The Savonarola Option: Why We Should Elect Christ as King – Dr. John-Paul Heil
The Thomistic Institute
The Thomistic Institute
4.8 • 873 Ratings
🗓️ 14 April 2026
⏱️ 55 minutes
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Summary
Dr. John-Paul Heil argues that Christians should “elect Christ as king” by judging political institutions according to whether they actually lead people toward holiness, the common good, and heaven.
This lecture was given on February 17th, 2026, at Virginia Tech.
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About the Speakers:
John-Paul Heil is a Core Fellow in history, philosophy, Catholic anthropology, English, and theology at Mount St. Mary's University. He received his PhD in history from the University of Chicago and is pursuing an MBA in marketing. He has received multiple awards from the U.S. and Italian Fulbright commissions. His writing has appeared in Time, Smithsonian, The Week, and Los Angeles Review of Books. He is the books editor at the University of Pennsylvania's Dappled Things.
Keywords: Christ The King, Common Good, Catholic Politics, Florence, Holiness, Lay Engagement, Lent, Local Community, Political Reform, Savonarola
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | quick show of hands. How many people know who Savonarola is? Kind of, okay, how many of you can tell |
| 0:05.7 | me more than he was a monk who's burned by the Pope for heresy? Okay, perfect. That's great. |
| 0:13.1 | Sorry that this room is toasty, it is obvious, but it's very thematically appropriate, right? |
| 0:17.5 | Sivonarola dies by being set on fire, he's, you know, famous for the |
| 0:21.4 | bonfire of the vanities. So it's very thematic. The title of my talk is the Savonarola option, |
| 0:26.5 | why we should elect Christ as king. Ooh, Allah. In the year 1494, the world was coming to an end. |
| 0:34.8 | Now that might sound a little dramatic, but this is the Italian Renaissance we're talking |
| 0:38.2 | about and everything that they do is a little dramatic. But I think this drama, like all good |
| 0:43.7 | drama, can disclose truth. And it's a very great honor to be able to examine what truth Italian |
| 0:49.2 | history in the late 15th century reveals here at Virginia Tech with all of you. Thank you so much on this beautiful |
| 0:56.4 | Shrove Tuesday. The first words of my namesake's pontificate, which you can find in Redemptor |
| 1:02.7 | Homonist, paragraph one, are as follows. My namesake, if it's not clear, is John Paul |
| 1:07.5 | the second. I'm not named for John Paul Jones or half of the Beatles. |
| 1:13.3 | Redemptor Hominus paragraph 1. |
| 1:19.9 | The Redeemer of Man, Jesus Christ, is the center of the universe and of history. |
| 1:26.4 | This is an extraordinarily radical claim about how time works and how history unfolds. |
| 1:29.8 | Time is not linear. Catholics could have told you that before any theoretical physicists. Time is centripetal. It moves towards a center. The end of time |
| 1:37.1 | in terms of both its conclusion and its telos, its end, is Christ, the logos through whom all things |
| 1:44.0 | were made. Christ draws us to himself |
| 1:46.5 | through time and through the actions of his body, the church. Through the sacraments, especially the |
| 1:51.5 | sacraments of the Eucharist, Christ transcends time and yet roots us in a particular historical |
| 1:56.0 | moment of our union with him, namely his sacrifice on Calvary. The church loves Christ both temporarily and eternally, |
... |
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