The National Catholic Register reports on oral arguments before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court regarding the installation of statues of St. Michael the Archangel and St. Florian on a public safety building in Quincy, Massachusetts. The ACLU of Massachusetts contends that these statues—representing patron saints of police and firefighters—impermissibly elevate Catholicism in violation of Article 3 of the Massachusetts Constitution, which prohibits the subordination of one religious sect to another. The city’s mayor, Thomas Koch, asserts the statues honor professional traditions, not religion. The court appears poised to reconsider the 1970s-era Lemon test, which the U.S. Supreme Court abandoned in 2022, but remains binding in Massachusetts precedent. The case exposes the deep-seated hostility of secularist legal structures toward any public acknowledgment of the supernatural order, a hostility rooted in the very liberalism condemned by the Church for over a century.
The Idol of Neutrality: A Heretical Constitutional Principle
The ACLU lawyer, Claire Rossman, articulated the core of the secularist argument: the Massachusetts Constitution “encompasses a general principle of government neutrality” that does not permit the government to elevate “one set of religious beliefs or religion more generally ‘above nonreligious beliefs.'” This principle, presented as self-evident, is nothing less than a formal declaration of the supremacy of irreligion over revealed truth. It is the practical application of the condemned errors of liberalism and indifferentism, which the Church has consistently identified as grave threats to both souls and civil society.
Pope Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), explicitly condemned the proposition that “the best theory of civil society requires that popular schools… should be freed from all ecclesiastical authority” and subjected to civil power according to “the prevalent opinions of the age” (Proposition 47). The ACLU’s argument extends this logic to all public space: any symbol with religious resonance must be purged to ensure the government does not “elevate” religion. This is not neutrality; it is the establishment of secularism as the state religion, a direct violation of the rights of Christ the King.
Condemned Roots: From Syllabus to Quas Primas
The secularist position is a direct descendant of the errors catalogued in the Syllabus. 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.” Proposition 80 goes further, declaring that “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.” The ACLU’s stance is the legal enforcement of these condemned propositions, demanding that public life be stripped of any acknowledgment of God’s sovereignty.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas (1925), established the Feast of Christ the King precisely to combat this rising tide of secularism. He lamented that “this kind of outpouring of evil has afflicted the whole world because very many have removed Jesus Christ and His most holy law from their customs, from private, family, and public life.” The ACLU’s lawsuit is a textbook example of the “secularism of our times, so-called laicism, its errors and wicked endeavors” that Pius XI identified as a “plague that poisons human society.” The attempt to remove saints’ statues from a public building is not a neutral act; it is an act of war against the Social Kingship of Christ, an attempt to exile the supernatural from the public square.
The Lemon Test: A Tool of Persecution, Now Abandoned
The legal framework at issue, the Lemon test, was a product of the same secularist mindset. Its standards—requiring a “secular legislative purpose” and prohibiting any “advancement” of religion—were designed to systematically marginalize religious expression. The U.S. Supreme Court abandoned this test in 2022, recognizing it as “ahistorical” and “atextual.” Yet Massachusetts clings to it, demonstrating how legal precedent can become a vehicle for perpetuating error long after its intellectual foundations have crumbled.
Justice Scott Kafker’s concern that Massachusetts “can’t allow more hostility to religion than the Supreme Court would tolerate” reveals the inversion of justice. The question should not be how much hostility the state can tolerate, but how much recognition of God’s law the state is obligated to provide. As Pius XI declared, “Christ the Lord… is the Lawgiver, to whom men owe obedience,” and “all power in heaven and on earth is given to Christ the Lord.” The state’s duty is not neutrality but submission to the Divine King. The Lemon test, even in its abandoned form, is an instrument of the abomination of desolation, a legal mechanism to ensure that “the sweetest Name of our Redeemer is omitted with unworthy silence in international gatherings and parliaments.”
The Professional Pretext: A Thin Veil for Secularist Dogma
Mayor Koch’s defense—that the statues honor police and firefighters, not religion—is a concession to the secularist framework. While St. Michael and St. Florian are indeed patrons of these professions, their significance is inseparable from their supernatural reality. To claim otherwise is to engage in the very separation of the natural and supernatural orders that the Church condemns. As Pius XI taught, Christ’s reign “encompasses all human nature,” and there is “no power in us that is exempt from this reign.” The attempt to reduce these saints to “mascots” is a degradation of their true nature and a denial of the spiritual realities they represent.
The ACLU’s Rossman explicitly stated that even if the figures were deemed “mascots,” their religious origin “poisoned the well.” This reveals the true agenda: not the prevention of religious favoritism, but the eradication of all religious influence from public life. It is the logical endpoint of the indifferentist error condemned by Pius IX, which holds that all religions are equally valid and therefore none should be acknowledged by the state. This is not tolerance; it is the establishment of atheism as the public norm.
The Duty of Rulers: Obedience to Christ the King
The Church’s teaching on the duties of civil rulers is unequivocal. Pius XI, in Quas Primas, declared: “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.” He further warned that “when God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed.”
The Massachusetts court, by entertaining this case, participates in the rebellion against Christ the King. The city of Quincy, by seeking to honor its protectors through their heavenly patrons, fulfills a natural and supernatural duty. The ACLU’s lawsuit is not a defense of constitutional principle but an act of hostility against the faith, a manifestation of the “synagogue of Satan” that Pius IX warned “gathers its troops against the Church of Christ.” The faithful must recognize that true justice and authority belong exclusively to the true Church and her immutable teachings, not to the usurpers of the conciliar sect or the secularist legal structures they have spawned.
Conclusion: The Abomination of Desolation in the Courts
This case is not merely about two statues. It is a battleground in the war between the City of God and the City of Man. The secularist legal establishment, armed with the condemned errors of liberalism and indifferentism, seeks to purge all acknowledgment of the supernatural from public life. The Church’s response must be uncompromising: to affirm the Social Kingship of Christ, to reject the false idol of neutrality, and to recognize that the state’s duty is not to be neutral but to submit to the laws of God. As Pius XI proclaimed, “the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” Any legal system that denies this truth is not merely mistaken; it is an instrument of the abomination of desolation, and the faithful must resist it with all the means at their disposal.
Source:
ACLU Lawyer Takes Pointed Questions in Saints-Statues Case Oral Arguments (ncregister.com)
Date: 06.05.2026