a gospel contrary to the one you received

I offer to the Church criticism of the new encyclical of Pope Leo, Magnifica Humanitas, which contains within it massive distortions of our Lord’s teaching, distortions which had already taken root more widely within the Body of Christ. We must correct these distortions, and their visibility in this encyclical gives us a good opportunity to make that correction happen.

There is so much to like in Magnifica Humanitas. Its concern for the dignity of all people, including the unproductive. Its concern for the people whose lives will be disrupted by AI technology, for the ways in which these technologies might be used for evil: we have a duty as Christians to bring these concerns to the fore, and I am glad that our pope has done that. The response to the encyclical seems to be extremely positive, both inside and outside the Church. For that reason, rather than showering more praise on the document, I feel freer to direct my focus to its serious problems. My problems stem from how the document answers a fundamental question of Christian Faith: what is the Gospel of Jesus?

The Christian Gospel is the proclamation of something that has happened and something that is going to happen. What has happened is that with Jesus, the Kingdom of God has come near, to Earth, and what will happen very soon is that that Kingdom will extend in perfection over all of creation, eliminating with it all of the burdens and sorrows of human life. That is the Gospel of the Lord. With the victory of the Kingdom will come the subjugation or even the destruction of the powers of the world. You cannot serve two masters: either the Kingdoms of the World will remain ascendant, or the Kingdom of God will overpower them. The Gospel is that from this great struggle, the Almighty God will emerge victorious.

What the Gospel is not is a series of requests to the powers of the world. Jesus did not go to Caesar and ask him to be nicer to the Jews. If he did that, he may have avoided crucifixion. Instead, he implied that, by an intervention of the Lord, the rule of Rome was about to end and be superseded by the rule of God. In allowing himself to be hailed as the new King, Jesus obviously diminished the authority of Caesar, which is why Pilate condemned him to die. The Gospel is a proclamation of a violent disruption from Heaven and a new political order, not a petition to the established worldly powers. After Christ’s resurrection and ascension, the Church (for a time, at least) continued to proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom, not begging political leaders to improve social conditions, but praying Maranatha, hoping for the Lord’s return in judgment so that he, by his insuperable power, might finish the work that only he can finish, that he might establish the full justice of the Kingdom on Earth.

However, in Magnifica Humanitas, in the way this document talks about the Gospel, that original hope for the coming of the Lord in power is absent. Great problems facing humanity are presented, and nowhere is there a hint of expectation that God will intervene in remedy, let alone that he will make this intervention shortly. The proclamation of a Kingdom established by divine power has been erased. In its place are petitions that our current decision-makers Be Better. And the writer seems to think that this substitution is truly evangelical.

This confused understanding of the Gospel is evident throughout the text, but it shows with particular starkness in this paragraph on Octogesima Adveniens, a social encyclical of Paul VI.

Paul VI believed that although the Gospel was proclaimed, written and lived out in a historical and cultural context very different from our own, its message was not “outdated.” Instead, it offers a vision of the human person, relationships, authority and the common good that is still capable of guiding economic, political and cultural choices today. In other words, the Gospel remains relevant because it provides the criteria for recognizing what humanizes or dehumanizes and what liberates or oppresses in ever-changing situations.¹

Is this really why we think the Gospel of Jesus is relevant today? Because it can help guide social actors in their decision making? Is this how degraded our understanding of the Gospel has become? The Gospel of Our Lord is not a helpful set of criteria for the powerful; you know, the ones who make the economic, political, and cultural choices. If anything, the vision of the Gospel is one where God becomes the decision-maker. God is in total, direct control and today’s power classes are sent to the unemployment line. But, of course, that is not a message with upmarket appeal. It is distasteful and embarrassing to many educated Christians and since the Church’s youth they have been trying to create Prestige Gospels that are more palatable to cosmopolitan tastes. We can call the message of Magnifica Humanitas the ‘Gospel of Guidance,’ in which the primary role of the Church becomes offering unsolicited advice to worldly authorities. This is the encyclical’s contribution to that Prestige Gospel tradition. But this is not a tradition we should be okay with. If we love Jesus Christ and we love the actual message that he actually proclaimed, then we should not allow that message to be twisted.

The divergence between the ‘Gospel of Guidance’ and the Gospel of the Kingdom shows in one of the encyclical’s most strongly underlined messages: the distinctness and autonomy of the two spheres of Church and earthly politics.

Near the start of the text, the author says that he must,

clarify some fundamental principles concerning the way in which the Church exists in history and relates to the world. Failing to do so would expose Social Doctrine to the risk of being perceived as an undue interference in “worldly” matters or as an external code of ethics imposed from above. In reality, it stems from a Church that walks alongside humanity, recognizing the autonomy of earthly realities and the distinction between ecclesial and political communities.²

This, the “autonomy of earthly realities and the distinction between ecclesiastical and political spheres of competence”³ is repeatedly and emphatically expressed. To the author I address the same question that Paul asked of the Corinthians: do you not know that the saints will judge the world?⁴ Do you not know that believers shall reign on the earth?⁵ These truths point to a Church that, far from respecting the “autonomy of earthly realities,” is keenly awaiting the day when it can violate that autonomy for the sake of God’s glory and the salvation of the suffering.

And to respect that autonomy, to refrain from interfering with a rod of iron in the world, would lead to a perpetuation of suffering, most notably in the vile realm of war and international conflict. The end to war is a central Christian hope to which this document devotes significant space. Yet the author’s commitment to the Guidance Gospel leads him to avoid the only solution to the problem of war. As long as there are independent nation-states, there will be outbreaks of violence between them. This can only end when there is one single power strong enough to permanently maintain dominance over all the rest and loving enough to reign in permanent benevolence. This is the role to be played on Earth by God and His Kingdom. We will only know peace when the prayer concerning the royal Son is answered: “May he have dominion from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth!…May all kings fall down before him, all nations serve him!”⁶ We will only know peace when every tongue confesses that, as a simple, geopolitical fact, Jesus Christ is Lord. We will know this peace even if the confession lacks enthusiasm from some mouths for a time.

But this, the sole solution to this great human burden, is more than ignored in Magnifica Humanitas: it is precluded by the author’s strong commitment to national sovereignty.

I invite everyone to conceive of ways of cooperating and of more effective international institutions, capable of safeguarding the global common good without compromising the legitimate diversity of peoples and nations. Indeed, the promotion of the common good can never be separated from respect for the right of peoples to exist, to preserve their own identity and to contribute their unique qualities to the family of nations. Moreover, any attempt or plan to eliminate or subjugate a nation is gravely immoral and therefore unacceptable.⁷

The subjugation of all nations under one, united Kingdom of God, at which point swords can be beaten into plowshares, has been deemed unacceptable by the author. Instead, humanity is to put its hope in “more effective international institutions.” Most people will never read this document, but if they did, would the prospect of these institutions inspire hope and joy in them? Imagine it being preached in the towns: ‘The time is fulfilled, and the effective international institutions are at hand.’ Would this message be received with excitement, as Good News? Which would people find more plausible: truly effective international institutions arising out of our current context, or divine intervention?

The realistic hope of the Gospel of the Kingdom is dismissed here in favor of a fantasy. The patchwork of sovereign nation-states is itself a scourge on humanity: in a world that uncritically accepts this status quo, the Church should be the voice boldly rejecting it and working to realize the single, all-encompassing polity of God’s Kingdom.

But I can imagine that some Christian listeners are bothered by my criticisms. They’re speaking to me through their screens, saying, “Don’t you understand that you’re talking about the End Times, whereas the pope is talking about solutions for right now?” I answer that what I understand is that in the proclamation of Jesus and his earliest followers, the awesome events of the End were expected to arrive at any moment. They knew themselves to be in the Last Days. All of creation was groaning as the New Age was being born. What I understand is that when Jesus said that the Kingdom of God had come near, this had both a spatial element and a temporal element. To ignore either of these elements is counter-evangelical, and much of the Church has become comfortable ignoring both. I am talking about the End Times; I am also talking about solutions for right now. The Goodness of any news is diminished as you push its payload into the future. If we were to learn that a cure for all cancers had been discovered, that would definitely be Good News. But if we were to learn that the cure would be discovered two centuries from today, good news has suddenly become bad. Everyone would think: two centuries? Is that really the best we can do? How will that help the people I know who’ve been diagnosed with this disease?

If we are not proclaiming that the world can expect the full perfection of the Kingdom very soon, then we are not proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus. In fact, our message is not good news at all. And if the author of this encyclical does believe that the fullness of the Kingdom is temporally near, it does not show anywhere on the page.

If we want others to experience the joy and excitement of the Gospel, if we want people to commit themselves to the work of building the Civilization of Love, then we have to insist on using the real Gospel proclamation rather than a flavorless substitute. The Gospel of the Kingdom At Hand is still just as relevant today as it was in first century Galilee. More relevant, in fact, because we are even closer to the promise’s fulfillment.

I have three cues to offer so that our Gospel stays interesting and doesn’t slip into Guidance Gospel territory.

1. The Kingdom of God is a political order. The very concept of a kingdom is essentially political; it is impossible to talk about a kingdom in an apolitical way. Let us embrace that the Kingdom of God has not only entered the political sphere of Earth, but has done so with ambitions of hegemony. Why do you clutch your pearls about this? Do you think most people will be sad to see their political leaders replaced by someone like Jesus?

2. Remember the words of the Lord: “There are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Kingdom of God after it has come with power.”⁸ The only proper perspective for a Christian is to believe that the fullness of the Kingdom will be seen within decades. If some of us don’t see it before we die, others of us definitely will. All needs will be met, every tear will be wiped away, and all the dead will be resurrected within decades.

3. Jesus, the Son of Man, is the one who will bring the promises of the Kingdom to fruition, and the Church and the Son of Man are one. Because the Church is truly one with the Lord Jesus, that means that we are the primary agents of the Kingdom’s coming. We, in the Lord, are the protagonists of human history. St. Augustine, along with St. Paul, understood better than anyone the profundity of our role as the Body of Christ, and we are blessed to have in Pope Leo a leader who was formed in Augustine’s tradition. In this encyclical, the truth of our oneness with Christ is emphasized with a saying of Augustine: In illo uno unum. I will echo this emphasis with an even bolder line of his: Nos ipse sumus.⁹ We are He. The Church is Jesus. Let us not, then, implore worldlings to do the will of God here while we stick to “accompaniment.” No one trusts them to fix things. Let us, the Body of Christ, take the lead ourselves, and make it known to others that they are welcome to join us if they desire to shape history.

The Kingdom of God is a terrestrial, political reality. The fullness of the Kingdom will be seen within decades. And the Church, as the Lord Jesus, is the primary agent of its realization. May the Holy Spirit fill our Church with the boldness to proclaim these incendiary truths, the zeal to attract others to our project, and the industriousness to bring it to completion.

If you want to be part of a movement to re-center the Body of Christ on the Gospel of the Kingdom, send me an email. I’m in Jackson, Mississippi; if you’re ever in town, come join me at the 8:30 Sunday Mass at my parish, St. Therese. And may the Kingdom of God come.