Pius XI’s 1925 encyclical instituting the Feast of Christ the King, Quas Primas, “On the Feast of Christ the King,” is possibly one of the most misunderstood and ignored encyclicals of all time. This is doubly ironic, for not only is Quas Primas easy to understand once we grasp the encyclical’s basic Thomist orientation, it is the cornerstone of Pius XI’s concept of individual sovereignty in the temporal order. Quas Primas is the political foundation of Pius XI’s revolutionary breakthrough in moral philosophy represented by his doctrine of social virtue.

The most politically significant passage in the encyclical is Paragraph 19, in which the Pope sets out a precise explanation of the interrelationships between individuals in civil society, the state (in the persons of “princes and rulers”) and God.

When once men recognize, both in private and in public life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, wellordered discipline, peace and harmony. Our Lord’s regal office invests the human authority of princes and rulers with a religious significance; it ennobles the citizen’s duty of obedience. It is for this reason that St. Paul, while bidding wives revere Christ in their husbands, and slaves respect Christ in their masters, warns them to give obedience to them not as men, but as the vicegerents of Christ; for it is not meet that men redeemed by Christ should serve their fellow-men. “You are bought with a price; be not made the bond-slaves of men.”1 If princes and magistrates duly elected are filled with the persuasion that they rule, not by their own right, but by the mandate and in the place of the Divine King, they will exercise their authority piously and wisely, and they will make laws and administer them, having in view the common good and also the human dignity of their subjects. The result will be a stable peace and tranquillity, for there will be no longer any cause of discontent. Men will see in their king or in their rulers men like themselves, perhaps unworthy or open to criticism, but they will not on that account refuse obedience if they see reflected in them the authority of Christ God and Man. Peace and harmony, too, will result; for with the spread and the universal extent of the kingdom of Christ men will become more and more conscious of the link that binds them together, and thus many conflicts will be either prevented entirely or at least their bitterness will be diminished.2

A LACK OF UNDERSTANDING

Much of this passage was obscure and confusing when Quas Primas was issued, and has become more so with the passage of time. This is not, however, due to lack of clarity or precision in the language itself. Lack of understanding can be traced directly to two factors. The first is that, by and large, people have ignored the explicit instructions by two popes, Leo XIII in Æterni Patris (1879)3 and Pius XI in Studiorum Ducem (1923).4 Both of these encyclicals contain a clear mandate to interpret the papal encyclicals in strict accordance with the philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, that is, in conformity with a “Christianized” Aristotelian analysis--or, if you prefer, ordinary common sense illuminated by the revelation of the Gospel.

The second factor limiting understanding of Catholic social teaching in general and Quas Primas in particular is a lamentable aspect of modern society that has become increasingly prevalent, almost by the day. That is the refusal of the intellectual elite to think in any logical or consistent fashion. This has seeped out into the general culture. The result is that many people not only refuse to think, they have forgotten how to think.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the analysis of the above passage. Astonishingly, a number of commentators, many of them otherwise far from unintelligent, have interpreted paragraph 19 as mandating a divine right monarchy as the only legitimate Catholic form of government.5

IS “DIVINE RIGHT” CATHOLIC?

The exact opposite is true. The Catholic Church has declared on more than one occasion that it has no competence in the civil sphere, other than as a moral guide. There can be no “Catholic form of government,” as the following passage from Divini Redemptoris makes clear.

Thus even in the sphere of social-economics, although the Church has never proposed a definite technical system, since this is not her field, she has nevertheless clearly outlined the guiding principles which, while susceptible of varied concrete applications according to the diversified conditions of times and places and peoples, indicate the safe way of securing the happy progress of society6 (emphasis added).

To understand this, we need to examine exactly what Pius XI says in Paragraph 19 of Quas Primas. Perhaps the single most important word in this passage from the point of view of political analysis is “reflected.” This is the same word used by Aristotle in Chapter V, Book I of The Politics to describe how a thing (in Aristotle’s example, a slave) becomes an artificial person so as to enable something that is not a natural person to function in society.7

With that single word Pius XI completely obviates the idea that God grants political sovereignty directly to any individual in civil society. The state only gains the “rule virtue” as the instrument or tool of the group. This is exactly analogous to the way that Aristotle claimed slaves acquire virtue in order to carry out their functions in society. This is by a process that we would call “delegation” but which in Aristotelian and Thomist philosophy is called “reflection.”8

THE SERVANT LEADER

Thus Pius XI embodied in his thought the idea of the “servant leader.” This is not, however, a “warm and fuzzy” catch phrase, but a hard and practical description of the transmission and exercise of the sovereign power for the benefit of the group. The leader or ruler in the thought of Pius XI is philosophically the slave of those whom he rules. Jesus Himself signaled this understanding of the role of the leader when He washed the feet of the Apostles at the Last Supper.9

The leader as leader has no authority to act in his own personal interest, except that which he has as just another member of the group—in which case he is not acting as the leader. As a “slave,” the leader may not under any circumstances act materially contrary to the best interests of his “masters,” or the general sovereign political power with which he has been vested will be revoked.10

THE PROBLEM OF THE COLLECTIVE

There is, however, a problem with the cited passage. Paragraph 19 apparently leaves in place Saint Robert Cardinal Bellarmine’s idea from De Laicis (“On Civil Government”) that God grants general political sovereignty not to individuals, but to the collective.11 The collective then transmits sovereignty to the chosen representative via a revocable grant. This theory inserts a “thing”—the collective —between God and man, and between the human person and his chosen representatives in the temporal order.

Pius XI, however, had already overcome that difficulty. It is probably not coincidental that he beatified Saint Robert Bellarmine and announced his reconciliation of Saint Robert’s political thought with the social teachings of the Church in the same year, 1923. This reconciliation was announced, again probably not coincidentally, in the encyclical Studiorum Ducem, “On Saint Thomas Aquinas,” already noted above in connection with the same matter. In Studiorum Ducem Pius XI gave a clear indication of his thought and intentions when he pointed out that legal justice and social justice were not simply different names for the same thing.12 The Pope thus signaled rather plainly his revolutionary breakthrough in moral philosophy —the idea of social virtue, and social justice especially, as a particular, not a general species of virtue.13

It was, however, necessary to remove Saint Robert’s insertion of the collective between man and the state and, of course, between man and God. “Only man, the human person,” Pius XI declared later, “and not society in any form is endowed with reason and a morally free will.”14 It was thus impossible, in Pius XI’s view, that God could grant anything directly to the collective—or to a leader qua leader, for that matter. The collective had to be removed from the equation.

PIUS XI AND SOCIAL VIRTUE

Pius XI accomplished this seemingly impossible task through his realization that there exists a type of particular virtue—social virtue—fundamentally different from the classical Aristotelian understanding of virtue. This “social virtue” has as its directed object not the good of any individual human person, as is the case in the traditional understanding of virtue, but the good of the institutions of society, the common good of all mankind.15

This is easy to understand once we get away from the idea that the act of a virtue can only be directed to the human person or other natural persons.16 According to Pius XI, there are certain virtues (and thus rights) that are, as is the case with all virtue of whatever kind, acquired and developed by individuals, but—and this is the essence of social virtue—which can only be exercised by individuals as members of groups.

Traditionally it was thought that only individuals as individuals could exercise (“carry out acts of”) virtue. Pius XI realized that man is not solely an individual, but an individual who is a member of many groups. Man as a human being is a member of society by nature—as Aristotle said, “a political animal.”17 This caused Pius XI to develop Saint Thomas Aquinas’ seminal idea of a class of virtue specifically directed toward the social structures —the institutions—of groups.18 The idea that an act of a particular virtue could be directed at something other than a natural person was a profound breakthrough in moral philosophy.

For example, being nice to a dog doesn’t mean that you are directing an act of a virtue to the dog, except in a colloquial sense. No, you are directing your act of virtue (kindness) to the owner, via the owner’s rights in the dog, and to God, via God’s rights in His creation. You are kind to animals not because an animal has a right to be treated kindly, but because God and the animal’s owner (if any) have a right that you will treat an owner’s property and God’s creation with proper respect and deference. You are also developing your own virtue by building the habit of being kind to animals. (It is in this sense that “virtue is its own reward.”) The dog is, philosophically speaking, only the indirect object of your act of virtue.

HOW TO BE VIRTUOUS TO A THING

Man therefore has the capacity to acquire and develop individual virtues, and thus possesses inalienable individual rights as an individual to assist him in his acquisition and development of individual virtue. These acts of individual virtue, however, while they have a direct effect on persons, have only an indirect effect on things. Pius XI’s breakthrough consisted, in part, in this: that man also has the capacity to acquire and develop social virtues. Social virtues are directed at the common good—a thing, although a very special kind of thing. A thing, according to Pius XI can be the directed object of an act of virtue!

Not unnaturally this requires a little explanation. The common good consists of institutions that have received a delegation of virtue (and thus rights) from natural persons. This delegation occurs “automatically” whenever human persons come together in an organized manner—an “institution” could not otherwise exist. This delegation may be either explicit or implicit, but the mere fact of organization gives positive evidence that the delegation has been carried out. The institutions of society have thereby become, in a sense, “persons” themselves (sometimes legally so, as with a business corporation or a court of law)—but artifi- cial persons.

THE ROLE OF THE CORPORATION

This is an important aspect of the social thought of Pius XI. The process of creating an artificial person is embodied in the very act of organization. Legally this is referred to as “incorporation,” that is, “putting into a body”—making something into a “person.” An association of natural persons, while remaining a “thing,” thereby acquires the ability to be the direct object of the act of a virtue—it acquires “personality.”

If, therefore,We consider the whole structure of economic life, as We have already pointed out in Our Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, the reign of mutual collaboration between justice and charity in socialeconomic relations can only be achieved by a body of professional and inter professional organizations, built on solidly Christian foundations, working together to effect, under forms adapted to different places and circumstances, what has been called the Corporation.19

In today’s society the general meaning of corporation is restricted to the business corporation, the most widespread creature of positive law in civil society. It also, on rare occasions, refers to an incorporated town or city that gives a municipality legal existence. This is simply an accommodation the state makes to reality and the complexity of the common good.

It would not be expedient to require that every organization be incorporated. The state therefore usually restricts this “privilege” to organizations that have a material or significant effect on the natural persons involved, the common good at their level, or the common good as a whole. Requiring virtually universal legal incorporation would also, to a great extent, interfere with the right of free association, although the idea has been used to comic effect as satire.20

Recognition by the state as a legal entity imposes certain obligations on an organization. These can become overweening, sometimes to the point that the organization forgoes all or part of its original mission in its anxiety to comply with governmental regulations. Is it necessary to cite the fact that certain U.S. corporations are forced to provide permanent office space for IRS auditors as they undergo continuous audit, or that an annual corporate tax return can exceed the equivalent of 45,000 pages of text?

Clearly Pius XI, due to the immediacy of the economic common good, put most of his focus on reforming the business corporation as a vehicle for restructuring the social order, as we will see in Part III of this article. The passage (above) from Divini Redemptoris, however, gives just as clear an indication that the corporate form itself is integral to his social thought. The Pope expands the scope of the corporation into “forms adapted to different places and circumstances.” He thereby indicates that the concept has applications beyond its admittedly crucial role in the economic common good.

THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY OF THE CORPORATION

The important breakthrough that Pius XI made, however, is not an expansion of the role of the corporation beyond business and today’s limited understanding of “politics.” It is that a social entity, a “thing,” can become, within the constraints of the common good, a “person.” It is this fact of personality, whether natural or artificial, that allows an entity to be the directed object of an act of virtue. In the case of a natural person, the entity is the object of a directed act of individual virtue. In the case of an artificial person, the entity is the object of a directed act of social virtue.

For Christians, there is an interesting “twist” that Pius XI put on this concept via his idea of the “Reign of Christ the King.” One of Jesus’ sayings in the New Testament is that, “For where two or three have gathered together in My name, there I am in their midst.”21 Now Jesus as God shares His substance with the Father, and therefore partakes of the Nature of God. This makes Jesus a sharer in the basis for natural law, those universal moral virtues that underlie a just social order, as well as the structure of every just organization (formal group or institution) within the social order.

This means that the act of organization itself, when carried out in conformity with universal moral virtues—that is, the natural law—does not merely “create” a person as Social Justice Review 54 March/April 2005 described above. It also, in a certain sense, brings God Himself, via the natural law based on His Nature as manifested in His Son, into the equation. The personality of the institution is not simply created out of nothing, but out of a sharing in the personality of Jesus, transmitted to the organization by means of a delegation of virtue—legal justice —from those making up the group.

The first catch is that the group has to be gathered in His Name—which, for the non-Christian, simply means an adherence to the norms established by a sound interpretation of natural law. Without this foundation in and conformity with natural law (solidarity), the group loses its legitimacy, and may even, in a sense, be said to have lost its personality—its social existence—for its “soul” has disappeared. The second catch is that this theory absolutely requires acquisition and development of social virtues, principally social charity and social justice.

This understanding of Pius XI’s thought has the added benefit of making the concept of the “Reign of Christ the King” more palatable to non-Christians, as well as secularists and other non- or even anti-religious individuals. Jesus “reigns,” but only through the natural law, inscribed in the hearts of men, and by having a sound interpretation of natural law embedded in the institutions of a just social order. Within the temporal sphere, it can be considered a matter of opinion under freedom of conscience whether the Nature of the Christian God is the basis of natural law. For civil purposes, what matters is a sound interpretation of natural law, not the recognized basis.

Man therefore possesses inalienable social rights as a member of society in order to assist him in his acquisition and development of social virtue. Man possesses at one and the same time the character of an individual and that of a member of society. Logically, then, we as human beings possess both individual and social rights.

GENERAL AND PARTICULAR VIRTUE

The social virtues are of two kinds. These are “particular” and “general” virtues, terms that have specific meanings in philosophy. A “particular virtue” has a specific object toward which its act is directed. That is, the act of a particular virtue has a direct effect on whatever constitutes its object. A “general virtue,” however, does not have a specific object toward which its act is directed. The effect of a general virtue is always indirect.

The “act” of a general virtue consists of the act of another particular virtue altogether, which act has a kind of “ripple effect” on something else. That “ripple effect” or “fallout” is the indirect “act” of the general virtue. In the philosophy of Aristotle and in Scholastic philosophy before Aquinas, philosophers by and large considered it was only necessary to add a good or general intention that the indirect object be beneficially affected by the act of the particular virtue.

The most important of these social virtues after social charity is, as we might expect, justice. In the philosophy of Aristotle, who seems to have invented the term,22 legal justice is a general justice. The Philosopher used the term to describe the beneficial effect that passing and obeying particular laws (applications of commutative and distributive justice) had on the common good. Unlike Aristotle, however, who saw legal justice solely as a general virtue, Saint Thomas Aquinas differentiated between a particular and a general legal justice.

The second part of this article is concerned with the implications of Saint Thomas’ discernment of a particular legal justice. The idea that the common good can be acted on directly has a profound impact on our understanding of the role of the state—and, most especially, on the role of the sovereign individual as a member of society.

ENDNOTES

1. I Cor.vii,23.

2. Pius XI, Quas Primas (“On the Feast of Christ the King”) 1925 § 19.

3. “On the Restoration of Scholastic Philosophy.”

4. “On Saint Thomas Aquinas.”

5. A few of the many commentators to hold this opinion are Rev. A. Phillipe C.SS.R., Christ, King of Nations (Kansas City, Missouri: Instauratio Press, 1992); Rev. Fr. A. Roussel, Liberalism & Catholicism, the Great Betrayal (Kansas City, Missouri: Angelus Press, 1998); Solange Hertz, Utopia: “NOWHERE”—Now Here (Santa Monica, California:Veritas Press, 1992), The Star-Spangled Heresy: Americanism (Santa Monica, California: Veritas Press, 1992).

6. Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris (“On Atheistic Communism”) 1937 § 34.

7. “Politikos bios”—the life of a citizen in the polis.

8. “Delegation” is a Roman concept, derived from the temporary grant of the Legatine power to someone who wasn’t a Legate. It rapidly came to mean the temporary grant of any kind of power or duty.

9. Jn 13:1—11.

10. De Regimine Principum, I.vi.

11. De Laicis, VI. A serious logical flaw in Bellarmine’s argument is that “rule virtue” as exercised through acts of legal justice is a general virtue, yet a grant to the state even by the collective is a particular act. The same holds true for God’s presumed particular grant of a general virtue in divine right theory.

12. Studiorum Ducem, § 27; Father William J. Ferree, S.M., Ph.D., The Act of Social Justice (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1942) 96 - 97.

13. Ibid., 36 - 76.

14. Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris (“On Atheistic Communism”) 1937 § 29.

15. Summa, Ia IIae q. 61 a. 5 4m; Ferree, op. cit. 83.

16. In Christian belief, God and the angels are also “natural persons.”

17. The Politics, I.ii.

18. Ferree, op. cit. 193 - 211.

19. Divini Redemptoris § 54.

20. Incorporation of an individual and universal incorporation of everything were used to good effect by W. S. Gilbert (of “Gilbert and Sullivan” fame) in The Gondoliers and Utopia, Ltd., respectively. Gilbert was trained as a lawyer, and well knew the bizarre conclusions that could be drawn when a seemingly reasonable proposition was taken to its reductio ad absurdum.

21. Mt 18:15 - 20.

22. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics. Book V, Chapters I and II (1129a-1130b30). Lessius attributes the first use of the term to Aristotle in his De Justitia et Jure, Cap. I, Dub. III, 10.