The Abandonment of Catholic Education to Secular Indifference
The National Catholic Register reports (March 12, 2026) that Judicial Watch has sued Minnesota Governor Tim Walz for failing to release public records concerning the exclusion of nonpublic schools—including Catholic schools—from state-funded safety programs. This follows the August 27, 2025 shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church and School in Minneapolis, which killed two children and wounded 17 others. The lawsuit seeks communications from 2022–2025 about proposals to include private schools in the Safe Schools funding and a $50 million Building and Cyber Security Grant Program. Despite repeated appeals from the Minnesota Catholic Conference, led by Archbishop Bernard Hebda, and a $17.6 billion state surplus, Governor Walz took no action. The Conference has distanced itself from Judicial Watch but continues to lobby for legislative inclusion in 2026.
The article’s factual narrative, while framed as a legal transparency issue, reveals a profound theological and ecclesial crisis: the post-conciliar hierarchy’s acceptance of a secular state’s right to discriminate against Catholic education, thereby denying the social reign of Christ the King. This is not merely a policy failure but a manifestation of the “secularism of our times” condemned by Pope Pius XI in Quas Primas. The bishops’ passive lobbying, devoid of any doctrinal or canonical challenge to the state’s authority, exposes their complete assimilation into the modernist principle of the separation of Church and State—a principle anathematized by Pope Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors.
1. Factual Deconstruction: The Illusion of “Neutral” Exclusion
The article presents the exclusion of private schools from safety funding as a simple oversight or political choice. It quotes Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton: “Governor Walz left the state’s nonpublic school students unprotected.” The Minnesota Catholic Conference’s statement expresses disappointment but frames the request as one policy among others (“gun-safety measures and protecting kids online”). This language is deliberately naturalistic, reducing a grave injustice to a matter of budgetary “priorities” and “political influence” from the teachers’ union, Education Minnesota.
What is omitted is any reference to the Catholic Church’s inalienable right to have its schools supported by the state, a right derived from the kingship of Christ. The article treats the state’s funding decision as a legitimate exercise of civil power, against which the Church can only politely petition. This is the very error condemned by Pius IX: “The Church has not the power of defining dogmatically that the religion of the Catholic Church is the only true religion” (Syllabus, Error 21) and “The civil power has authority to rescind… solemn conventions… entered into with the Apostolic See” (Error 43). By accepting the state’s discriminatory framework, the Minnesota bishops implicitly accept the modernist premise that the state is neutral in religious matters and can withhold support from Catholic institutions without sin.
2. Linguistic Analysis: The Language of Capitulation
The article’s tone is bureaucratic and procedural. Key phrases like “public records request,” “state safety programs,” “funding appropriation,” and “legislative proposals” are drawn from secular administrative discourse. The bishops’ statement uses the language of “requesting” and “hoping,” the language of supplicants before a sovereign state, not of co-heirs of Christ the King demanding their rights.
The most telling silence is the complete absence of supernatural terminology: no mention of the salus animarum (salvation of souls), the cura animarum (care of souls), the sacramental life of the school, or the formation of Catholic youth in the integrum Christianum (integral Christianity). The shooting is presented as a tragic security failure, not as a divine chastisement for the abandonment of Christ’s reign in society—a theme central to Quas Primas. The article’s vocabulary is that of a pressure group seeking a share of the public treasury, not of a hierarchical Church teaching the nations. This linguistic naturalism is symptomatic of the post-conciliar Church’s descent into worldly categories.
3. Theological Confrontation: Christ the King vs. the Secular Leviathan
Pius XI’s encyclical Quas Primas (December 11, 1925) is explicit: the kingdom of Christ “encompasses all men” and “extends not only to Catholic nations… but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians.” Therefore, “the state must leave the same freedom to the members of Orders and Congregations… and contribute most to the expansion and establishment of Christ’s Kingdom.” The Pope declares that rulers have a duty to “publicly honor Christ and obey Him,” and that the state’s authority is destroyed when “God and Jesus Christ… are removed from laws and states.”
Furthermore, Pius XI directly addresses the funding of Catholic institutions: “The annual celebration of this solemnity will also remind states that… rulers and governments have the duty to publicly honor Christ and obey Him: for it will remind them of the final judgment… because His royal dignity demands that all relations in the state be ordered on the basis of God’s commandments and Christian principles, both in the issuing of laws and in the administration of justice, as well as in the education and formation of youth in sound doctrine and purity of morals.” (Emphasis added).
The exclusion of Catholic schools from safety funding is a direct violation of this doctrine. The state, by funding only public schools, privileges a secular, godless education system and penalizes Catholic families for their faith. The bishops’ failure to articulate this as a matter of Christ’s rights, but rather as a “policy” disagreement, is a denial of the faith once delivered to the saints. They treat the state as a neutral arbiter, not as a power that must serve Christ the King.
The Syllabus of Errors (1864) condemns with anathema the proposition that “The Church has not the power of defining dogmatically that the religion of the Catholic Church is the only true religion” (Error 21) and that “The civil power may interfere in matters relating to religion, morality and spiritual government” (Error 44). By accepting the state’s right to define “public” benefit without including Catholic schools, the bishops accept the state’s interference in spiritual goods. They also implicitly accept Error 45: “The entire government of public schools… may and ought to appertain to the civil power,” and Error 47: “Public institutes intended for instruction… should be freed from all ecclesiastical authority, control and interference.” The bishops’ lobbying for inclusion within the state’s secular framework is a capitulation to these condemned errors.
4. Symptomatic Analysis: The Modernist “Abomination of Desolation”
This incident is not an anomaly but a systemic fruit of the conciliar revolution. The post-conciliar “Church” has embraced the principles of the Syllabus errors it once condemned. Vatican II’s Dignitatis Humanae (1965) enshrined religious freedom as a right, effectively denying the Catholic faith’s exclusive claim to truth and the state’s duty to profess it. This has led to the current situation where Catholic bishops plead for “equal treatment” in a system that is fundamentally anti-Catholic.
The bishops’ statement, while noting “gun-safety measures and protecting kids online,” shows they have absorbed the secular agenda’s priorities. There is no mention of the First Commandment, the necessity of grace, the danger of mortal sin, or the supernatural end of education. Their concern is “safety” in a purely naturalistic sense. This is the “cult of man” denounced by Pope Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907) and the “abuse of the name of liberty” in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907, Proposition 60). The modernists have reduced the Church’s mission to social work and safety compliance, exactly as the “false Fatima” file describes the diversion from apostasy: focusing on external threats (school shootings) while omitting the main danger—the modernist apostasy within the Church since the beginning of the 20th century.
The bishops’ failure to excommunicate or even sternly rebuke a governor who excludes Catholic children from safety funding—while he promotes policies contrary to Catholic morality (e.g., likely abortion, LGBTQ+ “rights”)—demonstrates their complete subservience to the “paramasonic structure” of the modern state. They act as functionaries of the “neo-church,” not as pastors of souls. Their silence on the supernatural destiny of the children killed at Annunciation—whether they were in a state of grace, the need for last rites, the eternal consequences of mortal sin—is the gravest accusation. It proves they believe in a “natural religion” (Syllabus, Error 5) and not in the Catholic faith as the sole path to salvation.
Conclusion: The Reign of Christ the King Is Not a Lobbying Issue
The Minnesota Catholic Conference’s approach—lobbying for a budgetary line item—is a scandalous reduction of the Catholic faith to a special interest group. It treats the Church as one voice among many in a pluralistic marketplace, not as the sole ark of salvation with a right to the state’s active support. Pius XI in Quas Primas did not call for “inclusion” in state programs; he called for the state to recognize its subjection to Christ the King and to order all its laws accordingly. The bishops’ failure to make this demand, and their willingness to accept the state’s discriminatory framework, is a public apostasy.
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, the current hierarchy occupying the Vatican and the dioceses are not the Catholic hierarchy. They are modernist occupiers who have embraced the errors of the Syllabus and the principles of Modernism condemned by St. Pius X. Their “requests” to the state are meaningless because they no longer teach the faith that obliges the state to serve Christ. The true Catholic response would be a formal protest, backed by canonical penalties, declaring that a state that discriminates against Catholic education violates the divine law and places itself outside the social reign of Christ. Such a protest is impossible from those who have accepted the conciliar “abomination of desolation.”
The lawsuit by Judicial Watch, a secular conservative group, ironically highlights the vacuum of authentic Catholic leadership. The Church should be the plaintiff against the state for violating Christ’s rights, not a petitioner asking for a share of the state’s largesse. The bishops’ distance from Judicial Watch is a sign of their desire to remain “pure” from any association with a group that, while not Catholic, at least recognizes the injustice of exclusion. Their own “legislative proposals in 2026” will likely fail because they operate within the compromised framework of the “neo-church” and the secular state. Until the Catholic hierarchy is restored to the pre-1958 faith—a faith that demands the social kingship of Christ and anathematizes the separation of Church and State—Catholic schools will remain vulnerable, and the blood of the children at Annunciation will cry out not just for security measures, but for the restoration of a faith that dares to proclaim Christus Vincit, Christus Regnat, Christus Imperat.
The ultimate scandal is that the modernists in Rome and Minnesota have made the Church irrelevant to the very question of Christ’s reign over society. They have exchanged the doctrine of the Rex Regum for the politics of the lobbying firm.
Source:
Judicial Watch Sues Minnesota Governor Over School Security Funding Records (ncregister.com)
Date: 13.03.2026