The National Catholic Register (EWTN News) publishes a feature profiling seven Republican members of the 119th United States Congress who identify as Catholic, detailing their personal devotional habits, conversion narratives, and claims that faith directs their legislative work. The article cites a Pew Research Center count of 150 self-identified Catholics comprising over 28% of the legislative branch. Senators and representatives — Eric Schmitt, John Rutherford, Mark Messmer, Stephanie Bice, Robert Onder, Riley Moore, and Tom Emmer — describe reliance on Jesuit retreats, daily Mass, the rosary, podcasts by “Bishop” Robert Barron and “Father” Michael Schmitz, and encounters with “Pope” Francis. They cite opposition to abortion, defense of religious liberty, and concern for persecuted Christians as fruits of their faith. The piece functions as a public relations exercise for the conciliar sect, presenting political operatives as witnesses to a Christianity emptied of its doctrinal integrity and supernatural mandate. These men do not serve Christ the King; they manage the secularist state under a veneer of conciliar sentimentality, proving that the “faith” of the Novus Ordo is indistinguishable from civil religion.
The Theatrical Piety of the Conciliar Laity
The article presents a gallery of externals — retreats, rosaries, daily Mass attendance, prayer groups — devoid of any reference to the integral Catholic faith defined by the Council of Trent, the Syllabus of Errors, and the anti-modernist oath of St. Pius X. Sen. Schmitt speaks of a “personal relationship with Christ” cultivated at a Jesuit retreat house; Rep. Rutherford cites Ephesians 2:10 to justify a vague “good work” prepared by God; Rep. Messmer credits a Cursillo retreat for igniting “a passion and a love for Christ and a love for the Eucharist”; Rep. Bice finds comfort in the “Blessed Mother” and a staffer rosary group; Rep. Onder roots his political motivation in “love of God, family, and country”; Rep. Moore declares faith “the most important thing” forming “every decision”; Rep. Emmer recounts a deathbed conversation with his sister that resolved his anger at God.
“I’ll listen to a podcast by Bishop [Robert] Barron or Father Michael Schmitz… technology now too has allowed a different avenue for people to maintain their faith and grow their faith.” — Sen. Eric Schmitt
Not one of these legislators mentions the Social Kingship of Christ, the duty of the State to profess the true religion, the condemnation of religious liberty by Gregory XVI (Mirari Vos), Pius IX (Quanta Cura, Syllabus), Leo XIII (Immortale Dei, Libertas), and St. Pius X (Vehementer Nos), or the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation (extra ecclesiam nulla salus). Their “faith” is entirely privatized, therapeutic, and oriented toward personal fulfillment — the hallmark of Modernism condemned in Pascendi Dominici Gregis: “The dogmas of faith should be understood according to their practical function, i.e., as binding in action, rather than as principles of belief” (Lamentabili, prop. 26). These men are not Catholics in the theological sense; they are adherents of the cult of man inaugurated at Vatican II.
Conversion to a Counterfeit Church
Rep. Rutherford’s conversion narrative is particularly damning. He states he “finally read a book by Pope John Paul II, ‘Crossing the Threshold of Hope,’ and that explained where the authority of the Church is… And how it’s passed down through the papacy.” He entered the Church inspired by “the true Church and presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.” Rep. Bice converted in college after attending Mass with her husband and later met “Pope Francis” who asked her to “pray for me.”
“After his research, and inspired by the true Church and presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, Rutherford entered the Catholic Church.”
They converted not to the Roman Catholic Church of the ages, but to the conciliar sect — the “Church of the New Advent” — whose “popes” since John XXIII have taught heresy: religious liberty (Dignitatis Humanae), ecumenism (Unitatis Redintegratio), collegiality subverting papal primacy (Lumen Gentium), and a “new evangelization” that refuses to convert non-Catholics. John Paul II’s Crossing the Threshold of Hope explicitly denies the dogma of hell as a place of eternal punishment for the damned, embraces evolution, and praises false religions. Francis — the current usurper, Robert Prevost (“Leo XIV”) — is a manifest heretic who has declared that “proselytism is solemn nonsense,” blessed same-sex unions, and placed Pachamama idols in the Vatican. To enter communion with this sect is to abandon the Catholic Church. As Pius XII taught in Mystici Corporis: “Only those are to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith, and who have not been so unfortunate as to separate themselves from the unity of the Body, or been excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults committed.” These converts have never professed the true faith; they have embraced a counterfeit.
Legislating Within the Masonic Order
The article inadvertently exposes the naturalistic framework within which these men operate. They are legislators in a Masonic republic founded on the principles condemned by the Syllabus: “The State, as being the origin and source of all rights, is endowed with a certain right not circumscribed by any limits” (prop. 39); “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church” (prop. 55); “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State” (prop. 77). The United States Constitution enshrines religious indifferentism — the “pest of indifferentism” (prop. 79) — as the supreme law. Every oath these men swear is to uphold this godless charter.
Rep. Onder boasts of fighting for “religious liberty bills” and “conscience rights of physicians.” Religious liberty is a heresy. It grants a civil right to error. Leo XIII in Libertas (1888) declares: “To affirm that every man has the right to choose and profess whatever religion he pleases… is to assert that truth and error have equal rights… The Church cannot approve such a system.” Rep. Moore speaks of “persecution of Christians around the world, especially in Nigeria,” yet ignores the primary persecution: the auto-demolition of the Church by the conciliar hierarchy who have handed the faithful over to wolves. He says, “their suffering offers us salvation as well by doing something here” — a Pelagian inversion of the Cross, reducing redemption to political activism.
Rep. Bice proudly notes that “not every woman believes that you should be able to terminate pregnancies up to birth,” framing opposition to abortion as a demographic preference rather than a divine commandment (Non occides). The article notes a “groundswell of women consider running for congressional seats” — the feminist revolutionary principle applied to the conciliar laity. St. Pius X in Notre Charge Apostolique (1910) condemned the Sillon for exactly this: “They want to set up a ‘People’s Church’… where authority comes from below… This is not the Church of Christ.”
The “Clergy” They Follow: Architects of Apostasy
The spiritual directors cited by these legislators are the engineers of the conciliar revolution. “Bishop” Robert Barron and “Father” Michael Schmitz are functionaries of the usurping hierarchy. Barron promotes the “hope” of universal salvation (denying extra ecclesiam nulla salus), praises Buddhism and Islam, and teaches a “theology of the body” divorced from Thomistic anthropology. Schmitz is a celebrity podcaster whose “Bible in a Year” program feeds scriptural literalism stripped of the Church’s magisterial interpretation — the very error condemned in Lamentabili (prop. 2: “The interpretation of Holy Scripture given by the Church… is subject to more exact judgments and corrections by exegetes”).
“Speaker [Mike] Johnson is absolutely a brother in the Christian faith and a very, very strong believer.” — Rep. Robert Onder
Mike Johnson, a Calvinist “Christian nationalist,” is held up as a model. The conciliar sect’s ecumenism has so obliterated the distinction between the one true Church and heretical sects that a Catholic legislator calls a Protestant “a brother in the Christian faith.” This is the sin against the First Commandment institutionalized. Pius XI in Mortalium Animos (1928) condemned this: “The union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it.”
Sacramental Simulation and Idolatry
The article repeatedly references “Mass,” “Eucharist,” “Communion,” and “daily Mass” as the center of these men’s spiritual lives. The Novus Ordo Missae is not the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. It is a Protestantized memorial meal, fabricated by the Freemason Bugnini and promulgated by the antipope Paul VI in 1969. It lacks the propitiatory character, the Roman Canon (mutilated), the orientem orientation, the Latin language, and the theology of the Cross. The “priests” who celebrate it are ordained in the invalid 1968 rite of Paul VI, which removed the essential form for the priesthood (utrique sanguinis oblationem). Therefore, no valid sacrifice occurs, no transubstantiation, no Real Presence. These legislators worship bread and wine — idolatry. As the Council of Trent anathematized: “If anyone says that in the holy sacrament of the Eucharist… the whole Christ is not contained… let him be anathema” (Session XIII, Can. 1). The conciliar “Mass” is the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place (Matt. 24:15).
Symptomatic Diagnosis: The Conciliar Laity as Agents of the Revolution
These seven men are not anomalies; they are the ideal product of the conciliar formation. They embody the Gaudium et Spes anthropology: man as autonomous subject, faith as “values,” the Church as a “community of believers” serving the world. Their piety is therapeutic (Schmitt’s retreat for stress, Emmer’s grief counseling), their morality proportionalist (Onder’s “religious liberty” exceptions), their ecclesiology democratic (Bice’s “groundswell of women”), their eschatology immanentist (Moore’s “salvation through suffering” via political action).
The article’s closing keyword — “capitol hill” — reveals the true altar. They serve the State, not Christ the King. Pius XI in Quas Primas (1925), provided in the context files, declares: “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 entire human society had to be shaken, because it lacked a stable and strong foundation.” These legislators participate in the shaking. They give Caesar what belongs to God — the souls of the faithful, the definition of marriage, the protection of the innocent, the public worship due the Trinity.
The Silence That Condemns
What the article omits is the indictment. Not a word on:
- The Kingship of Christ over nations (Quas Primas);
- The condemnation of the Americanist heresy (Leo XIII, Testem Benevolentiae);
- The invalidity of the Novus Ordo sacraments and the vacancy of the Holy See since 1958;
- The duty to resist unjust laws (St. Thomas Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 96, a. 4: “Lex injusta non est lex”);
- The reality of hell and the necessity of grace for salvation;
- The Masonic origin of the American republic and the permanent instruction of the Alta Vendita to infiltrate the Church.
This silence is not accidental. It is the modus operandi of the conciliar sect: speak much of “faith,” “Jesus,” “Eucharist,” “Mercy,” but never define them dogmatically. As St. Pius X diagnosed in Pascendi: “They make use of a double language… they speak in one way to the faithful, in another to the learned… they express Catholic doctrine in terms so vague and ambiguous that it can be interpreted in a heretical sense.”
Conclusion: No King But Caesar
The Register’s feature is a hagiography of the conciliar laity — men who have made their peace with the Civitas Terrena and call it the Kingdom of God. They are the laity of the abomination, legitimizing the usurpers in the Vatican, validating the Masonic order, and leading souls into the counter-church of the Antichrist. Their “faith” is the opium of the people in the Marxist sense: a comfort that reconciles them to their chains. “Woe to you who call evil good, and good evil: that put darkness for light, and light for darkness” (Isa. 5:20). The only remedy is the restoration of all things in Christ (Instaurare omnia in Christo) — the rejection of the conciliar sect, the recognition of the vacant See, and the submission to the true bishops and priests who preserve the Tradition without compromise. These congressmen are not the salt of the earth; they are the salt that has lost its savor, fit only to be cast out and trodden underfoot (Matt. 5:13).
Source:
Faith On the Hill: Catholic Members of Congress Share How Faith Shapes Their Lives and Work (ncregister.com)
Date: 08.09.2026