USCCB Unveils Naturalistic Voting Guide: Faithful Citizenship Replaces Christ the King
The EWTN News portal reports that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has published a guide titled Outlines for Clergy Formation on Faithful Citizenship ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. The document, framed as a tool for priestly formation in Catholic Social Teaching, presents five principles — common good, universal destination of goods, subsidiarity, solidarity, and social justice — derived from the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas of the antipope Leo XIV (Robert Prevost). It explicitly cites the Second Vatican Council’s definition of the common good and the teachings of Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, while insisting that faith must precede politics. Archbishop Alexander Sample of Portland is quoted urging Catholics to have a seat at the table
to form society. The guide treats faithful citizenship
as a way of life
encompassing issues from abortion to immigration, racial equality
, and economic inequities
. This document is not a pastoral exhortation but a manifesto of the conciliar sect’s capitulation to secular democracy, substituting the Social Kingship of Christ with a baptized liberalism.
The Conciliar Sect’s Electoral Catechism: Democracy as Salvation
The very title Faithful Citizenship betrays the theological inversion at work. The term citizenship (civitas) belongs to the City of Man; the Catholic’s primary allegiance is to the Civitas Dei, the Kingdom of Christ. Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas, declared unequivocally: If men were ever to recognize Christ’s royal authority over themselves, both privately and publicly, then unheard-of blessings would flow upon the whole society, such as due freedom, order, and tranquility, and concord and peace.
The USCCB guide, by contrast, directs the faithful to the ballot box as the primary locus of Christian duty. Archbishop Sample’s language — agents of transformation of society
, seat at the table
— is the rhetoric of political activism, not supernatural apostolate. The Syllabus of Errors (Pius IX, 1864) condemned the proposition that The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church
(Error 55) and that 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
(Error 77). The guide’s silence on the duty of the State to profess the Catholic Faith and submit to Christ the King is not an omission; it is a formal adherence to the condemned error of laicism.
Antipope Leo XIV and the Magisterium of the Neo-Church
The guide’s foundational authority is the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas of Pope
Leo XIV (Robert Prevost). Since the death of Pius XII in 1958, the See of Peter has been vacant; the line of claimants beginning with John XXIII are manifest heretics who, by the very fact of their public adhesion to the errors of Vatican II (religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, liturgical reform), have lost all jurisdiction ipso facto. St. Robert Bellarmine teaches: A manifest heretic, by that very fact ceases to be Pope and head, just as he ceases to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church.
(De Romano Pontifice, Bk. 2, Ch. 30). Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code confirms that an office becomes vacant by the mere fact and without any declaration
if a cleric publicly defects from the Catholic faith.
To cite the writings of a usurper as magisterial authority is to build on sand. The Pope
Leo XIV cited here is a private theologian at best, a public heretic at worst; his encyclical
possesses no more binding force than the opinions of any other modernist.
Vatican II: The Poisoned Source of the Common Good Definition
The guide cites the Second Vatican Council’s definition of the common good: the sum of those conditions of social life which allow social groups and their individual members relatively thorough and ready access to their own fulfillment.
This definition, from Gaudium et Spes 26, is a naturalistic reduction. The true common good of civil society is not mere access to fulfillment
but the temporal peace and order that dispose men for their supernatural end. Pope Pius XI taught: 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, citing Leo XIII, Annum Sacrum). The conciliar definition eliminates the finis ultimus — the glory of God and the salvation of souls — rendering the common good a purely immanent, sociological category. This is the fruit of the Modernist error condemned in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907): Christ did not proclaim any specific, all-encompassing doctrine suitable for all times and peoples, but rather initiated a certain religious movement, applied or applicable to different times and places
(Prop. 59). The Council’s anthropology is Pelagian, assuming man can achieve his fulfillment
through structural conditions apart from grace.
Subsidiarity and Solidarity: The Twin Pillars of Masonic Humanism
The guide presents subsidiarity and solidarity as Catholic principles applied to modern politics. In the hands of the neo-church, these become instruments for the democratization
of the Church and the dissolution of hierarchy. True subsidiarity, as taught by Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno (1931), orders society so that higher associations do not usurp the functions of lower ones — but always within the framework of the common good oriented to God. The guide’s formulation — issues should be addressed at as local a level as possible
— strips the principle of its theological telos, making it a tool for decentralization per se, compatible with the Masonic ideal of local autonomy from any higher (divine) law. Solidarity, as used here, is the Parable of the Good Samaritan
divorced from the Caritas in veritate that requires the truth of the Faith. St. Augustine warns: Two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self.
(De Civitate Dei, XIV, 28). The neo-church’s solidarity is a parody of Christian charity, a horizontal philanthropy that looks beyond one-on-one relationships… to the structural elements that lead to injustice
— the language of liberation theology, condemned by the Holy Office in 1984 and 1986, now canonized as social justice
by the antipope.
The Universal Destination of Goods: Private Property Subordinated to the State
The guide states that the right to private property is not absolute
but subordinate to the duty to ensure that all can live in dignity.
This phrasing, while paying lip service to Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, inverts the Pope’s teaching. Leo XIII wrote: The right of private property is sacred and inviolable… The State would be unjust and cruel if it deprived the laborer of the fruit of his labor.
(Rerum Novarum, 8, 14). The conciliar sect’s version makes property a concession of the civil power, revocable whenever the dignity
of the collective demands it. This is the socialism condemned in the Syllabus (Error 40: The teaching of the Catholic Church is hostile to the well-being and interests of society
) and by Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno: No one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist.
The guide’s social justice
— explicitly defended against the charge of being woke
— is in fact the very definition of the social justice of the neo-church: the redistribution of goods by state coercion under the guise of Gospel mandate.
Abortion Among Equals: The Seamless Garment of Indifferentism
The guide lists abortion, racial equality, economic inequities, criminal justice, euthanasia, family life, immigration, participation in the political process, war and peace, and many more
as specific moral issues
addressed by faithful citizenship. This is the seamless garment
strategy of the late Cardinal Bernardin, designed to dilute the absolute gravity of intrinsic evils (abortion, euthanasia) by placing them on a continuum with prudential policy judgments. Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas, insisted that the Church… demands for itself by a right belonging to it, which it cannot renounce, full freedom and independence from secular authority.
The USCCB guide, by contrast, instructs priests to form consciences for prudent judgements and concrete decisions
within the democratic process, implicitly accepting the legitimacy of a legal order that permits the slaughter of the innocent. The Syllabus condemned the error that The civil government… has a right to an indirect negative power over religious affairs
(Error 41) and In the case of conflicting laws enacted by the two powers, the civil law prevails
(Error 42). The guide operates entirely within this condemned framework.
Silence on the Kingship of Christ: The Gravest Omission
Nowhere in the guide — nor in the accompanying video messages — is there a mention of the Feast of Christ the King, instituted by Pius XI to address the needs of the present times and provide a special remedy against the plague that poisons human society. And this plague is the secularism of our times, so-called laicism.
(Quas Primas). The guide’s faithful citizenship
is precisely the laicism Pius XI condemned: a Catholicism that began with the denial of Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations
and ended with states that thought they could do without God and that their religion was impiety and contempt for God.
The bishops of the conciliar sect do not call the faithful to restore all things in Christ
(Eph 1:10), but to participate in the management of the Civitas Terrena on its own terms. Bishop Flores’s closing remark — And the rest is in God’s hands
— is a pious evasion of the duty to fight bravely and always under the banner of Christ the King
(Quas Primas).
The Clergy Formation Trap: Forming Hirelings, Not Shepherds
The guide is explicitly for clergy formation
— training priests
of the neo-church to communicate this naturalistic social doctrine. The 1917 Code (Canon 188.4) and the Bull Cum ex Apostolatus Officio of Paul IV establish that a cleric who publicly defects from the faith loses his office ipso facto. The priests
and bishops
of the USCCB, by their public adherence to the heresies of Vatican II and the novus ordo, have tacitly resigned their offices. They are not shepherds but hirelings (John 10:12-13), feeding the flock not with the words of faith and sound doctrine
(1 Tim 4:6) but with the doctrines of men
(Matt 15:9). The guide’s offer of a 3-5 hour session
or a concise 1-hour session
reveals the bureaucratic, managerial mentality of the neo-church: formation as compliance training, not spiritual conversion.
Conclusion: The Ballot Box Is Not the Throne
The USCCB’s Faithful Citizenship guide is a document of apostasy. It replaces the Regnum Christi with the Res Publica, the Kingship of Christ with the sovereignty of the people, the supernatural virtue of charity with the naturalistic virtue of solidarity, the immutable moral law with prudential judgements
subject to electoral calculus. It is the practical application of the heresy of Americanism, condemned by Leo XIII in Testem Benevolentiae (1899), which sought to adapt the Church to the spirit of democracy and religious liberty. The true Catholic response to the midterm elections — and to every election — is not a voter guide but the proclamation: Jesus Christ is King.
As Pius XI commanded: Let rulers of states therefore not refuse public veneration and obedience to the reigning Christ… if they wish to maintain their authority inviolate and contribute to the increase of their homeland’s happiness.
(Quas Primas). The structures occupying the Vatican and the USCCB have refused this obedience. The faithful Catholic, adhering to the immutable Tradition, withdraws his consent from the neo-church’s political catechism and awaits the restoration of the true Hierarchy, praying: Adveniat Regnum Tuum.
Source:
U.S. bishops offer pre-midterms guidance on faithful citizenship (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 04.09.2026