EWTN News reports that the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, a New Jersey faith-based pregnancy center, allowing it to challenge a state subpoena demanding donor information. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), through Bishop Daniel E. Thomas, hailed the decision as a victory for “freedom of religion,” while their amicus brief argued that “compelling disclosure of a religious organization’s financial support violates the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion.” The case originated from New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin’s 2022 investigation into crisis pregnancy centers, which he accused of providing “false or misleading information about the safety and legality of abortion.” While the ruling protects donor privacy, the entire framing — by both the “bishops” and the secular court — reveals a profound theological bankruptcy: the reduction of the Church’s mission to a mere constitutional right within a liberal democratic order, rather than the supernatural mandate to proclaim Christ’s absolute kingship over all nations and every aspect of human law.
The “Bishops” and the Idolatry of Constitutional Rights
The most immediate and damning observation is the USCCB’s own language. Bishop Daniel E. Thomas declared gratitude for “the unanimous Court decision protecting the freedom of pregnancy help centers to serve mothers and children in need without harmful and unconstitutional government intrusion.” The USCCB’s amicus brief went further, asserting that “compelling disclosure of a religious organization’s financial support violates the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion.” This language is not merely imprudent — it is a formal act of submission to the very principle that Pius IX condemned as the 80th proposition of the Syllabus of Errors: “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.”
The “bishops” of the conciliar sect do not speak as successors of the Apostles, who were commanded to teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost (Matt. 28:19). They do not invoke the kingship of Christ over the state of New Jersey, nor do they remind the civil magistrate that his authority is derived from God and circumscribed by divine law. Instead, they petition the secular court, invoke the First Amendment, and rejoice when the state deigns to respect a “constitutional guarantee.” This is the language of a voluntary association seeking its place in the marketplace of ideas — not the language of the Church founded by the King of kings.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, established the Feast of Christ the King precisely to combat this mentality: “The plague is the secularism of our times, so-called laicism, its errors and wicked endeavors… It began with the denial of Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations.” The “bishops” of the USCCB do not deny Christ’s kingship in so many words — they simply act as though it has no bearing on the legal strategy of a Catholic organization. They treat the First Amendment as the ultimate protection, rather than recognizing that the Church’s freedom comes from Christ, not from the Constitution of the United States. As Pius XI taught: “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 Silence That Condemns: What the “Bishops” Did Not Say
The article describes the subpoena as seeking “names, addresses, and places of employment” of donors. The USCCB’s brief contended that disclosure would “undermine the group’s religious mission and chill the free-exercise rights of donors.” These are legitimate concerns on a purely natural level. But what is conspicuously absent from the entire discourse?
There is no mention of the mortal sin of abortion. There is no declaration that New Jersey’s permissive abortion laws are intrinsically evil, null, and void insofar as they contradict the divine law. There is no warning that Catholic legislators who support such laws are formal cooperators in evil and risk excommunication. There is no reminder that the civil magistrate who commands or permits the murder of the innocent violates the natural law written by God in every human heart and will face the judgment of Christ the King.
Instead, the framing is entirely defensive and juridical: “Can we challenge this subpoena in federal court, or must we go through state court first?” This is the language of lawyers, not shepherds. The “bishops” have reduced the defense of unborn children — a matter of divine law and the fifth commandment — to a procedural question of federal versus state jurisdiction. This is the hermeneutic of continuity in action: the seamless adaptation of the Church’s mission to the categories of liberal democracy.
St. Pius X, in Lamentabili Sane Exitu, condemned the proposition that “the Church is an enemy of the progress of natural and natural sciences” (prop. 57) and that “truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him” (prop. 58). But the conciliar “bishops” have embraced a different evolution: the evolution of the Church’s self-understanding from a perfect society endowed with all the means to achieve its supernatural end into a voluntary association navigating the pluralistic public square. This is not progress — it is apostasy.
The Subpoena Itself: A Perversion of Civil Authority
New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin’s investigation into crisis pregnancy centers is described as targeting organizations that “may provide ‘false or misleading information about the safety and legality of abortion.'” Let us examine this claim with the clarity that Catholic doctrine demands.
Abortion is not a matter of opinion or debate. It is the direct killing of an innocent human being, which the Church has always taught is a grave sin against the fifth commandment. The civil authority that legalizes abortion does not thereby make it moral — it merely compounds its own guilt by formal cooperation in the destruction of the innocent. As Pius IX declared in Apostolicae Sedis (1869), those who procure abortion incur excommunication latae sententiae. The “legality” of abortion in New Jersey is, from the perspective of divine law, no law at all, since “it is not lawful for the state to act as if there were no God” (Pius XI, Quas Primas).
When Platkin accuses crisis pregnancy centers of providing “false or misleading information about the safety and legality of abortion,” he is operating within a framework that presupposes the legitimacy of abortion as a legal right. But this framework is itself a violation of the natural law. The crisis pregnancy centers are not providing “misleading” information — they are providing true information about the humanity of the unborn child and the spiritual and physical dangers of abortion. The “misleading” information comes from the state, which pretends that the deliberate killing of an innocent person is a “reproductive right.”
The USCCB’s response to this persecution should have been a formal denunciation of New Jersey’s abortion laws as contrary to divine law, a warning to Catholic politicians who support them, and a declaration that the subpoena is an act of hostility toward the Church’s divine mission. Instead, they filed an amicus brief arguing about constitutional guarantees. This is the difference between the Church of Christ and the conciliar sect: the former fears only God; the latter fears the state.
The ACLU and the Unholy Alliance
The article notes that “diverse groups including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, members of Congress, the Trump administration, and the ACLU had agreed that First Choice should be able to challenge the subpoena in federal court.” The inclusion of the ACLU — an organization historically hostile to the Catholic Church on virtually every moral issue — should give pause to any Catholic who takes the USCCB’s leadership seriously.
This alliance is not a sign of the Church’s engagement with the world — it is a sign of the absorption of the Church into the world. The ACLU’s vision of “religious freedom” is not the Catholic vision. For the ACLU, religious freedom means the right to private worship without interference from the state — a vision that Pius IX condemned as indifferentism (Syllabus, prop. 15: “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true”). For the Catholic Church, religious freedom means the right — and duty — of the true religion to be publicly professed and to shape the laws of the state in conformity with divine law.
The USCCB’s willingness to stand alongside the ACLU in defense of a “constitutional guarantee” reveals that they have internalized the liberal framework rather than challenging it. They do not argue that New Jersey’s abortion laws are unjust and must be repealed — they argue that crisis pregnancy centers should be left alone to operate within the existing legal framework. This is not the voice of the Church Militant — it is the voice of a domesticated religion that has accepted the terms set by its persecutors.
The Deeper Malady: The Conciliar Sect’s Abdication of Authority
The entire episode — from the subpoena to the Supreme Court ruling to the USCCB’s response — illustrates the fundamental problem with the conciliar sect: it has no authority to speak on behalf of the Church of Christ.
The USCCB is not a legitimate magisterial body. It is a bureaucratic apparatus created after Vatican II, staffed by men who have, in many cases, been implicated in the cover-up of clerical sexual abuse, the promotion of liturgical abuse, and the systematic dismantling of Catholic doctrine on faith and morals. Bishop Daniel E. Thomas, who issued the statement praising the Supreme Court’s decision, speaks not with the authority of a successor of the Apostles but with the authority of a registered agent of a tax-exempt corporation.
The true Church — the Church that endures in the faithful who profess the integral Catholic faith and are led by bishops with valid sacraments and validly ordained priests — does not petition the Supreme Court for “constitutional guarantees.” It proclaims the kingship of Christ, condemns the sins of the nations, and warns the civil magistrate that his authority is derived from God and will be judged by God. As Pius XI taught: “The annual celebration of this solemnity will also remind states that 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 conciliar “bishops” do not remind anyone of the final judgment. They remind us only of their own irrelevance.
Conclusion: The Yoke Is Easy, but They Have Chosen Another
The Supreme Court’s ruling in First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, Inc. v. Davenport is, on its face, a minor procedural victory for religious liberty. But the manner in which it was achieved — and the manner in which it was received by the USCCB — reveals the depth of the crisis in the structures occupying the Vatican.
The “bishops” have chosen to fight on the enemy’s terrain, using the enemy’s weapons, and accepting the enemy’s rules. They invoke the First Amendment instead of the divine law. They petition the Supreme Court instead of proclaiming the judgment of Christ the King. They stand alongside the ACLU instead of condemning the culture of death. And they call this “protecting the freedom of religion.”
This is not the freedom of religion — it is the freedom of religion to be irrelevant. It is the freedom to operate a pregnancy center within a legal framework that permits the murder of the unborn. It is the freedom to serve mothers and children without challenging the system that destroys them. It is the freedom of a Church that has forgotten its mission.
Christ said: “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:30). But the conciliar sect has chosen a different yoke — the yoke of liberal democracy, constitutional law, and pluralistic dialogue. And that yoke is not easy. It is the yoke of apostasy, and it leads not to eternal life but to the destruction of souls.
Let the faithful take note: when the “bishops” speak, they speak not for Christ but for the abomination of desolation that has taken His place. Let them turn instead to the unchanging teaching of the Church — to the Syllabus of Errors, to Quas Primas, to Lamentabili, to the canons of the ecumenical councils, and to the witness of the saints. There, and only there, will they find the truth that sets them free — not the “freedom” of the First Amendment, but the freedom of the children of God.
Source:
U.S. Supreme Court allows faith-based pregnancy center to challenge donor subpoena (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 29.04.2026