Ed has posted an interesting comment to my post of June 3rd (The Absence of the Past). He is eloquent in his defence of Monarchy but I’d like to make one or two comments about his comments:

Ed: The history of the West after the fall of Christendom is one of draculeon inverse. Everything loved and praised and zealously fought for by that old Christian world is now despised, hated, and zealously fought against.

 

Response: The history of the West, like the history of the World, is a permanent struggle between the Heilige Geist and the Zeigeist, the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of the Age, Christ and the Devil. The perennial motto of Holy Church: Pro Ecclesia contra Mundum!

Has Christendom fallen? It depends on how you define Christendom. I see Christendom as the Mystical Body of Christ: the Church Triumphant in Heaven; the Church Suffering in Purgatory; the Church Militant in Time. The gates of hell can never prevail against Christendom, thus defined.

As for the belief that Christendom represents some golden age in the past, I would respond that the only golden rule is that there was no golden age. Heresy of one sort or another has always beset the Church. Violence from without and corruption from within has been a perennial feature of the Church’s history. Only an institution that is supernatural could have survived such constant abuse. This is why the Church in Time – all Time – is called the Church Militant, the Church at War. The Church is always at war with the prince of this world, not only since the French Revolution but since the Fall of Man. (Mystically, the Church, as Christ’s Body, is mystically connected to all time, not simply the time that has elapsed since the Incarnation.)

 

Ed:  Once the Kings were beheaded, the noble beaten, the Church was next on the chopping block.

 

Response: And before the Kings were beheaded, the Kings were beheading the saints! The only justified Absolute Monarch is Christ the King. All lesser kings are as subject to the laws of subsidiarity as is every subject of the True King. Insofar as a King defies or denies the Church, he loses his kingship. Insofar as a king usurps the true function of the family as the political foundation of human society, he loses his kingship.

 

Ed: The Kingdom of Heaven is where God reigns.

 

Response: And the kingdoms on earth are not the Kingdom of Heaven.

 

Ed: To put it simply, I’m a Monarchist because God is a Monarchist.

 

Response: Yes, I’m a monarchist for the same reason, but I know the difference between Christ the King and other kings. If ever there’s a conflict between the two, as there usually is, my allegiance is with the King not his counterfeits.