The National Catholic Register (NCR), the flagship organ of the EWTN media empire, reports that the “Bishop” of Springfield, Illinois, Thomas Paprocki, has joined a Lutheran nursing home and four doctors in a federal lawsuit against the State of Illinois over its “End-of-Life Options” assisted suicide law. The coalition, represented by the Thomas More Society, argues that the statute compels participation in suicide against “conscience” and abandons “nearly two millennia of medical practice.” Paprocki claims Catholic healthcare must advance “the healing work of Christ” and “affirm the God-given dignity of every human life,” demanding freedom to serve “according to our faith, not according to the state’s mandate.” A similar suit was filed by Rockville Centre “Bishop” John Barres and religious sisters against New York’s law. This legalistic maneuvering exposes the total capitulation of the conciliar hierarchy to the secular order: they petition Caesar for “religious liberty” crumbs rather than proclaiming the Social Kingship of Christ (Quas Primas) which demands the State’s subordination to God’s Law.
The Usurpers in the Dock: No Authority, No Standing, No Church
The very premise of the lawsuit is a juridical and theological absurdity. Thomas Paprocki and John Barres are not Catholic bishops. They are functionaries of the conciliar sect occupying the Vatican since the usurpation of John XXIII in 1958. As the Defense of Sedevacantism file demonstrates from the teaching of St. Robert Bellarmine, Wernz & Vidal, and Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code: a manifest heretic loses his office ipso facto, without any declaration. By their public adhesion to the heresies of Vatican II — religious liberty (Dignitatis Humanae), false ecumenism (Unitatis Redintegratio), collegiality undermining papal primacy, and the New Mass — these men have publicly defected from the Catholic Faith. They hold no jurisdiction, no teaching office, and no sacramental authority. Their “lawsuit” is the act of private individuals, not shepherds of the Church.
Furthermore, the “Catholic health service directives” cited by Paprocki are the product of the USCCB, a national episcopal conference with no divine institution, no canonical authority in the true Church, and no power to bind consciences. It is a bureaucratic apparatus of the neo-church. To invoke its directives as a basis for “conscience rights” is to build on sand.
Ecumenism in the Courtroom: Collaboration with Heretics as Co-Plaintiffs
The most scandalous fact, reported casually by NCR, is that Paprocki joins the Lutheran Care Center as a co-plaintiff. This is operative ecumenism in its purest, most condemned form. Pius XI in Mortalium Animos (1928) condemned the “pan-Christian” movement: “The Church of Christ… cannot be united to non-Catholics without ceasing to be the Church of Christ.” The Syllabus of Pius IX (Error 18) condemns the proposition: “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion.” By suing shoulder-to-shoulder with a Lutheran institution — a body founded on heresy and schism — Paprocki publicly acknowledges the Lutheran sect as a legitimate partner in the “defense of life,” thereby denying the necessitas medii of the Catholic Church for salvation and the social order. This is not “co-belligerence”; it is apostasy in action.
The Language of the Enemy: “Healthcare,” “Dignity,” “Accompaniment,” “Conscience”
The linguistic level of the article reveals the Modernist infection of the conciliar vocabulary. Paprocki speaks of “Catholic healthcare” advancing “the healing work of Christ.” The true Church speaks of the salus animarum (salvation of souls), the Extreme Unction, the viaticum, the propitiatory Sacrifice of the Mass. “Healthcare” is a naturalistic, secular category reducing the supernatural ministry of the Church to a social service.
Mary Keen, one of the physician plaintiffs, declares: “As a doctor, I have a responsibility to meet my patients’ existential pain with loving accompaniment, not with abandonment.” This is the language of the “New Evangelization” and the “culture of encounter” — Bergoglian buzzwords replacing caritas in veritate. “Accompaniment” without the proclamation of the Gospel call to conversion and the reality of eternal judgment is sentimental humanitarianism. The “dignity of every human life” invoked by both Paprocki and Keen is the anthropocentric “dignity” of Gaudium et Spes and Dignitatis Humanae, severed from the imago Dei restored only by sanctifying grace. It is the “cult of man” condemned by Pius XI in Quas Primas: “When God and Jesus Christ were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.”
Petitioning Caesar: The Rejection of Christ’s Kingship Over the State
The theological core of the lawsuit is the plea for an exemption from a positive law of the State. The plaintiffs argue the law “requires doctors to participate… even if they conscientiously object” and “health care entities… must promote the ‘benefits’ of the suicide law.” They ask a U.S. Federal District Court to enjoin the State.
This is a radical inversion of the Catholic order. Quas Primas teaches: “The State must leave the same freedom to the members of Orders… rulers and governments have the duty to publicly honor Christ and obey Him… His royal dignity demands that all relations in the state be ordered on the basis of God’s commandments.” The Syllabus (Error 55) condemns: “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.” Error 39 condemns: “The State, as being the origin and source of all rights, is endowed with a certain right not circumscribed by any limits.” Error 42: “In the case of conflicting laws enacted by the two powers, the civil law prevails.”
By suing in a secular court for a “conscience exemption,” Paprocki and Barres implicitly accept the State’s claim to be the source of rights (Error 39), accept the supremacy of civil law (Error 42), and accept the separation of Church and State (Error 55). They do not demand the repeal of the law as an offense against God; they demand a carve-out for themselves. This is the theology of “religious liberty” — the “corruptio optimi pessima” of the conciliar church. They beg for tolerantia where the Church demands regnum.
The Thomas More Society: Lay Legalism Usurping Ecclesiastical Authority
The representation by the Thomas More Society — a lay legal nonprofit — completes the picture of ecclesiastical vacuum. In the true Church, the defense of the Faith and the rights of the Church belongs to the Hierarchy and the Roman Pontiff, acting through Canon Law and Ecclesiastical Courts, backed by the potestas iurisdictionis. The conciliar “bishops,” having no jurisdiction, must hire secular lawyers to plead before secular judges. This is the total secularization of the Church’s defense. It mirrors the Modernist error condemned in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (Prop. 52-53): the Church’s organic structure is subject to change; the hierarchy is a mere stage in the evolution of Christian consciousness. Here, the “hierarchy” is replaced by a 501(c)(3) litigation shop.
Symptomatic Level: The Fruit of the Conciliar Revolution
This lawsuit is not an anomaly; it is the necessary fruit of Vatican II. Dignitatis Humanae declared a “right to religious freedom” based on human dignity, not on the truth of the Catholic Faith. It taught the State has no duty to profess the true religion, only to protect “freedom.” The result: the State becomes the arbiter of what “religious freedom” means. Illinois defines it as the freedom to kill; the “bishops” sue for an exception. They play by the rules of the Masonic Republic.
The False Fatima Apparitions file identifies the “Masonic Operation” strategy: “Stage 3 (1958-2000): Takeover of the narrative by modernists, concealment of the Third Secret, ecumenical reinterpretation.” The ecumenical lawsuit with Lutherans is the visible manifestation of this takeover. The “bishops” are functionaries of the “abomination of desolation” (Matt 24:15), managing the decline of the visible structures into a humanitarian NGO begging the State for operating space.
Conclusion: No King But Caesar
The NCR article concludes by noting the suicide law “went into effect on Aug. 5.” The “bishops” have filed their paperwork. The Lutheran nursing home has filed its paperwork. The doctors have filed their paperwork. The Thomas More Society has filed its paperwork. Christ the King is nowhere acknowledged as the Legislator, the Judge, the King. The Social Kingship is replaced by legal standing. The potestas sacra is replaced by civil procedure. The salus animarum is replaced by “healthcare access.”
As Pius XI warned in Quas Primas: “When authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed… the entire human society had to be shaken.” The conciliar “bishops” derive their “authority” from the same source as the Illinois legislature: men. They have no other foundation. Their lawsuit is the death rattle of a counterfeit church that has no King but Caesar (John 19:15).
Non est potestas nisi a Deo (Rom 13:1). The true bishops, the true priests, the true faithful — those who keep the Tradition entire — do not sue the State for “conscience exemptions.” They denounce the law as tyrannical and void (lex injusta non est lex), they refuse obedience (obsequium non debetur), and they proclaim the Kingship of Christ until the State submits or perishes. That is the Catholic way. The way of Paprocki, Barres, and the Thomas More Society is the way of the world — and its end is destruction.
Source:
Springfield Bishop Thomas Paprocki Joins Doctors, Nursing Home in Suit Against Illinois Suicide Law (ncregister.com)
Date: 12.08.2026