EWTN News reports that the Canadian Parliament has passed the “Combatting Hate Act” (Bill C-9), which received Royal Assent on June 18 and takes effect July 18. While ostensibly strengthening penalties for hate-motivated offenses and adding protections for places of worship, the legislation repeals a long-standing Criminal Code provision that protected the expression of religious opinions “in good faith” based on religious texts. Cardinal Frank Leo of Toronto expressed concern, urging lawmakers to “carefully consider amendments that will provide clear and unambiguous protection for freedom of religion, conscience, and expression.” The roundup also includes news of a Missionaries of Charity sister acquitted of child trafficking charges in India, the death of Sister Mary Augustine Nemer in East Africa, a Coptic Catholic synod in Egypt, revelations about weapons theft linked to the murder of 11 Catholics in Northern Ireland, a Chaldean patriarch’s meeting with Kurdish officials, and an archbishop’s lament over violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Abolition of Religious Truth in the Name of “Hate”: Canada’s Logical Descent into Persecution
The passage of Canada’s “Combatting Hate Act” represents not merely a legislative shift but the culmination of a decades-long process whereby secular states, emboldened by the abdication of ecclesiastical authority, systematically dismantle the public reign of Christ the King. The repeal of the protection for expressing religious opinions “in good faith” based on religious texts is a direct assault on the divine mandate of the Church to teach all nations (Matthew 28:19-20). When the state declares that the objective truths of Catholic doctrine— truths such as the condemnation of sodomy, the exclusivity of the Catholic Church as the sole ark of salvation, or the reality of eternal damnation—can be legally reclassified as “hate,” it does not merely restrict speech; it establishes a regime of de facto persecution against those who profess the integral faith.
Pius XI, in his encyclical Quas Primas (1925), unequivocally declared that the reign of Christ extends over all nations and that rulers who refuse public veneration to Christ invite societal collapse: “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 Canadian legislation is a textbook fulfillment of this prophecy. By removing the “religious exemption,” the state implicitly declares that human law supersedes divine revelation—a proposition condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), particularly in proposition 55: “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church,” which the Church has consistently rejected as a dangerous falsehood.
The Silence of the Shepherds: Cardinal Leo and the Illusion of “Freedom of Religion”
The response of Cardinal Frank Leo of Toronto is emblematic of the post-conciliar Church’s impotence and complicity in its own marginalization. His plea for “clear and unambiguous protection for freedom of religion, conscience, and expression” operates entirely within the framework of liberal democracy—a framework that the pre-conciliar Church explicitly condemned. The “freedom of religion” championed by the conciliar sect since Dignitatis Humanae (1965) is a naturalistic error that places the Catholic Church on the same level as false religions, directly contradicting the teaching of Pius IX in the Syllabus (proposition 15: “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true”) and Leo XIII in Immortale Dei (1885), which affirmed that the state has a duty to profess the Catholic faith and restrict the public exercise of false cults.
Cardinal Leo’s language reveals the depth of the conciliar captivity. He does not invoke the Kingship of Christ, the binding nature of divine law, or the duty of the state to submit to the Church. Instead, he begs for “protection” within a system designed to silence Catholic truth. This is the inevitable fruit of the post-conciliar abandonment of the Church’s divine mission to govern nations spiritually. As St. Pius X warned in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907), the modernist error reduces religion to a private sentiment, stripping it of its objective, binding authority. The Canadian law is the logical consequence of this reduction: if religion is merely a matter of personal opinion, then the state may legitimately suppress opinions it deems “harmful.”
The Symptomatic Level: From Quas Primas to Bill C-9
The trajectory from Pius XI’s institution of the Feast of Christ the King in 1925 to the passage of Canada’s hate crime law in 2026 illustrates the catastrophic failure of the post-conciliar Church to maintain the social reign of Christ. Where Pius XI demanded that states publicly recognize Christ’s authority, the conciliar sect has accepted—and even legitimized—the expulsion of Christ from public life. The “Combatting Hate Act” is not an aberration but the natural outcome of a Church that has embraced the very secularism Pius XI identified as “the plague that poisons human society.”
Moreover, the law’s focus on “hate” rather than truth reveals the subjectivist epistemology that underpins modern liberalism. In the Catholic framework, truth is objective and immutable; error has no rights. The Canadian state, by contrast, defines “hate” not by reference to divine law but by the shifting sentiments of a relativistic culture. This inversion—where the state becomes the arbiter of moral truth—is precisely the “secularism” (laïcité) that Pius XI condemned as a “crime” that “began with the denial of Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations.”
The Wider Roundup: A Church in Retreat
The other items in the EWTN News roundup further illustrate the global retreat of the Church and the conciliar sect’s inability to defend its own interests, let alone the faith.
India: The Persecution of Religious Sisters and the Failure of “Dialogue”
The acquittal of Missionaries of Charity Sister Concelia Baxla after eight years of legal ordeal—including three years in prison—on child trafficking charges is presented as a victory for “truth.” However, the very fact that a religious sister could be imprisoned for years on dubious charges reflects the hostility of secular and Hindu nationalist forces toward Catholic charitable works. The conciliar sect’s reliance on “dialogue” and legal processes, rather than the assertion of the Church’s divine right to operate freely, leaves religious orders vulnerable to state harassment. As Pius IX declared in Etsi Multa (1863), the Church possesses inherent rights that no state may legitimately suppress.
East Africa: The Death of a Missionary and the Illusion of “Progress”
The death of Sister Mary Augustine Nemer, who contributed to the publication of the “African Bible,” is noted with tributes. Yet the conciliar sect’s embrace of vernacular translations and ecumenical Bible projects—often influenced by Protestant and modernist agendas—stands in contrast to the Church’s traditional insistence on the Vulgate and the Magisterium’s exclusive authority to interpret Scripture (cf. the Council of Trent, Session IV). The “African Bible” project, while presented as a triumph, may well reflect the very “development of dogmas” condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907).
Egypt: The Coptic Catholic Synod and the Diaspora Dilemma
The Coptic Catholic Synod’s focus on education and the diaspora reflects the conciliar sect’s preoccupation with institutional survival rather than the conversion of nations. The discussion of establishing a Coptic Catholic eparchy in the diaspora is a tacit admission that Christianity is being driven from its historic homelands—a direct consequence of the West’s abandonment of Christ the King and the rise of secularism and Islamism.
Northern Ireland: The Murder of Catholics and the Betrayal of Justice
The revelation that a stolen British army gun was used to murder 11 Catholics in Northern Ireland—and that documents linking the theft to the murders were withheld from investigators—exposes the complicity of state forces in anti-Catholic violence. The conciliar sect’s silence on such matters, in contrast to the vigorous defense of Catholic rights by pre-conciliar popes, underscores its abandonment of the faithful.
Iraq: The Chaldean Patriarch and the Illusion of “Coexistence”
Chaldean Patriarch Paul III Nona’s meeting with Kurdish officials, where he thanked them for receiving displaced Christians after the ISIS invasion, is presented as a positive development. Yet the very existence of displaced Christians is a testament to the failure of the West—and the conciliar Church—to defend the Christian East. The patriarch’s call for “coexistence” echoes the post-conciliar obsession with “dialogue” at the expense of the Church’s missionary mandate to convert all nations to Christ.
Democratic Republic of Congo: Decades of War and the Absence of Christ the King
Archbishop François-Xavier Maroy Rusengo’s lament over three decades of war in eastern DRC, while invoking the “Gospel message of love and reconciliation,” fails to identify the root cause: the absence of Christ the King from the governance of nations. As Pius XI taught, peace is only possible when individuals and states submit to the reign of Christ. The conciliar sect’s reliance on naturalistic appeals to “love” and “reconciliation,” divorced from the supernatural order, is powerless to heal the wounds of a world in rebellion against God.
Conclusion: The Reign of Christ or the Reign of the Antichrist
The passage of Canada’s “Combatting Hate Act” is not an isolated event but a milestone in the global advance of the secularist tyranny that the pre-conciliar Church warned against for centuries. The conciliar sect, having abandoned the social Kingship of Christ and embraced the errors of religious liberty, ecumenism, and the separation of Church and State, is incapable of resisting this advance. Its leaders, like Cardinal Leo, can only plead for “protection” within a system designed to destroy the faith.
The remedy is not dialogue, not legal appeals, not the cultivation of “good relations” with secular powers. The remedy is the restoration of the integral Catholic faith: the recognition of Christ the King as the sovereign of all nations, the submission of states to the Church’s spiritual authority, and the uncompromising proclamation of the Gospel—including those truths that the world labels “hate.” As Pius XI declared, “The peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ.” Until that kingdom is restored, the faithful must resist the lies of the conciliar sect and the tyranny of the secular state, trusting not in human prudence but in the promise of Our Lord: “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
Source:
Canada enacts hate crime law that removes long-standing religious exemption (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 19.06.2026