Catholic News Agency reports on the U.S. Supreme Court case First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, Inc. v. Platkin, where New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin issued a 2023 subpoena demanding donor lists from a faith-based pregnancy center. Platkin established a “reproductive rights strike force” targeting crisis pregnancy centers, accusing them of providing “false or misleading information about the safety and legality of abortion.” First Choice, which provides medical services but no abortions, contends the subpoena violates First Amendment rights by chilling free speech and association. The case has drawn support from groups including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, who argue forced donor disclosure burdens religious exercise. The Supreme Court’s decision will determine whether such challenges can proceed directly to federal courts.
State Usurpation of Divine Jurisdiction
The New Jersey attorney general’s actions constitute a brazen violation of the principle Libertas Praestantissimum (Liberty the Highest Good) articulated by Leo XIII: “The State is bound to protect and foster, but by no means to create or command the religious body” (Immortale Dei, 1885). By demanding donor information under threat of contempt, Platkin commits the precise error condemned in Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors: “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which he shall consider true” (Proposition 15) and “The Church ought to be separated from the State” (Proposition 55). The state’s presumption to investigate religious donors echoes the Masonic persecution catalogued in Pius IX’s Etsi Multa, which decried governments that “deny the rights of the Church under the pretext of defending civil liberty.”
Theological Bankruptcy of “Reproductive Rights” Ideology
Platkin’s “reproductive rights strike force” embodies the naturalistic heresy defined in Pius X’s Lamentabili Sane as “reduction of Christian faith to natural religion” (Proposition 64). The term “reproductive rights” constitutes theological fraud, masking the grave sin condemned in Pius XI’s Casti Connubii: “Any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature.” When the state attorney general declares pregnancy centers “misleading” for opposing abortion, he commits blasphemy against the Fifth Commandment and rejects the Church’s infallible teaching that abortion constitutes “unspeakable crime” (Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes 51 – cited only to show continuity with pre-1958 condemnation).
USCCB’s Selective Defense Reveals Conciliar Complicity
While the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops rightly opposes this particular subpoena, their brief conspicuously avoids condemning the root evil: state endorsement of child murder. This mirrors the conciliar sect’s fatal compromise with modernity exposed in Paul IV’s Cum Ex Apostolatus Officio: “They give a ready hearing to the wicked glosses of those who pervert the Gospel of Christ.” Where are the bishops’ canonical sanctions against Catholic politicians enabling abortion? Where their denunciation of New Jersey’s abortion infrastructure? Their selective outrage confirms St. Pius X’s warning in Pascendi Dominici Gregis that modernists “make public protestations of their reverence for the Church” while “destroying her vitality.”
Erosion of Christ’s Social Kingship
The very fact that religious institutions must litigate fundamental rights before secular courts demonstrates society’s rejection of Pius XI’s encyclical Quas Primas: “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.” By reducing the Church to a mere interest group pleading before human tribunals, the conciliar sect betters the social reign of Christ the King. The pregnancy center’s legal defense, while necessary, must not obscure the greater battle: restoring the Regnum Christi over all nations, as commanded in Psalm 2: “Serve the Lord with fear: and rejoice unto Him with trembling. Embrace discipline, lest at any time the Lord be angry.”
The modernist assault on First Choice exposes the bitter fruits of religious liberty heresy solemnly condemned by Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos. Until civil rulers acknowledge that “the right to practice any religion is insanity” (St. Augustine, Epistola 185), such persecutions will intensify. Authentic Catholics must reject both state tyranny and the conciliar sect’s complicity, returning to the integral faith that “subjected all peoples to the sweet yoke of Christ” (Pius XI, Quas Primas).
Source:
U.S. Supreme Court hears dispute over faith-based pregnancy centers (catholicnewsagency.com)
Date: 02.12.2025