# Equal judgment does not abolish a sacred defense of rank

Commentary on Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

On [CH07.P034](https://glosses.org/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH07.P034/#char=792,889): "No Christianity, however ignorant or extravagant, ever suggested that a duke would not be damned."

Chesterton's narrow claim about salvation is easier to sustain than his sweeping claim that Christian Europe never took aristocracy seriously. A revealing comparison is Leo XIII's *Quod apostolici muneris*, issued on 28 December 1878, read here in the Vatican's English translation. Section 5 grounds human equality in a common nature, a common supernatural destiny, and judgment under the same law. Section 7 explicitly subjects rulers to severe divine judgment. A title confers no immunity from damnation.

But sections 5–6 also attribute inequalities of rights and power to God and explain distinct civil ranks through an analogy with the orders of angels and offices of the Church. Leo's social hierarchy is consequently more than an amusing human weakness: it belongs to a providential order. This does not assert that a duke's soul is intrinsically better than a butcher's. It shows why that denial cannot by itself prove that Christian thought regarded aristocracy only as a joke. Chesterton's paragraph moves between two propositions—equal exposure to judgment and the unseriousness of social rank—which this prominent Christian witness separates. [Leo XIII, §§5–7](https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_28121878_quod-apostolici-muneris.html).

## Sources

- [Leo XIII, Quod apostolici muneris (28 December 1878), Vatican English translation](https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_28121878_quod-apostolici-muneris.html), Sections 5–7; issue date in concluding dateline

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