WHERE IS CHRIST KING?

"My kingdom is not of this world.

Jesus Christ told Pilate that his kingdom was not of this world: "My kingdom is not of this world" (Jn. XVIII, 36).  A liberal reads the words as if it is said that the kingdom of Christ is exclusively supernatural, heavenly, never with natural and/or earthly dimensions.  It's so reiterated the argument how old.  The drama lies in the Catholics repeating it as their own.

What Christ said is not that His kingdom is not "here";  in several Gospel passages He is said to announce that the Kingdom of God had come, that it was among us.  "World" does not designate a place opposed to "heaven" but the origin and root of its powerful region.  His words mean that His Kingdom has no origin in the world;  that its principle is not worldly nor founded on earthly powers, that it is not surrounded by the honors of the century;  but that he is divine and, by being so, exercises himself over all created things, even over the world and over human life in its fullness.

Christ –he was called in times of Christianity—affirmed that his kingdom was not of this world to refute Pilate who believed him a pure man.  That is why His words say that He is not king by human hand and, yet, He is the rex world.  Such is the teaching of Conrado de Megenberg.  This counterargument is classic: that it is not of this world means that it is not constituted in a human way, because in this world (adds Augustine Trionfo) we have the vice of sin.

Nor did Our Lord say that, being heavenly, his Kingdom is not unfolded on earth, in the world.  Christ is not consecrating the "autonomy of the temporal," as it is usually said, for he immediately retorts to Pilate that he would not have that power over Him if it had not been given to Him from above.  Unfortunately we can say that Christ separated the supernatural from the natural and left the human world to its own destiny.  Indeed, Christ the King is an earthly monarch in view of the heavenly homeland: "The kingdom where Christ will reign eternally with his people - affirms Calderón Bouchet - is not of this world, but in it is incorporated.  One of the essential conditions for the existence of the Christian city is that Christ should impersonate and reign in it as ‘priests et rex’””.

Juan Fernando Segovia, The Dogma of the Reality of Christ.  Quas primas, of Pius XI.