EWTN News reports that the Trump administration plans to issue new guidance to religious nonprofits regarding the Johnson Amendment, the 1954 law that bars 501(c)(3) organizations from endorsing political candidates. Following a federal judge’s dismissal of a lawsuit challenging the amendment, the Treasury Department and IRS announced forthcoming guidance that “will provide clear, administrable standards for houses of worship, including how the law applies to certain communications made within the context of religious services.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declared that “religious liberty is foundational to our Constitution,” while the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops reiterated that the Catholic Church will maintain its policy of not endorsing political candidates. The entire discussion, however, operates within a framework so fundamentally naturalistic and secular that it renders invisible the only question that ultimately matters: the obligation of all nations and all men to submit publicly and privately to the Social Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Abomination of Desolation Speaks of “Religious Liberty”
The language deployed throughout this report is itself a diagnostic tool of theological bankruptcy. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declares that “religious liberty is foundational to our Constitution.” This is precisely the error condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors, where proposition 77 states: “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship.” And proposition 79: “It is false that the civil liberty of every form of worship, and the full power, given to all, of overtly and publicly manifesting any opinions whatsoever and thoughts, conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people, and to propagate the pest of indifferentism.”
The very concept of “religious liberty” as a constitutional foundation — the notion that the state is neutral among religions and merely guarantees freedom of worship — is a modernist heresy. Pope Leo XIII in Immortale Dei (1885) taught with absolute clarity: “The Almighty, therefore, has given the charge of the human race to two powers, the ecclesiastical and the civil, the one being set over divine, and the other over human, each supreme in its own kind, and each fixed within limits which are defined by its own nature and special object.” The state is not neutral. The state has a strict duty to profess the Catholic faith, to protect it, and to impede whatever is contrary to it, within the limits of prudence. Pius XI in Quas Primas (1925) — precisely the document whose theological framework should govern every Catholic’s understanding of the relationship between Church and state — proclaimed: “The Kingdom of our Redeemer encompasses all men” and that “rulers of states therefore [must] not refuse public veneration and obedience to the reigning Christ.”
To speak of “religious liberty” as a constitutional foundation is to enshrine indifferentism as the organizing principle of civil society. It is to declare, in effect, that the state has no obligation to acknowledge the kingship of Christ — which is not merely an error but apostasy.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops: Apostates Preserving Apostasy
The report notes that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops “reiterated that, despite that agreement, the Catholic Church will continue its long-standing policy of not endorsing or opposing political candidates.” This statement, delivered with the smug satisfaction of men who believe they are exercising prudence, is in fact a shameful abdication of the Church’s prophetic mission.
The question is never whether a particular priest or bishop endorses a particular candidate. The question — the only question — is whether the Church demands that the state itself submit to Christ the King. Pius XI, in the very encyclical that established the Feast of Christ the King, stated unambiguously: “Not only private individuals, but also rulers and governments have the duty to publicly honor Christ and obey Him: for it will remind them of the final judgment, in which Christ, whom not only was cast out of the state, but was also forgotten and ignored through contempt, will very severely avenge these insults.”
The “long-standing policy” of the post-conciliar USCCB is not prudence — it is the systematic silencing of Christ’s Social Kingship. It is the reduction of the Church to just another 501(c)(3) nonprofit, scurrying to comply with the tax codes of a secular republic that, by its very constitution, refuses to acknowledge God. These men do not represent the Catholic Church. They represent the conciliar sect, a paramasonic structure whose entire existence since the Second Vatican Council has been devoted to reconciling the Church with the world — which is precisely the error condemned by Pope St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907) as the “synthesis of all heresies”: Modernism.
By reducing the Church’s political engagement to the question of candidate endorsement, the USCCB reveals that it has fully absorbed the liberal, democratic, secular framework. The Church does not exist to play within the rules of the American tax code. The Church exists to demand that every nation — including the United States of America — publicly profess the Catholic faith as the one true religion and submit its laws to the governance of Christ the King. Extra ecclesiam nulla salus (Outside the Church there is no salvation) applies to states as well as to individuals.
The Johnson Amendment: A Law of a Regime That Has Already Rejected God
The entire debate over the Johnson Amendment presupposes the legitimacy of a secular constitutional order that is itself fundamentally disordered. The 1954 amendment bars 501(c)(3) nonprofits from political endorsement — but the very existence of a tax code that treats the Church as a “nonprofit organization” is an act of subjection. The Church does not need the state’s permission to exist, to speak, or to govern. As Pius XI declared in Quas Primas: “The Church, established by Christ as a perfect society, demands for itself by a right belonging to it, which it cannot renounce, full freedom and independence from secular authority.”
The Catholic Church is not a “nonprofit.” She is the one true Church of Jesus Christ, founded by God, endowed with all jurisdiction necessary for her mission, and answerable to no earthly power. The notion that the IRS has authority to regulate what a bishop says from the pulpit — or what a priest says at the altar — is an act of tyranny that no Catholic should accept, regardless of whether the particular restriction happens to be favorable or unfavorable at any given moment.
Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus condemned proposition 24: “The Church has not the power of using force, nor has she any temporal power, direct or indirect.” And proposition 55: “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.” The entire American constitutional arrangement — including the Johnson Amendment, the First Amendment, and the Establishment Clause — is built upon precisely these condemned errors. To debate the application of the Johnson Amendment to “houses of worship” is to accept the legitimacy of a regime founded on the separation of Church and state — a proposition the Church has explicitly and repeatedly condemned.
The Deeper Apostasy: Silence on the Social Kingship of Christ
What is most revealing about this entire report is not what it says but what it does not say. There is no mention — not a single word — of the Social Kingship of Christ. There is no mention of the Feast of Christ the King. There is no mention of the duty of nations to submit to God’s law. There is no mention of the Church’s divine right to teach, govern, and sanctify without interference from any civil power.
The silence is deafening, and it is damning.
Pius XI warned in Quas Primas: “When God and Jesus Christ — as we lamented — were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed, because the main reason why some have the right to command and others have the duty to obey was removed.” The entire American political system — and the discussion captured in this EWTN News report — operates precisely within this framework of destruction. Authority is derived from “We the People,” not from God. The Constitution is the supreme law, not the law of Christ. And the Church is expected to operate within these rules, seeking “guidance” from the IRS on what she may or may not say.
This is not merely political error. This is apostasy — the public, corporate, institutional denial of Christ’s kingship over civil society. And the men who lead the post-conciliar structures in the United States — the bishops who “reiterate” their compliance with secular tax law — are not shepherds. They are hirelings who have abandoned the flock to the wolves of secularism, indifferentism, and naturalism.
The Remedy: Return to the Integral Teaching of the Church
The only remedy for the spiritual catastrophe described in this report — and in the entire post-conciliar arrangement it presupposes — is a return to the integral, unchanging teaching of the Catholic Church on the Social Kingship of Christ.
This means:
First, the recognition that Christ is King of all nations, and that every state has the strict duty to acknowledge Him, to profess the Catholic faith, and to order its laws in accordance with divine revelation. This is not a matter of “religious liberty” or “pluralism.” It is a matter of objective truth and strict justice.
Second, the recognition that the Church is a perfect society, entirely independent of civil authority in her spiritual mission, and that no earthly power has the right to tax, regulate, or restrict her teaching, governing, or sanctifying mission.
Third, the recognition that the separation of Church and state is a heresy condemned by the solemn magisterium of the Church, and that no Catholic may accept it as a legitimate political principle.
Fourth, the recognition that the current occupants of the Vatican are not legitimate successors of Peter, and that their “teaching” — including their silence on the Social Kingship of Christ — carries no authority whatsoever. The true Church endures in the faithful who profess the integral Catholic faith and are led by bishops with valid orders and valid jurisdiction.
The Trump administration’s guidance on the Johnson Amendment is, in the final analysis, a distraction — a rearrangement of deck chairs on a ship that is already sinking. The real crisis is not whether churches can endorse candidates. The real crisis is that the Church has been silenced on the only question that matters: the obligation of all men and all nations to submit to the kingship of Jesus Christ. Until that question is answered — until the Church resumes her prophetic mission and demands the submission of every nation to Christ the King — no amount of IRS guidance will save America, or any other nation, from the just judgment of God.
Rex regum et Dominus dominantum — King of kings and Lord of lords. There is no other foundation, and there is no other hope.
Source:
Trump administration to issue guidance to religious nonprofits on Johnson Amendment (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 08.04.2026