by abandoning their present position and joining Christ’s one and only true Church. Yet how can a faithful Vicar of Christ do anything else but preach these truths, which flow not from changeable law, but from the very essence of God and of the Faith itself?
            The more our Church leaders promote a pan-religious “healthy secularity”, the more difficult it will be for a future Pope to stand up for Our Lord’s Kingly rights in the social order. Thanks to modern Papal trips and statements that constantly endorse ecumenism and interreligious collaboration, present and future generations will regard the true doctrine of the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ as alien to their understanding of Catholicism; as something “un-Catholic”.
            Despite the thousands who cheered and wept during the latest Papal visit, there can be no lasting hope except in a return to the perennial magisterium of the centuries. Heaven cannot bless a religious camaraderie between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of satan. The new spirit of ecumenism and interreligious dialogue is foreign to the spirit of Catholicism and to the consistent teaching of the Church.[8] It will only bring about more chaos and ruin.
            Let us pray for Pope Benedict XVI. Let us also pray fervently that God will soon grant us a Pope who will resurrect the true teaching of the Kingdom of God vs. the kingdom of satan, and discard the counterfeit “Civilization of Love vs. Culture of Death” dichotomy.

[1] Pope Leo XIII explains this in his magnificent encyclical against Freemasonry, Humanum Genus: “The race of man after its miserable fall from God, the Creator and the Giver of Heavenly gifts, ‘through the envy of the devil,’ separated into two diverse parts, of which the one steadfastly contends for truth and virtue, the other for those things which are contrary to virtue and to truth. The one is the Kingdom of God on earth, the true Church of Jesus Christ; and those who desire from their heart to be united with it so as to gain salvation must of necessity serve God and His only-begotten Son with their whole mind and with an entire will. The other is the kingdom of satan, in whose possession and control are all whosoever follow the fatal example of their leader and of our first parents, those who refuse to obey the divine and eternal law, and who have many aims of their own in contempt of God, and many aims also against God. This twofold kingdom St. Augustine keenly discerned and described after the manner of two cities, contrary in their laws because striving for contrary objects; and with subtle brevity he expressed the efficient cause of each in these words: ‘Two loves formed two cities: the love of self, reaching even to contempt of God, an earthly city; and the love of God, reaching even to contempt of self, a Heavenly one.’ At every period of time each has been in conflict with the other…” [emphasis added]. Even if post-Conciliar Church leaders use the term "Kingdom of God", they never define it as did Pope Leo XIII; and they simultaneously advance the new pan-religious "Civilization of Love".

[2] “The Meaning of the Word ‘Church’”, Fenton, American Ecclesiastical Review, October 1954.

[3] Fenton, The Catholic Church and Salvation [Westminster: Newman, 1958], p. 134.

[4] Subjective dispositions and the actual state of the soul of non-Catholics (and Catholics, for that matter) is known only to God.

[5] Fenton, Catholic Church and Salvation, p. 134-135..

[6] Pope St Pius X against the Sillon, 1910.

[7] From Zenit, April 17.

[8] For example, see the Syllabus of Blessed Pope Pius IX; and the encyclical against Ecumenism, Mortalium Animos by Pope Pius XI

From the May 2008
Catholic Family News
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