In his Epistle to the Philippians, St. Paul alludes to the prophet Isaiah in accounting for the meaning of the death and resurrection of Christ. “Because of this,” explains the Apostle, “God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend … and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2:8-11).
I have considered this passage often over the past couple of weeks since the presidential election, especially in light of reactions from the two extremes of the political spectrum. From the political right, the election seems to have the weight of divine redemption, by which we are saved from the wickedness of the political left. From the left, the election is an apocalyptic event, in which the right will initiate cataclysmic oppression, death and destruction. And, as we Catholics are spread across the political spectrum, these respective reactions include a significant number of us.
Both attitudes are symptoms of the same political pathology, namely the sacralization of politics and the idolatry of partisanship. We have either expressly abandoned any sense of transcendent reality, or we have reduced the transcendent to a set of pious words or phrases that really have no ultimate purchase over our moral and political lives. In other words, both sides have made politics their god.
Depending on the side one is on, this god is either triumphant or defeated. But both views share the same idolatrous posture toward political life, assigning ultimate meaning to transitory politics. We say “God,” but we mean “party.”
Substituting creature for creator
In his 1944 Christmas poem, “For the Time Being,” W.H. Auden describes the folly of precisely this state of affairs. Writing in the midst of World War II, Auden saw the danger of attempting to answer theological problems with political answers, or in ascribing to Caesar power and authority that belongs to God alone. In seven stanzas of the poem, a “Fugal-Chorus” extols the alleged power, might, and benevolence of earthly politics. “Great is Caesar: He has conquered Seven Kingdoms,” begins each stanza, followed by a fairly comprehensive scope of human institutions over which Caesar claims both omnipotence and sovereignty. These include philosophy (“the Kingdom of Abstract Idea”), science and mathematics (“the Kingdom of Natural Cause” and of “Infinite Number”), economic life (“the Kingdom of Credit Exchange”), technology (“Inorganic Giants), therapeutic culture (“Organic Dwarfs”), and, finally, propaganda (“the Kingdom of the Popular Soul”). And each of the seven stanzas ends with the antiphon, “Great is Caesar: God must be with Him.”
In each conquered kingdom, Caesar purports to be the all-encompassing solution to every human problem, replacing divine authority with profane assertions of power. And because Caesar purports to solve every problem, we must conclude that it is because God is on his side. Substitute Caesar with “Democrat” or “Republican” and the Frugal-Chorus gives a precise account of American politics in 2024. The point is punctuated by the stanza that follows: “These are stirring times for the editors of newspapers: / History is in the making; Mankind is on the march.”
Auden’s purpose, of course, is to describe the pernicious folly of ascribing politics with such comprehensive power and authority. The “dream of a Perfect State or No State at all, / To which we fly for refuge, is part of our punishment,” the poem continues. “For Powers and Times are not gods but mortal gifts from God.” When we substitute the creature for the creator, it inevitably follows that we become lost in misguided obeisance. This misplaced deference to politics is also known as idolatry.
Christ, the king of ‘now’
As we approach the crescendo of ordinary time in the Feast of Christ the King, Auden’s “For the Time Being” has particular resonance for us Catholics. The placement of this solemnity at the end of the current liturgical year and before the start of the next is crucial to understanding its full import. The Feast of Christ the King signifies neither the past nor the future, because it resides in neither liturgical year that ends nor the new one that begins. Instead, it exists in a time between the times, where kairos enters chronos. The Feast of Christ the King symbolizes the perpetual “now” of the Kingdom of God, inaugurated by the intrusion of the eternal Logos into the temporal cosmos. And it thus relativizes all aspects of cosmos by pointing us toward heavenly triumph.
I cannot summarize the point better than Auden, who answers the hubris of the Caesars by concluding:
“Let us acknowledge our defeats but without despair,
For all societies and epochs are transient details,
Transmitting an everlasting opportunity
That the Kingdom of Heaven may come, not in our present
And not in our future, but in the Fullness of Time.”
This is a lesson that we Catholics, especially, would do well to heed.
