Friday, April 02, 2010

More about Christ’s kingship and us

A little political supplement to my last post, for whomever might be surprised by my reference to Christ sacrifice as "kingly" (with some implications for the question of bipartisanship raised in the one but last post).

I am used to say that there are two different ways to understand democracy: that in democracy there are no kings; that in democracy everybody is called to be king.

Another more provocative way of saying the same thing is that democracy either is Christian or it is nothing: meaning that, if it is not such it ceases to be what it claims to be.

To understand what I mean, one has to know the historic and ethnographic evidence concerning kingship, where someone is deemed worthy of being king by his capability of giving all: even life. His figure appear then as an eminently sacrificial one.

If I add that only in Christ the idea of king is fully realized, then my statement might look less provocative: because, by adhering to him, we come to share of his kingship.

Kingship becomes democratized.

The corollary is that those who are attacking the Church and the Pope are not only enemies of religion but also of democracy.

HP