Quas Primas

Background and Occasion

In his first encyclical, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio (1922), Pius XI had diagnosed the evils of Europe after the First World War and taken as his motto the peace of Christ in the kingdom of Christ. Quas Primas turns that motto into a feast. It was issued at the close of the Holy Year 1925, which was also the sixteenth centenary of the Council of Nicaea, the council that defined the Son as one in being with the Father, the truth on which Christ’s kingship rests.

The Pope’s concern was laicism, which he calls the plague of the age: the systematic exclusion of Christ and his Church from public life, law and education. He traces its stages: first the denial of the Church’s authority over the nations, then the reduction of the Christian religion to the level of other religions, then its subjection to the civil power, and finally the substitution of a merely natural religion or none. The remedy he proposes is not only argument but worship. The liturgy, he says, teaches more effectively than any document, because feasts reach every member of the Church year after year.

Central Teaching

Christ is King

The encyclical first shows that Scripture and Tradition speak of Christ as King. The title is often used in a figurative sense: Christ reigns in human minds because he is truth, in wills because he is holiness, and in hearts because he is love. But Pius XI insists that Christ is King also in the proper and strict sense, and that this kingship belongs to him as man.

The Old Testament foretells a King of David’s line whose kingdom will be everlasting (Psalm 2; Isaiah 9; Daniel 7). The angel promises Mary that her Son will reign over the house of Jacob for ever (Luke 1:32–33). Before Pilate, Jesus acknowledges that he is a king, though his kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36–37), and after the Resurrection he declares that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him (Matthew 28:18).

By what right

Christ’s kingship rests on two titles. The first is by nature: through the hypostatic union, the humanity of Christ belongs to the Person of the Word, and so Christ as man is rightly adored by angels and men. The encyclical cites St Cyril of Alexandria for this point. The second is by acquired right, the right of redemption: Christ purchased us with his blood, so that we belong to him not only as creatures but as the redeemed (1 Corinthians 6:20; 1 Peter 1:18–19).

The extent of his power

Like any kingship, Christ’s includes legislative, judicial and executive power. He gave a new law, he has received from the Father the power to judge, and he has the right to be obeyed and to punish the disobedient. His kingdom is principally spiritual: one enters it by faith and Baptism, and it is opposed only to the kingdom of Satan and the power of darkness. During his earthly life he did not exercise civil rule. But it would be a grave error to deny that Christ as man has authority over civil affairs, since he has received from the Father absolute power over all creatures. His reign extends to all people, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, and to societies as well as individuals.

The blessings of his reign

If rulers and peoples would recognise Christ’s kingship publicly, the Pope says, society would receive great blessings: true liberty, order and tranquillity, harmony and peace. Authority would be respected because it is exercised in Christ’s name, and obedience would not be servile because it would be given to God.

The Feast

The practical decree of the encyclical institutes the feast of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King, to be kept every year on the last Sunday of October, the Sunday before All Saints. On that day the consecration of the human race to the Sacred Heart, made by Leo XIII in 1899, is to be renewed. Pius XI explains the choice of date: the feast stands at the close of the liturgical commemoration of Christ’s mysteries and just before the feast that celebrates his glory in the saints.

In the reform of the calendar after Vatican II (1969), the feast was moved to the last Sunday of the liturgical year and given the title Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, emphasising its eschatological meaning: Christ will hand over the kingdom to the Father at the end of time (1 Corinthians 15:24–28).

Theological Significance

Quas Primas is the classic magisterial statement of the doctrine of Christ’s kingship, which the manuals treat under Christology as one of the consequences of the hypostatic union and under Soteriology as a fruit of the Redemption. Its distinction between a kingship chiefly spiritual and a real authority over all things is the standard one.

Its teaching on the public recognition of Christ by states has been read alongside Vatican II’s Dignitatis Humanae. The declaration leaves intact the moral duty of individuals and societies toward the true religion, while teaching that the state may not coerce consciences. Together the two documents say that Christ’s reign over society is real but is to be realised through the free conversion of persons, not through compulsion. The Catechism teaches the same in its treatment of the social duty of religion (CCC 2105).

For readers of this site, the encyclical connects naturally with the tracts on Christology and Soteriology, and with Haurietis Aquas on the Sacred Heart, whose consecration it links to the new feast.