The National Catholic Register (CNA) portal reports on July 21, 2026, that Representative Veronica Escobar (D‑Texas) introduced H.R. 9739 to block the federal government from seizing land around Mount Cristo Rey in Sunland Park, New Mexico, owned by the Diocese of Las Cruces, for border barrier construction. The legislation would designate the mountain — crowned by a limestone statue of Christ the King — as a “holy site” and prohibit federal funds for litigation or construction on the property. The bill is endorsed by the conciliar “bishops” Peter Baldacchino of Las Cruces and Mark Seitz of El Paso, who frame the government’s action as an assault on “religious liberty” and a violation of a “sacred place” that serves as a “pathway to unity.” This maneuver exposes the conciliar sect’s perversion of the Social Kingship of Christ into a weapon of political activism and the heresy of religious liberty.
Reduction of the Kingship of Christ to a Naturalistic Symbol
The article centers on a statue erected in honor of Christ the King, a feast instituted by Pius XI in the encyclical Quas Primas (1925) to assert the absolute sovereignty of Christ over all nations, laws, and temporal powers. Pius XI declared: “His reign extends not only to Catholic nations… but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ” (Quas Primas, 28). The conciliar “bishops” Baldacchino and Seitz, however, strip this kingship of its political and juridical dimension. They present the statue not as a claim of Christ’s rights over the State, but as a “religious and cultural landmark,” a “symbol of hope and peace,” and a “literal pathway to unity” — purely horizontal, sociological categories. This is the laicism condemned by Pius XI: “the secularism of our times… began with the denial of Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations” (Quas Primas). The conciliar hierarchy collaborates with a pro-abortion Democratic politician to invoke the King of Kings against border enforcement, thereby prostituting the royal dignity of Christ to serve a partisan, naturalistic agenda.
The Heresy of “Religious Liberty” as a Shield Against the State’s Duty
The legislation and the “bishops'” statements explicitly invoke “religious liberty” — the error condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus (Error 15, 55, 77, 79) and by Leo XIII in Immortale Dei and Libertas. The Syllabus anathematizes the proposition: “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church” (Error 55). Pius XI in Quas Primas teaches that rulers of states have the duty to publicly honor Christ and obey Him, ordering laws and justice according to God’s commandments. The conciliar “bishops” invert this: they demand the State abstain from exercising its sovereign right to secure its borders — a duty of the temporal power for the common good (Salus populi suprema lex esto) — in deference to a false concept of ecclesiastical immunity that serves only to obstruct the State’s God-given function. Bishop Seitz’s rhetoric — “mutual respect and love,” “separation and rejection” — reveals a personalist, dialogical ecclesiology foreign to Catholic doctrine, which knows only the subjection of the State to Christ the King.
Invalid Hierarchy Collaborating with Enemies of the Faith
The “bishops” Baldacchino and Seitz are functionaries of the conciliar sect, occupying sees vacated by the apostasy of the post-1958 hierarchy. As demonstrated in the theological arguments for sedevacantism, a manifest heretic loses his office ipso facto (St. Robert Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice; Wernz-Vidal, Ius Canonicum; Canon 188.4, 1917 Code). The “ordination” rites of Paul VI (1968) are doubtful at best, invalid at worst, rendering the entire conciliar episcopacy canonically non-existent. These men possess no jurisdiction, no teaching authority, no sacramental power. Their “support” for a bill is the political maneuvering of laymen in purple, collaborating with a legislator who champions the slaughter of the unborn. The faithful are warned: “A manifest heretic cannot be Pope… he cannot be the head of something of which he is not a member” (Bellarmine). A fortiori, a manifest heretic cannot be a bishop.
Profanation of the Sacred: The Statue as Political Prop
The article notes Bishop Baldacchino “celebrating Mass at the mountain’s peak on June 28.” In the conciliar sect, the “Mass” is the Novus Ordo Missae — a fabricated rite that expresses a Protestantized theology of the “Lord’s Supper,” anathematized by the Council of Trent (Sess. XXII, can. 1-9). Any “Mass” offered by an invalidly ordained “priest” using a heretical rite is not the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary but a simulacrum, an act of idolatry. To use this pseudo-liturgical act as a photo-op to defend a statue against a border fence is the height of sacrilege. The statue itself, erected in 1939, stands as a monument to a feast the conciliar church has moved and emptied — transferring Christ the King from the last Sunday of October (eschatological, confronting the world) to the last Sunday of the liturgical year (privatized, “cosmic”). The conciliar hierarchy guards the stone while having abandoned the reign.
Symptomatic Level: The Conciliar Church as NGO
This episode is paradigmatic of the neo-church: a paramasonic structure functioning as a non-governmental organization for social advocacy. The “bishops” speak the language of the world — “community,” “culture,” “history,” “mutual respect” — never the language of the Gospel: sin, grace, conversion, the Kingship of Christ, the final judgment. Total silence on the supernatural order. The Syllabus condemns the proposition: “The teaching of the Catholic Church is hostile to the well-being and interests of society” (Error 40); the conciliar sect proves the Modernists right by reducing the Church to a servant of secular interests. The “diocese” sues the government not for the libertas Ecclesiae (freedom to preach the Gospel and govern souls), but to preserve a pilgrimage tourism site. Quas Primas warned: “When God and Jesus Christ were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed”. The conciliar “bishops” are the gravediggers of those foundations.
Conclusion: No King But Caesar
The Mount Cristo Rey dispute reveals the theological bankruptcy of the conciliar sect. It invokes Christ the King to dethrone Him in the public square, using the heresy of religious liberty to neuter the State’s duty to govern for the common good under God’s law. The “bishops” are impostors; their “dioceses” are juridical fictions; their “Masses” are null; their “statues” are museum pieces. Non est rex nisi Christus — but the conciliar hierarchy serves a different king. The true remedy is not a congressional bill, but the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy, the Traditional Latin Mass, and the public confession of Christ’s Kingship over every nation and law. “Then at last… every tongue will confess that our Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father” (Pius XI, Quas Primas, quoting Leo XIII).
Source:
Mount Cristo Rey Bill Seeks to Block Federal Land Seizure (ncregister.com)
Date: 21.07.2026