Aug. 25, Feast of St. Louis
Fr. Anthony Brankin
You gotta love being Catholic. Think of it. Who else can trip back to any time in two thousand years and pick out any one of tens of thousands of characters from any age? any era? any occupation? any station in life? and say — that one was one of ours — a saint in fact? I think of this especially when we celebrate saints who were Kings, or Queens — Princes or Princesses. There is Queen Margaret of Scotland, Queen Elizabeth of Portugal, King Edward the confessor, and the King who we will celebrate Thursday — King Louis of France.
We will talk about him specifically in a moment, but think about it — there is something about the nature or essence of a King or Queen — or Prince or Princess that says that holiness — heroic holiness — would seem more of a possibility for them — than for your everyday run of the mill politician.
Now why might that be true? First of all, being a monarch is a vocation. It certainly is usually a function of birth. One is born to the role. (There are a few monarchies that were not so strictly hereditary — Ireland and Poland would select their kings from their pool of nobles.) And certainly many a kingship in history was seized in war or by means of a well-placed execution.
But at least in theory, to be born a king is a vocation of some sort. At some point the prince realizes he is stuck in that role. He usually didn’t ask for it or seize it. It was simply thrust upon him at birth.
He decides then that he can be a good king and do what he can for his people — and offer his life — his time and his wealth for his people. Or he can be a greedy grasper and spend all his life and time in pursuit of his own pleasure. (There were certainly enough of that kind throughout history so that when democracy came the people pretty much shed no tears as they kicked out their monarchs country after country.
One of the more consoling examples of a good monarch who cared for his people was Otto Von Hapsburg, the last Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. (This Empire was the successor to the Holy Roman Empire which was the successor to the Roman Empire!) Well, Otto — whom they buried in Vienna only a few weeks ago — was genuinely a good man, and when the newspapers asked him — after he had been de-throned to make room for the politicians — What is the purpose of a monarch in modern society? He answered: To protect the people from the government. Now that is something to think about — the king is there to protect the people from the government. Think about it: he seems to be saying that the government is all those people who run all the machinery that tries to run our lives — and since the king is not the government — he is above the government — the people need him to keep the government in check.
Again: Who is the government? It is the same crowd throughout history — from the time of Jesus right down to our own era. The government is composed of all the bureaucrats and tax collectors who threaten us daily with jail or fines if we do not do their will and pay up. The government is all our security forces: the traditional ones and the new ones: the Treasury police, the Post office police, the Homeland Security people.
(These are the ones who snarl and tell us to take our pants off when we want to get on a plane or who strip search your grandmother when she wants to go to Pennsylvania. Sadly, the government has succeeded in militarizing police work way beyond what my policeman father would have recognized as appropriate.) The government also consists of all the petty politicians who promise us better lives if we give them our vote — not to mention our campaign contributions.
But all that our modern politicians have ever succeeded in giving us is war, taxes, unrelieved unemployment, ever-burdening regulations and death to millions of unborn babies — and senior citizens. And they keep telling us how great things will become if we elect them. But it only gets worse. It always gets worse.
How many years did we have a pro-life Senate and a pro-life House and pro-life President — all at the same time — and we did not pass one bill to save one life of one unborn baby? Who are they kidding? So who can protect us from our government? No one. Not even the President — not even Barack Obama — because he is the government. We have no one to protect us. And that’s a little scary. Besides anyone who wants to rule us like a modern politician should be suspect. We don’t have to believe the propaganda of the Masons and the Whigs and the Republicans and Democrats. There is nothing inherently right about democracy — just as there is nothing inherently wrong about a monarchy.
A world of perpetual war
And please recall that modern liberal democratic governments and their politicians are the ones who have given us the world in which we now live: a world of perpetual war, financial collapse that only hurts the middle classes as well as total breakdown of family and morals.
How did we get to the point where 50% of our children — the ones who survive the government-funded abortion mills — are born to single mothers? This is not a victory by any measure. Our economy and our families and our cities are a wreck — and the politicians keep telling us that this wasteland is a paradise.
Well, we are Catholics who have been around for two thousand years. We know what it takes to be a good ruler — grace. We know what every government needs to be a good government — Christ. And we know the means by which grace and Christ will come into the soul of our nation — the Church.
We also know why things are so awful and don’t seem to be getting better. We have expunged Christ from our society. We have ignored His teachings and blocked his grace.
That is why we need a Catholic King — actually we need Christ as King. It is that simple. Because without Christ, it is only going to get worse — no matter whom we elect. None of them have what it takes to bring things back to normal. All they can do — the best of them — is to slow the decline down a little. Christ must be our Ruler — or we perish.
So how will we know when Christ is ruling? We will know when those who rule us — be they politicians or monarchs — are following the teachings of the Church. We will know that Christ is King of our land when family and marriage is encouraged and strengthened by law and privilege — when the livelihood of our fathers is protected by living wages and a radical reduction in taxes — when pornography and contraception and abortion is outlawed — when our soldiers are brought home from the reaches of Empire — when babies in the womb and children in the garden and seniors in their beds are guarded by explicit legislation from the assaults of Planned Parenthood and their kind.
That is when we will know that Christ is our King.
So you see, actually the point of a feast like that of St. Louis is to remind us that it was not Louis who ruled France (or Elizabeth who ruled Hungary or Edward who ruled England) but Jesus who ruled those countries by means of holy Kings and Queens. And they were holy because they were faithful to their Lord, Jesus.
And truth to tell, any one aspires to rule or govern (a politician even!) needs to be faithful to Jesus and to the Church — and we will all be better off for it!