EWTN News portal reports that on June 11, 2026, multiple lawsuits were filed in federal courts challenging the permissive assisted suicide laws recently enacted in New York and Illinois. The lawsuits, brought by individual plaintiffs and patients’ rights groups including the Institute for Patients’ Rights and the National Council on Independent Living, argue that these laws pose a grave threat to individuals with disabilities, creating what they describe as a “deadly and discriminatory system.” The suits contend that the laws violate disability protection statutes and equal-protection provisions under the 14th Amendment. Notably, the article quotes New York Archbishop Ronald Hicks and the Illinois bishops voicing opposition to these laws, with Hicks warning of a “new and frightening era” and the Illinois bishops describing the law as a “dangerous and heartbreaking path.” Yet this article, and the Catholic leaders it quotes, reveal a profound theological and spiritual bankruptcy that demands uncompromising exposure.
The Sanctity of Life: A Doctrine the Conciliar Sect Long Abandoned
The fundamental Catholic teaching on the sanctity of human life is unequivocal and immutable. Human life is a gift from God, and only God has dominion over its beginning and end. The Fifth Commandment — “Thou shalt not kill” — admits of no exceptions for state-sanctioned murder dressed in the language of “compassion” or “medical aid in dying.” The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches that homicide is among the most grievous of sins, and the Church has consistently condemned any cooperation with the intentional destruction of innocent human life.
Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical Casti Connubii (1930), declared: “The public magistrate, who has no power over the lives of the innocent, cannot directly kill an innocent person.” This principle applies with equal force to the terminally ill, the disabled, and the elderly. The state has no authority to license what God expressly forbids. As the Syllabus of Errors of Pope Pius IX (1864) condemns in Proposition 63: “It is lawful to refuse obedience to legitimate princes, and even to rebel against them” — and by extension, when civil law contradicts divine law, the faithful are bound to resist, not merely file lawsuits.
Yet what do we observe in the response of the conciliar “clergy” to this abomination? Archbishop Ronald Hicks offers a rhetorical question: “How long before this so-called ‘compassion’ for the terminally ill evolves from a ‘choice’ into an expectation to kill oneself for all sorts of vulnerable individuals?” This is not the language of a shepherd defending his flock with the sword of truth. This is the language of bureaucratic caution, of a man who has internalized the very secular framework he claims to oppose. He speaks of “evolution” — the very modernist heresy condemned by Saint Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu, which rejects the immutability of Catholic doctrine. The Archbishop does not declare, with apostolic authority, that this law is null and void before God, that cooperation with it constitutes mortal sin, and that legislators who enacted it have incurred automatic excommunication. Instead, he asks a timid question and warns of a “frightening era” — as though the era of apostasy did not begin decades ago.
The Linguistic Betrayal: “Medical Aid in Dying” as Orwellian Deception
The article itself employs the euphemism “medical aid in dicing” — a term deliberately crafted by the culture of death to obscure the reality of what is occurring: the intentional killing of a human being by a physician. This is not medicine. This is not care. This is murder, plain and simple, dressed in the language of compassion to deceive the weak and the vulnerable.
The lawsuits filed by disability advocates correctly identify the core danger: these laws create a system in which “people with life-threatening disabilities are offered death instead of the support programs everyone else get.” This is the logical and inevitable consequence of a society that has rejected the kingship of Christ. When God is removed from the public square — as Pius XI lamented in Quas Primas — the result is not freedom but tyranny, not compassion but the commodification of human life. The state, having denied the sovereignty of Christ the King, assumes to itself the divine prerogative of determining who shall live and who shall die.
The Illinois bishops’ statement is equally revealing in its impotence: “Rather than investing in real end-of-life support such as palliative and hospice care, pain management, and family-centered accompaniment, our state has chosen to normalize killing oneself.” Note the framing: the bishops speak as though the state merely made a poor policy choice, as though the solution is more funding for hospice care. This is the conciliar sect’s characteristic reduction of supernatural truths to naturalistic categories. The issue is not inadequate palliative care — it is the formal cooperation of the civil authority in the deliberate destruction of a human soul at the moment of its greatest vulnerability. The bishops should be declaring, with the authority of the Magisterium, that these laws are intrinsically evil, that no Catholic may cooperate with them in any way, and that the legislators who passed them have placed themselves outside the Church. Instead, they offer policy recommendations.
The Omission That Condemns: Silence on the Supernatural
What is most damning in this article — and in the statements of the “Catholic” leaders it quotes — is what is entirely absent. There is no mention of the state of the soul of the person who commits suicide. There is no mention of the eternal consequences of self-murder. There is no mention of the sacraments — of Confession, of the Anointing of the Sick, of the Most Holy Eucharist as the true comfort of the dying. There is no mention of the redemptive value of suffering united to the Cross of Christ.
This silence is not accidental. It is the hallmark of the post-conciliar apostasy. The conciliar sect has so thoroughly accommodated itself to the secular world that it no longer speaks the language of the supernatural. Its “bishops” address the world in the world’s terms — “rights,” “discrimination,” “equal protection” — while remaining utterly silent about the only matters that truly pertain to salvation. As Saint Pius X warned in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, the Modernists reduce religion to a matter of sentiment and social action, stripping it of its supernatural content. The result is a “Church” that can file lawsuits against assisted suicide but cannot — or will not — tell a dying soul how to save itself for eternity.
The Catholic teaching on suffering is clear: suffering, when united to the Passion of Christ, has immense redemptive value. The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches that suffering is a consequence of original sin but also a means of purification and merit for the faithful. To offer a suffering person death instead of the grace of the sacraments is not compassion — it is the ultimate cruelty, a diabolical inversion of true charity. It is to tell a soul in its darkest hour that there is no hope, no meaning in suffering, no Cross to bear — only the needle and the poison.
The Conciliar Sect’s Complicity in the Culture of Death
Let there be no illusion: the conciliar sect bears direct responsibility for the passage of these laws. For over six decades, the structures occupying the Vatican have systematically dismantled the Church’s public witness on the sanctity of life. They have embraced the very principles of religious liberty, secularism, and the separation of Church and State that Pius IX condemned in the Syllabus of Errors as Proposition 77: “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to exclusion of all other forms of worship.”
By accepting the legitimacy of secular governance in matters of faith and morals — by conceding that the state may legislate independently of divine law — the conciliar sect created the very conditions in which assisted suicide could become law. The “bishops” who now lament these laws are reaping what they sowed. They abandoned the social reign of Christ the King, and now they are surprised when the state behaves as though Christ has no kingship at all.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, declared with unmistakable clarity: “The state must leave the same freedom to the members of Orders and Congregations, both male and female, who are indeed the most valiant helpers of the Pastors of the Church and contribute most to the expansion and establishment of Christ’s Kingdom.” And further: “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.” Where is this warning in the statements of Archbishop Hicks and the Illinois bishops? Where is the reminder of the final judgment? Where is the proclamation that Christ the King demands obedience from the state, and that disobedience will be punished?
It is absent — because the conciliar sect does not believe it. The “bishops” of the neo-church operate within a theological framework that has effectively dethroned Christ the King and replaced Him with the secular liberal state. They appeal to the 14th Amendment while remaining silent about the divine constitution of society. They speak of “rights” — a concept Pius IX condemned in Proposition 59 of the Syllabus: “Right consists in the material fact. All human duties are an empty word, and all human facts have the force of right.” — while ignoring the only true right: the right of God to be obeyed.
The Lawsuits: Justice Through Secular Means or the Justice of God?
The lawsuits filed by disability advocates invoke federal law and the 14th Amendment. While their concerns about discrimination against the disabled are legitimate from a natural law perspective, the Catholic response cannot be confined to secular legal remedies. The Church’s authority does not derive from the Constitution of the United States. It derives from Christ, Who said to Peter: “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18).
When the civil power enacts laws contrary to divine law, the Church’s response is not to file lawsuits in secular courts — it is to declare those laws null and void, to excommunicate those who enact and enforce them, and to call the faithful to resist unto death if necessary. This is the teaching of every pope before the conciliar revolution. Pope Pius IX, in his apostolic letter Ad Apostolicae (1851), declared that the Church’s immunity derives not from civil law but from divine law, and that no civil power can deprive the Church of its rights. The same principle applies to laws that destroy innocent life: they are ipso facto null and void, because they contradict the eternal law of God.
The conciliar “bishops” will not make this declaration — because they lack the authority, the faith, and the courage to do so. They are captives of the very system they claim to oppose. They have accepted the premises of liberal democracy — that the state is sovereign in its own domain, that religious authority must operate within the boundaries set by civil law — and they cannot escape the consequences of that acceptance.
The True Remedy: Return to Christ the King
The only true remedy for the evil of assisted suicide — and for every other evil that flows from the rejection of God’s law — is the restoration of the social reign of Christ the King. This is not a political program in the secular sense. It is a supernatural reality: the recognition by individuals, families, and states that Jesus Christ is King of kings and Lord of lords, and that all authority — civil, ecclesiastical, and domestic — must be exercised in obedience to His law.
Pius XI taught: “If rulers and legitimate superiors will have the conviction that they exercise authority not so much by their own right as by the command and in the place of the Divine King, everyone will notice how religiously and wisely they will use their authority.” And further: “Then at last so many wounds can be healed, then there will be hope that the law will regain its former authority, sweet peace will return again, swords and weapons will fall from hands, when all willingly accept the reign of Christ and obey Him.”
This is the message that the conciliar sect refuses to proclaim. It is the message that the true Church — the Church of all ages, the Church that endures in the faithful who profess the integral Catholic faith — must proclaim without compromise or hesitation. Assisted suicide is not a policy disagreement. It is a mortal sin against the Fifth Commandment, a violation of the natural law written on every human heart, and an act of rebellion against the sovereignty of God. No lawsuit, no legislative campaign, no amount of “investment in palliative care” can address the root cause of this evil. Only the return of souls to Christ the King — through the sacraments, through prayer, through the preaching of the unchanging Gospel — can restore the order that sin has destroyed.
The conciliar “bishops” have shown themselves incapable of this mission. They have chosen the path of dialogue with the world, of accommodation with the culture of death, of silence on the supernatural truths that alone can save souls. Let the faithful reject their false leadership and turn to the immutable Tradition of the Church — the Tradition that teaches, with Saint Augustine, that “the state is nothing else than a harmonious association of men” ordered toward God, and that any state which sanctions the killing of the innocent has forfeited its claim to the obedience of the faithful.
Adveniat regnum Tuum.
Source:
Disability advocates file federal suits over ‘imminent risk’ of New York, Illinois suicide laws (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 11.06.2026