Solemnity of Christ the King, preached on October 25, 2026

But what's different really this time is national monuments are being desecrated, churches are being burned, no other houses of worship, just Catholic churches.

On and on it goes, and when I say that, I mean it's not just contained to Paris, it is all over France, and it has spread as we speak to Spain and Italy and Serbia, and there's another, It's a list.

It's one of the countries that begins with an A. They're all rioting too.

And the riots have different causes and every conceivable faction is altogether setting fires and desecrating churches and throwing rocks at police for all sorts of different reasons.

And the response from the authorities has been the kind of response you'd expect from a rather feckless parent.

You better quad it out.

I really mean it this time.

Don't make me come down there.

And that's been largely the official political response.

Now the non-political response, public figures, gosh, they say they like peace a lot.

And they said rather anodyne things about our Lord.

And they said that disciples of Christ should work for peace if and only if they're ably assisted by absolutely anybody else who also thinks that peace is nice.

What they didn't sound like, it's like Blessed Miguel Pro, S.J., being put up against the wall about to be shot as he cries out, viva Cristo re.

They didn't sound like that.

They didn't sound like the calm confidence of the Carthusians who says the world spins and the cross stands firm.

And they certainly didn't sound like Pius XI of blessed memory.

who wrote, we were convinced that there is no more effective way to restore and invigorate peace than to seek the restoration of the reign of Jesus Christ, Pax Christi and Regno Christi, the peace of Christ in the kingdom of Christ.

Well, that's really different, isn't it? And by the way, no one has even hinted that maybe there's kinetic unpleasantness in France as maybe it's God's judgment given their very liberalization of abortion as a right to freedom now written into their constitution.

And speaking of peace and justice, I myself have been in American cities where the enthusiasms got kinetic.

And eventually, as they were breaking windows, they had signs that said, no justice, no peace.

And I thought to myself, we're in a world of trouble.

Because if you're waiting for peace to follow the establishment of justice, and we're all sinners, and there's no reference to Christ, we can't get there from here.

It really is that simple.

So rather than saying bland words, what if, hear me out, there's precedent, I'm not kidding, we preached Christ crucified.