Restoring Christ's Kingship: A Call for True Monarchy

By the Archbishop of Selsey

When Our Lord told the sons of Zebedee, “You know not what you ask,”¹ He revealed that kingship in His Kingdom bears no likeness to the ambitions of men. For He reigns not by command but by sacrifice; not through armies, but through love. The throne of Christ is the Cross, and His crown is of thorns. Every other throne, every other crown, is legitimate only insofar as it reflects that mystery.

This is the heart of the doctrine proclaimed by Pope Pius XI in Quas Primas: that Christ’s kingship is not confined to the sanctuary or the soul, but extends over nations, laws, and rulers—that “He must reign,” not merely in private hearts, but in social and political order.² The Social Reign of Christ the King is no abstraction; it is the blueprint of reality restored to grace. Without it, every state eventually becomes its own idol.

The Bourbon Appeal and the Crisis of France
It is striking that, a century after Quas Primas, these truths should echo once again through the words of a French prince. Earlier this month, Louis de Bourbon, Duke of Anjou and head of the historic House of Bourbon, declared: “The situation has never been so serious; the Fifth Republic is on the verge of collapse. My family has served France for centuries, and if France calls upon me, I will be at its service. The indispensable condition is that France desires the return of the monarchy—a monarchy above parties, unifying.”³

His words were not anachronistic but prophetic. They arose from a nation whose political structures have lost moral direction, whose secularism has bled into cynicism, and whose people hunger for meaning. The Fifth Republic endures in form but not in faith. The prince’s offer of service—“above parties, unifying”—speaks to the deeper truth that sovereignty without sanctity cannot save a nation.

France was once the Eldest Daughter of the Church, baptised with the tears of St. Remigius and consecrated by Clovis. Her kings, for all their failings, were anointed as lieutenants of Christ the King—vicars of divine order within the temporal realm. The glory of St. Louis IX, who built Sainte-Chapelle to enshrine the Crown of Thorns, was not that he ruled, but that he ruled in obedience to Christ. When Louis XVI forgave his executioners, he did so as one who knew that true kingship is cruciform. In them both, we see the image of Christ’s reign—authority purified by sacrifice.

From Christendom to the Republic of Man
When France severed the bond between altar and throne in 1789, she inaugurated not liberty, but a new servitude: the worship of man in the place of God. As Joseph de Maistre warned, “Every nation has the government it deserves, for it has the religion it confesses.”⁴ Having expelled God from public life, modern states have enthroned the will of man as absolute. The result is instability, fragmentation, and despair. The secular republic has produced not unity but emptiness, not enlightenment but exhaustion.

Louis de Bourbon’s appeal is not nostalgia—it is a reminder that the Social Kingship of Christ is the only true foundation of freedom. The monarchy he envisions, “above parties,” is one that points beyond politics to Providence, one that restores the vertical order between heaven and earth. Such a vision is not antiquated; it is urgently prophetic.

The Hollow Crown of Britain
Across the Channel, the same truth confronts us in inverse form. The British monarchy endures, but without the faith that once gave it meaning. The Coronation of King Charles III in 2023 was grand but spiritually impoverished. The words “defender of the Faith” have been replaced with “defender of faiths.”⁵ In striving to honour all, the Crown affirms none. What was once a covenant between monarch and God has become a contract between monarch and media.

The Coronation’s sacred oil still flowed, yet the divine Kingship it symbolised was no longer confessed. A Crown that once promised fidelity to the “laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel” now guards a civil creed of inclusivity—a religion of tolerance without truth. Britain’s monarchy, in so far as it mirrors the world rather than Christ, has ceased to image kingship; it has become merely decorative. The “Defender of Faith” has become custodian of relativism.

Here lies the tragedy: a Crown wedded to politics loses its soul, while a Crown consecrated to Christ becomes the conscience of the nation. When rulers cease to kneel before the altar, they eventually kneel before opinion.

The Social Reign and the Restoration of Order
The kingship of Christ is no private devotion. As Pius XI wrote, “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, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony.”⁶ The Church’s mission, therefore, is not to retreat from the world but to reclaim it for its rightful King.

Louis de Bourbon’s words remind us that temporal authority, when rightly ordered, can serve as a visible sacrament of that greater Kingdom. The monarch anointed under God serves as father to his people precisely because he himself is subject to the Father of all. This is the model of hierarchy redeemed by humility—the antithesis of modern power politics.

The world calls this reactionary; the Church calls it reality. The throne, like the altar, must once again become a place of offering.

Britain, France, and the Two Temptations
Both nations illustrate opposite temptations: France’s rejection of monarchy in the name of liberty, and Britain’s retention of monarchy at the cost of truth. The first killed the king; the second forgets the King of Kings. Yet both demonstrate that without the social reign of Christ, human authority collapses into either revolution or ritualism.

The renewal of monarchy, if it is to come, must therefore be Eucharistic—a renewal of sacrifice, not spectacle. To restore the crown is not to revive aristocracy, but to restore sanctity. The ruler must once again be a servant of Christ’s law, not of public mood. The same is true of every priest, politician, and parent. For all authority shares one source: “All power in heaven and on earth is given unto Me.”⁷

The Kingdom and Its Prayer
When we pray Adveniat regnum tuum—“Thy Kingdom come”—we invoke not only the Second Coming but the sanctification of our present age. This prayer is the charter of Christendom. It proclaims that the laws of nations must conform to the moral law; that peace without justice is false; that liberty without truth is slavery. The reign of Christ is social because His redemption is universal.

The call for “Monarchy and God Again” is, in essence, a call for the restoration of the Social Kingship of Christ—for the re-evangelisation of culture through the conversion of rulers and the sanctification of law. France, once baptised by saints, and England, once consecrated as Our Lady’s dowry, must both rediscover that their national vocation lies in serving the divine.

The kingdoms of this world will pass away. The republics of men will crumble. But the Kingdom of Christ endures, because it is built not upon compromise but upon the Cross. The world awaits not the return of kings, but the return of Christ the King in public life, in conscience, in culture, and in law. Only then will liberty be true, and order be just.

Let every sceptre, every crown, and every constitution confess what the Church still dares to sing:
Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat.

¹ Gospel according to St. Mark 10:38.
² Pope Pius XI, Quas Primas (Encyclical on the Kingship of Christ), 11 December 1925, §§18–19.
³ “Louis de Bourbon prêt à servir la France si elle veut le retour de la monarchie,” Le Figaro, 10 October 2025.
⁴ Joseph de Maistre, Considérations sur la France (1797), ch. II.
⁵ The Coronation of Their Majesties King Charles III and Queen Camilla, Official Liturgy (London: Church House Publishing, 2023), pp. 10–14.
⁶ Quas Primas, §19.
⁷ Gospel according to St. Matthew 28:18.