News Catholic Church

Pete Baklinski

ROME, May 18, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Catholics must consciously place themselves under the “Kingship of Christ” in the face of enemies of the Church today attempting to “infiltrate the life of the Church herself and to corrupt the Bride of Christ by an apostasy from the Apostolic Faith,” Cardinal Raymond Burke indicated at a talk today in Rome.

The Cardinal, one of the dubia signers and a foremost defender of orthodoxy within the Church today, told participants at the annual Rome Life Forum that Christ as King reigns over his Bride the Church, over the world, and must also reign over human hearts.

He said that St. Paul was summarizing this truth with his teaching about all things, the entire universe, being restored, or recapitulated, in Christ (Eph 1:10).


These words of St. Paul “refer to the order and peace, the eternal salvation, for which God the Father sent His only-begotten Son to take our human nature and to suffer, die, rise from the dead and ascend to the right hand of Father,” he said.

“They refer to the Mystery of Faith, which assures us that Christ, seated at the Right Hand of the Father in glory, remains with us on earth, pouring forth, from His glorious pierced Heart, without measure and without cease, the sevenfold gift of the Holy Spirit upon His Mystical Body, the Church, that is, into human hearts,” he added.

The Cardinal said that “in Christ is realized the right order of all things, the union of heaven and earth, as God the Father intended from the beginning.”

“It is the obedience of God the Son Incarnate which reestablishes, restores, the original communion of man with God and, therefore, peace in the world. His obedience unites once again all things, ‘things in heaven and things on earth,’” he added.

Burke stressed that Christ’s Kingship over human hearts is not some “ideal to which only a few can attain but to which all are called.”

“It is, rather, a reality of divine grace which helps even the weakest and the most tried human subject to attain an heroic degree of virtue, if he or she only cooperates with divine grace,” he said.

A number of Catholic theologians loyal to the perennial teaching of the Church on marriage, the moral life, and reception of the sacraments have expressed concern over novel teachings from the highest levels within the Church that present the moral life as only an “ideal” to be aimed at, rather than a reality that is binding on all.

The Cardinal said that faithful Catholics must allow the Kingship of Christ to be exercised over their lives “most of all, through the conscience, ‘the voice of God’ expressing His law written upon every human heart.”


“The conscience, therefore, is not, as is often falsely understood and stated today, formed by the thoughts and desires of the individual but by the truth which ever purifies individual thoughts and desires, and directs them in conformity with the law of love of God and neighbor. Obedience to the Kingship of Christ is expressed by the resolve and effort to conform all of one’s thinking and speaking and acting to Christ alive for us in the living Apostolic Tradition,” he said.

Some dissident high-ranking prelates and theologians have portrayed conscience as a final and ultimate authority that must be followed even if it contradicts the laws of God and Church teaching.

Burke went on to stress how the Kingship of Christ applies not only to Christians, but to everyone on the world, including those who hold political office.

“The Kingship of Christ is, by nature, universal, that is, it extends to all men, to the whole world. It is not a kingship over only the faithful or over only the things of the Church, but over all men and all of their affairs,” he said.

“The kingship is exercised from the Heart of Christ in human hearts. It does not pretend to govern directly the world but to govern it through man,” he continued.

"Christians who do not pretend to govern the civil state by means of the Church at the same time are called to give an heroic public witness to the truth of the moral law, of the law of God. Thus, Christ’s Kingship is exercised by hearts one with His Royal Heart,” he added.

He encouraged Catholic families to enthrone an image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the home as a way of putting themselves under Christ’s reign.

“The Kingship of Christ in the home frees the members of the family and the family as a society to enjoy those rights and fulfill those duties, in accord with the will of God. The universality of the Kingship of Christ is reflected by the practice of enthroning the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the home, and in the other places of our human endeavor.”

He also outlined how participation in the Eucharist is the “most perfect and efficacious means of the transformation of human hearts through union with the Heart of Christ, through submission to His Kingship of pure and selfless love.”