Today's feast of Christ the King is a great time to meditate upon an apparent difficulty in Scripture - what appear to be two contradictory strands, one "positive" and the other "negative," regarding kingship in ancient Israel. The first, the "positive" view of kingship is given in Deuteronomy and the later promise made to David:
"When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, 'Let us set a king over us like all the nations around us,' be sure to appoint over you a king the Lord your God chooses. He must be from among your fellow Israelites." (Dt 17:14-15)
“The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you: When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son."
The second, the "negative" view is found in First Samuel:
"But when [the elders of Israel] said, 'Give us a king to lead us,' this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the Lord. And the Lord told him: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will claim as his rights ...” (1 Sam 8:6-9)
What's the deal - if the Israelites' desire for an earthly king was a rejection of God's kingship, why would He consent? How could he then speak of David's kingdom as part of His plan to bless the world? God doesn't change His mind or make things up as He goes along. Jesus birth into the world as the kingly son and successor of David was God's eternal plan.
And therein lies the resolution - the Incarnation resolves the apparent contradiction. The Lord could consent to the Israelite desire for an earthly king, while ultimately remaining their only King, because at the end of David's kingly line was the God-Man, Christ Jesus! "Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!" (Rm 11:33)
I remember walking into a discussion back in 2004. One of my co-workers was in my boss's office, lamenting the recent statement from our city's Archbishop that if the Democratic presidential nominee, John Kerry, campaigned within our Archdiocese, he should not present himself to receive Communion.
Our Archbishop, (now Cardinal) Raymond Burke, was vocal in his conviction that Catholic politicians who publicly persist in grave, manifest sin such as supporting abortion, must be denied Communion. Their reception of Communion was both a sacrilege
(see 1 Cor.11:27-32) and a scandal to the consciences of the faithful - giving the confusing impression that it was possible to receive the Lord in Holy Communion while simultaneously persisting in grave sin (see 1 Cor.5:1-13).
My coworker felt it was completely wrong for a churchman to tell someone how he should vote. We live in a democracy where every one has the right to vote their conscience. My boss, knowing how committed I was to the Faith, asked me to weigh in. Here was how I responded to my coworker:
"Senator Kerry is free to vote however he wishes. What he cannot do, and Archbishop Burke is reminding him of this, is support the killing of unborn children and, at the same time, be united to Christ. The Church is not the "Democracy of God," it is the Kingdom of God. Jesus is the King, and His statement of what is good and what is evil is absolute; it's not up for a vote. So John Kerry must decide which is more important to him - union with Jesus or his support of abortion. The choice is his, but he can't have it both ways."
Why am I bringing this up 9 years later? I was reminded of it yesterday while watching PBS's Religion & Ethics Newsweekly. With the election of a new pope about to get underway they wanted to revisit a Vatican report released earlier this year citing “serious doctrinal problems” within the United States' Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) - a group that has expressed approval of same-sex relationships and contraceptives, and signed the New York Times letter stating there were legitimate, diverse opinions possible on the matter of abortion. The program (transcript available here) interviewed Sr. Mary Hughes, past president of the LCWR, who seemed hopeful that the Church might adopt a more democratic model in the days to come:
"This is not just about the Vatican versus the nuns. This really is about
the future of how we interpret the message of the Second Vatican
Council, and what’s going on right now quite frankly makes me sad,
because I see certain people in Rome, in the Vatican, who want
retrenchment, who want to go back to the church the way it was before
the Second Vatican Council, when the church was essentially the
hierarchy, and they determined everything down to sometimes the minutia
of Catholic life ... There’s always a blessing that comes with every conflict. Perhaps the
blessing is that we continue to open up within the Church avenues for
true dialogue and true dialogue isn’t about winners and losers. It’s
about people truly being able to listen to understand the other
perspective before making any judgments."
To its credit, Religion & Ethics also interviewed author Colleen Carroll Campbell, who responded:
"Women religious need to stand with the Church, and if they don’t feel
that they can in good conscience do that anymore then I think it would
take more integrity to simply step back and say, you know, maybe we’re
not called to be Catholic women religious anymore. Maybe we want to be
something else."
The Church isn't a democracy; it's a Kingdom. The Pope and Bishops cannot dialogue on these matters because they aren't matters upon which diverse opinions can exist among disciples of Jesus. They aren't positions that can be changed over time. They are the directives of our King, "Jesus Christ - the same yesterday, and today, and for ever" (Heb.13:8).
