EWTN News portal reports that a federal appeals court has permitted a historic cross and Nativity display to remain in a Los Angeles public plaza, framing the decision as a victory for “religious liberty.” The 9th Circuit ruled against an atheist plaintiff who claimed the monuments violated the Establishment Clause, dismissing his suit for lack of standing and irreparable harm. Merchants on Olvera Street attempted to intervene, arguing the displays “ennoble Americans across all ethnicities, faiths, cultures, and generations,” but the court deemed their participation moot. The religious liberty law firm Becket hailed the ruling as “common sense,” asserting that the public square “naturally bears the marks of that diversity.” This capitulation to secular jurisprudence, celebrated by the conciliar media as a triumph, exposes the utter bankruptcy of the post-conciliar strategy: the Cross of Christ is reduced to a cultural artifact, His Kingship is denied in the public order, and the enemies of God are appeased by the very language of “pluralism” and “inclusion.”
The Domestication of the Cross: From Sovereign Standard to Cultural Artifact
The cited article relates that the cross and Nativity stand at El Pueblo de Los Angeles, “marking its founding in 1781.” The merchants’ spokesman, Edward Flores, declares that such a “cultural display” helps “ennoble Americans across all ethnicities, faiths, cultures, and generations.” Here lies the radical perversion of the Sign of Redemption. The Cross is not a “cultural display” commemorating a municipal founding; it is the vexillum regis, the standard of the King of Kings, before which every knee must bend — in caelis, in terra, et sub terra (Phil 2:10). By accepting the secular framework of “historic preservation” and “cultural heritage,” the defenders of the monument have implicitly conceded the central tenet of laicism: that religion belongs to the private sphere or the museum, while the public order is governed by neutral, secular law.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, condemns this precise error: “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 Cross retained as a “historic monument” is a Cross despoiled of its sovereignty. It becomes an idol of civic religion, a totem of “diversity” acceptable to the “nonbeliever” and the merchant alike. This is not a victory for the Faith; it is the final humiliation of the Cross — tolerated only as a harmless relic of a bygone era, stripped of its demand for the social reign of Christ the King.
The Heresy of “Religious Liberty” as Operational Principle
The entire narrative revolves around the concept of “religious liberty,” championed by the Becket law firm and echoed by the EWTN portal. This term is a theological poison condemned by the infallible Magisterium. The Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX anathematizes the proposition: “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) and “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (Error 80).
The Becket attorney, Andrea Butler, proclaims: “Los Angeles belongs to people of every faith and none, and its public square naturally bears the marks of that diversity.” This is the Masonic ideal realized: the City of Man, indifferent to the City of God, where truth and error share equal citizenship. The “victory” celebrated here is a victory for liberalism, the “synthesis of all heresies” (St. Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis). By arguing on the grounds of the First Amendment — a document rooted in Enlightenment naturalism and the separation of Church and State — the “religious liberty” advocates have already surrendered the principle. They fight to keep a symbol while abandoning the Social Kingship of Christ which alone gives that symbol its meaning and its right to public dominance.
Indifferentism Masquerading as Pluralism
The merchants’ argument — that the displays “ennoble Americans across all ethnicities, faiths, cultures” — is a textbook definition of indifferentism, condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus (Errors 15-18) and by Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos. The idea that a Nativity scene serves to “ennoble” a Muslim, a Jew, an atheist, and a Catholic equally, without distinction of truth, is a denial of the necessity of the Catholic Faith for salvation (extra Ecclesiam nulla salus). It reduces the Incarnation — Verbum caro factum est — to a vague “cultural” sentiment that “ennobles” humanity in a generic, naturalistic sense.
The article notes the plaintiff, Jack Gerritsen, claims the monuments make him feel “excluded.” In a truly Catholic polity, the exclusion of the unbeliever from public honors paid to false gods or to secularism is a duty of justice; the exclusion of the Cross from the public square is a crime of lèse-majesté divine. The conciliar defenders have inverted the order: they apologize for the Cross’s presence by invoking its “inclusivity,” thereby making the subjective comfort of the atheist the measure of the Cross’s legitimacy. This is the cult of man in its purest form, the very “plague” Pius XI identified as “secularism… so-called laicism” in Quas Primas.
The Judicial Farce: Positive Law Usurping Divine Law
The 9th Circuit’s reasoning — that the plaintiff “failed to establish the requirements” including “irreparable harm” and that removal would not be “in the public interest” — reveals the total subjection of the sacred to the profane legal calculus. The rights of Christ the King are not subject to a balancing test of “standing,” “irreparable harm,” or “public interest” as defined by a secular court. Lex injusta non est lex (an unjust law is no law). A court that claims authority to decide whether the Cross may stand based on procedural technicalities has usurped the throne of Christ.
Pius XI teaches: “Christ received from the Father unlimited right over all that is created, so that all is subject to His will.” The State has a duty to publicly honor Christ and obey Him (Quas Primas). The fact that a lawsuit by an atheist even reaches a federal appeals court, and that the “defense” of the Cross rests on the absence of legal standing rather than the absolute right of Christ to reign, demonstrates that the conciliar church has accepted the secularist premise: that the State is the source of rights, and the Church a petitioner for tolerance.
EWTN and the Neo-Church: Celebrating Defeat as Victory
The source of this article, EWTN News, is an organ of the conciliar sect, the “Church of the New Advent” occupying the Vatican structures. Its reporting style — highlighting the “religious liberty law firm Becket,” quoting the “common sense” of a lawyer who affirms the city “belongs to people of every faith and none” — serves to normalize the Masonic framework among the faithful. It presents a pyrrhic procedural victory as a cause for celebration, distracting from the catastrophic theological surrender inherent in the arguments used.
This is the modus operandi of the neo-church: manage the decline, celebrate the crumbs thrown by the secular master, and never — never — proclaim the Social Kingship of Christ as the non-negotiable foundation of public order. The Cross on Olvera Street stands today not because Christ is King, but because a secular court found an atheist lacked “standing.” Tomorrow, a different plaintiff with better standing may remove it, and the “religious liberty” lawyers will have no principled ground to stand upon, having built their house on the sand of liberalism rather than the Rock of Petrus.
There is no “religious liberty” for error; there is only the liberty of the children of God to serve Him in truth. The Cross belongs in the public square not as a “historic monument” or a “cultural display” that “ennobles diversity,” but as the public profession of the sole sovereignty of Jesus Christ over Los Angeles, over California, over the United States, and over every nation. Until that Kingship is acknowledged in the Constitution, in the laws, and in the courts, every “victory” like this is a further step into the abyss of the abomination of desolation.
Source:
Federal appeals court says historic cross, Nativity can remain in Los Angeles public square (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 29.09.2026