The National Catholic Register reports that Tom Homan, a self-identified Catholic serving as border czar in the Trump administration, publicly declared that Roman Catholic Church leaders should “stay out of politics,” following President Trump’s personal denunciation of antipope Leo XIV. Homan, who called the antipope “weak on crime, and terrible for foreign policy,” expressed his wish that Church leaders would “stick to fixing the Church” and refrain from engaging in political matters. Several American bishops — including Philadelphia Archbishop Nelson Pérez, Bishop Robert Barron, USCCB President Archbishop Paul Coakley, and Archbishop Mark Rivituso — responded by defending Leo XIV’s role as a spiritual leader preaching “the Gospel of peace,” calling Trump’s remarks “disrespectful,” and urging prayer for the president. The entire spectacle — a public official dictating to Church leaders the boundaries of their moral authority, and bishops rushing to defend an antipope while invoking “peace” and “dialogue” — is a perfect distillation of the ecclesiological catastrophe that has consumed the conciliar sect since 1958.
The Heresy of “Stay Out of Politics” as Ecclesiological Mutilation
Tom Homan’s statement — “I just wish they’d stick to fixing the Church, because there’s issues. I know because I’m a member. And stay out of politics” — is not merely the opinion of one government official. It is a precise articulation of the spirit of the Council, the very soul of Dignitatis Humanae and Gaudium et Spes, which together erected a wall between the Church’s supernatural mission and the public order. This is the heresy of laicism, condemned with the utmost severity by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors:
Error 55: “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.”
Pius IX, in the very same document, had already exposed the fraudulent claim that the Church has no authority to pronounce on matters touching the temporal order:
Error 19: “The Church is not a true and perfect society, entirely free—nor is she endowed with proper and perpetual rights of her own, conferred upon her by her Divine Founder; but it appertains to the civil power to define what are the rights of the Church, and the limits within which she may exercise those rights.”
Homan’s injunction — “stay out of politics” — is nothing other than Error 19 spoken in the crude vernacular of a government functionary. He claims the authority to define the boundaries of the Church’s public speech. He, a layman and a state official, presumes to tell the Church what she may and may not address. This is the inversion of the divine order: Caesar instructing Christ’s Church on the limits of her own mission.
Pius XI, in the encyclical Quas Primas — quoted extensively in the provided source material — established with irrefutable clarity that the reign of Christ the King extends over all human affairs, including those Homan would dismiss as merely “political”:
“His reign, namely, extends not only to Catholic nations or to those who, by receiving baptism according to law, belong to the Church, even though their erroneous opinions have led them astray or discord has separated them from love, but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.”
And further:
“Let rulers of states therefore not refuse public veneration and obedience to the reigning Christ, but let them fulfill this duty themselves and with their people, if they wish to maintain their authority inviolate and contribute to the increase of their homeland’s happiness.”
There is no domain — immigration, criminal justice, foreign policy, economics — that falls outside the kingship of Christ. To tell the Church to “stay out of politics” is to tell Christ to stay out of His own kingdom. It is, in the most literal sense, apostasy: a defection from the acknowledgment of Christ’s universal sovereignty.
The Theological Bankruptcy of the Bishops’ Response
The response of the American bishops to this unprecedented situation reveals the depth of the conciliar captivity. Consider the statements collected by the Register:
Archbishop Nelson Pérez defended Leo XIV’s role in preaching “the Gospel of peace,” saying the antipope has “consistently spoken with clarity and compassion with calls for peaceful resolutions to complex challenges in a manner that upholds the sanctity and dignity of all human life.”
Bishop Robert Barron called Trump’s comments “disrespectful” and urged the president to apologize.
Archbishop Paul Coakley said he was “disheartened” by the comments.
Archbishop Mark Rivituso said he “affirms the Pope’s role as a spiritual leader who speaks from the Gospel and for the care of souls” and encouraged the faithful “to be one with the Holy Father in praying for and witnessing to the Gospel of Christ’s peace and care for all peoples.”
Every single one of these statements is a masterclass in evasion. Not one bishop — not one — proclaimed the doctrinal truth that Christ the King reigns over nations, that the Church has the divine right and duty to pronounce moral judgment on public policy, and that no civil authority may silence the Church’s voice. Instead, they retreated into the conciliar ghetto of “spiritual leadership,” “care of souls,” and “the Gospel of peace” — phrases that, in the mouths of post-conciliar prelates, mean nothing other than: the Church has no authority over the public order, and we know it.
Pius XI warned precisely against this reduction of the Church’s mission:
“But, if we delve deeper into the matter itself, we shall realize that the name and authority of king in the proper sense belong to Christ the Man… Christ not only is to be adored as God by angels and men, but that angels and men are to be obedient and subject to His dominion as Man.”
The bishops’ silence on this point is not accidental. It is the fruit of the conciliar revolution, which systematically dismantled the Church’s public authority and replaced it with the language of “dialogue,” “respect,” and “peace” — the very language Satan uses to silence the truth.
The Deeper Apostasy: Defending an Antipope in the Name of “Peace”
The most damning aspect of this entire episode is that the bishops rushed to defend Leo XIV — an antipope, a usurper of the Chair of Peter, a manifest heretic who has publicly contradicted the defined teaching of the Church on matters of faith and morals. By the principles articulated by St. Robert Bellarmine in De Romano Pontifice, a manifest heretic ipso facto ceases to be Pope and head of the Church. The source document on sedevacantism establishes this beyond any cavil:
“By notorious and publicly manifested heresy, the Roman Pontiff, should he fall into it, is deprived ipso facto of his personal jurisdiction even before any declaratory sentence by the Church…”
And Bellarmine himself:
“This principle is most certain. A non-Christian in no way can be Pope… The reason for this is that he cannot be the head of something of which he is not a member; now, he who is not a Christian is not a member of the Church, and a manifest heretic is not a Christian… therefore, a manifest heretic cannot be Pope.”
Yet these bishops — Pérez, Barron, Coakley, Rivituso — do not merely fail to apply this doctrine. They actively defend the usurper. They call for “respect and admiration” for an antipope. They urge the faithful to pray for him as “the Holy Father.” They invoke “the Gospel of peace” to shield him from legitimate civil criticism. In doing so, they commit the gravest of sins: they place the authority of a manifest heretic above the authority of Christ the King.
Pius IX, in Cum ex Apostolatus Officio, established that any pontiff who has defected from the Catholic faith holds his office null and void:
“…if at any time it shall appear that any Bishop… or even the Roman Pontiff, prior to his promotion or his assumption to the cardinalate or the papacy, has defected from the Catholic Faith or fallen into some heresy: (i) his promotion or elevation, even if it shall have been uncontested and by the unanimous assent of all the Cardinals, shall be null, void, and no effect.”
The defense of Leo XIV by these bishops is not merely a political misjudgment. It is a public act of adhesion to the conciliar abomination, a formal participation in the abomination of desolation that has occupied the Vatican since 1958.
The Irony of Homan’s “Fix the Church” Remark
There is a bitter irony in Homan’s remark that Church leaders should “stick to fixing the Church, because there’s issues.” He is correct that there are issues — cataclysmic, soul-destroying issues. But the “fix” he implicitly envisions is not the restoration of Catholic order. It is the further domestication of the Church, the silencing of her prophetic voice, the reduction of her mission to a private spiritual service compatible with secular governance.
The true “fix” — the only fix — is the restoration of the Catholic Church as she existed before the conciliar revolution: a Church that acknowledges Christ the King as sovereign over all nations, that exercises her divine authority to teach, govern, and sanctify without deference to civil power, and that recognizes no separation between the spiritual and temporal orders that would silence her voice in the public square.
Pius XI declared:
“By rendering this public veneration to the Lord’s Kingship, people must remember that 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.”
Homan’s demand that the Church “stay out of politics” is a direct assault on this divine right. It is Caesar demanding that Christ be silent. And the bishops’ response — defending an antipope, invoking “peace,” and retreating into the ghetto of “spiritual leadership” — is the proof that the conciliar Church has already surrendered.
The Duty of the Faithful
The faithful who still profess the integral Catholic faith must recognize this moment for what it is: a public revelation of the total apostasy of the conciliar structures. When a government official commands the Church to be silent, and the bishops obey — not by silence, but by retreating into the language of conciliar accommodation — the mask falls entirely.
The duty of the faithful is clear: to reject the authority of the conciliar sect, to refuse obedience to antipopes and manifest heretics, and to hold fast to the unchanging Catholic faith as taught by the Fathers, the Councils, and the pre-conciliar Magisterium. As Pius IX thundered in the Syllabus:
“The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.” — Error 80, condemned.
The conciliar Church has reconciled itself with modern civilization. It has come to terms with liberalism. It has surrendered to Caesar. And now Caesar tells it to stay in its place.
The faithful who understand this must not follow. They must stand with Christ the King — whose kingdom shall have no end — and reject the false peace of the conciliar abomination.
Source:
Border Czar Tom Homan Calls for Church Leaders to ‘Stay Out of Politics’ (ncregister.com)
Date: 14.04.2026