The EWTN News portal reports that the Society of Catholic Social Scientists (SCSS), a creature of the post-conciliar establishment founded in 1992 by Stephen M. Krason, held its 34th National Meeting at John Carroll University on October 23–24, 2026. The conference, framed as a blending of “Catholic theology and social teachings with the academic work in their various disciplines,” featured discussions on artificial intelligence, immigration, just war, euthanasia, and American history, all under the gaze of the usurper “Pope” Leo XIV (Robert Prevost) and his recent encyclical Magnifica Humanitas. Awards were bestowed upon Clark Massey and the modernist political theorist Patrick J. Deneen. The organization requires a “profession of faith” accepting the “Church’s teachings” — meaning the novelties of Vatican II — and welcomes non-Catholic “associate members.” This gathering is not a defense of the Social Kingship of Christ but a capitulation to the spirit of the age, a pseudo-academic exercise in legitimizing the conciliar sect’s surrender to secularism.
The False Premise: “Catholic Social Science” as a Contradiction in Terms
The very concept of a “Catholic social scientist” operating within the structures of the neo-church is a theological monstrosity. The article reveals that the SCSS seeks to follow “St. John XXIII’s instruction in his encyclical Mater et Magistra for Christians to ‘conform their behavior in economic and social affairs to the teachings of the Church.'” This appeal to Angelo Roncalli — a manifest modernist who convened the Robber Council Vatican II — as a doctrinal authority exposes the rot at the foundation. As Pope St. Pius X condemned in Lamentabili sane exitu (1907), the modernist error holds that “the dogmas which the Church proposes as revealed are not truths of divine origin but are a certain interpretation of religious facts, which the human mind has worked out with great effort” (Prop. 22). The SCSS does not submit the social order to the regnum Christi; it submits the Faith to the categories of secular sociology, psychology, and political science.
Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas (1925), teaches that “the hope of lasting peace will not yet shine upon nations as long as individuals and states renounce and do not wish to recognize the reign of our Savior.” He declares that “the state must leave the same freedom to the members of Orders and Congregations… who are indeed the most valiant helpers of the Pastors of the Church and contribute most to the expansion and establishment of Christ’s Kingdom.” The SCSS conference, by contrast, discusses “balancing national sovereignty and human dignity” regarding immigration — a Masonic phrasing that subordinates the rights of God to the “rights of man.” There is no mention of the Social Kingship of Christ, the duty of states to profess the Catholic Faith, or the condemnation of religious liberty found in the Syllabus of Errors (Prop. 55, 77, 79). The “Catholic social thought” on display is nothing but baptized liberalism.
Antipope Leo XIV and the “Augustinian Approach” to Transhumanism
The article highlights a talk on “Pope Leo XIV’s recent encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, which focuses on AI and other elements of Catholic social teaching” and “an Augustinian approach to concerns about transhumanism.” Robert Prevost, a manifest heretic who participates in the false ecumenism of the conciliar sect and upholds the heretical documents of Vatican II, possesses zero authority. As St. Robert Bellarmine teaches (De Romano Pontifice), “a Pope who is a manifest heretic, by that very fact ceases to be Pope and head.” The 1917 Code of Canon Law (Canon 188.4) confirms: “Every office becomes vacant by the mere fact and without any declaration… if the cleric… publicly defects from the Catholic faith.” The “encyclical” of an antipope is waste paper. To analyze it as a source of Catholic teaching is to participate in the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place (Matt. 24:15).
The “Augustinian approach” invoked is a fraud. St. Augustine teaches that duae civitates — the City of God and the City of Man — are fundamentally opposed. The neo-church’s “dialogue” with transhumanism seeks a synthesis, a tertium quid, which is the essence of modernist evolutionism condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis: “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” (Lamentabili, Prop. 59). The SCSS does not condemn transhumanism as a satanic rebellion against the Creator; it manages it.
Patrick Deneen and the “Pope Pius XI Award”: Irony as Judgment
The conferral of the “Pope Pius XI Award for Contributions Toward the Building Up of a True Catholic Social Science” upon Patrick J. Deneen — a professor at the University of Notre Dame, a hotbed of modernism — is a grim satire. Deneen’s quoted statement reveals the naturalistic core of his project: “A true social science recognizes that we are most free when we acknowledge and follow those laws within even the wide boundaries they establish.” This is pure natural law liberalism, devoid of the supernatural end of man. Pius XI in Quas Primas insists that Christ’s Kingdom “is primarily spiritual and relates mainly to spiritual matters” and that “men who wish to belong to it prepare themselves through repentance, but cannot enter except through faith and baptism.” Deneen’s “creatures — men and women — who are simultaneously free and subject to natural laws not of our making” are not supernaturalized subjects of Christ the King but autonomous agents of a secular order.
Pius XI condemned the very separation of temporal society from the Church: “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 SCSS, by honoring a theorist of “post-liberalism” who still operates within the liberal paradigm, confirms its allegiance to the City of Man.
Just War Doctrine Without the True Vicar of Christ
The conference includes talks on “just war doctrine, one of which looks into the approaches of various popes in the 20th and 21st centuries.” This phrase — “various popes in the 20th and 21st centuries” — is an implicit profession of faith in the false line of Roncalli, Montini, Luciani, Wojtyła, Ratzinger, Bergoglio, and now Prevost. A true Catholic knows there has been no true Pope since the death of Pius XII (1958). The “just war” discussions of the neo-church are exercises in casuistry for the benefit of the Masonic world order. The Syllabus of Errors condemns the proposition that “the civil government, even when in the hands of an infidel sovereign, has a right to an indirect negative power over religious affairs” (Prop. 41). The SCSS discusses war and peace as if the United Nations and the “international community” were legitimate authorities, ignoring Pius XI’s warning that “the state is happy not by one means, and man by another; for the state is nothing else than a harmonious association of men” — an association that must be ordered to the finis ultimus, God.
The Masonic Architecture of the “Society of Catholic Social Scientists”
Founded in 1992 at Franciscan University of Steubenville — a flagship institution of the neo-church’s “charismatic renewal” deception — the SCSS bears the marks of a Masonic front operation. Its structure mimics secular academia: “peer-reviewed” papers, a “scholarly journal” (Catholic Social Science Review), “associate members who are not Catholic,” “student members.” This is the democratization of the Church condemned by Pius X: “The Church listening cooperates in such a way with the Church teaching in defining truths of faith, that the Church teaching should only approve the common opinions of the Church listening” (Lamentabili, Prop. 6). The “profession of faith” required is not the Professio Fidei Tridentinae but acceptance of the “teachings” of the conciliar sect — i.e., religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, the new mass.
The topics — “Thomistic analysis of usury and modern banking,” “principle of subsidiarity… and the political theory of John C. Calhoun” — are academic distractions. Usury is condemned by the Council of Vienne and Benedict XIV (Vix Pervenit); modern banking is institutionalized usury. A “Thomistic analysis” that does not conclude with a call for the restoration of the Catholic confessional state and the criminalization of usury is sterile intellectualism. Calhoun’s “strong decentralization” is a secular political theory; the Catholic principle of subsidiarity (Quadragesimo Anno) is rooted in the ordo christianus, not states’ rights.
Silence on the Supernatural: The Gravest Accusation
Nowhere in the article — nor, by implication, in the conference — is there mention of: the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass (the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary), the necessity of the state of grace, the Four Last Things, the conversion of nations to the Catholic Faith, the rights of the Sacred Heart, the Rosary, or the reign of Mary as Queen. The “Bl. Frederic Ozanam Award” (Ozanam, a layman of the 19th century, not a canonized saint of the traditional calendar) goes to a “missionary organization” — A Simple House — which likely practices the neo-church’s “social justice” activism devoid of supernatural charity. Caritas sine fide mortua est. The entire enterprise is opus humanum, not opus Dei.
Conclusion: The SCSS as an Organ of the Great Apostasy
The Society of Catholic Social Scientists is a symptom and an instrument of the apostasia foretold by St. Paul (2 Thess. 2:3). It provides intellectual cover for the laity to believe they are “faithful Catholics” while collaborating with the paramasonic structure occupying the Vatican. By recognizing the false “popes,” using the new vernacular liturgies, accepting non-Catholic members, and framing the Faith in categories of secular social science, the SCSS fulfills the Modernist program condemned by St. Pius X: “The progress of sciences requires a reform of the concept of Christian doctrine concerning God, creation, Revelation, the Person of the Incarnate Word, and Redemption” (Lamentabili, Prop. 64).
True Catholic social science is the Doctrina Socialis Ecclesiae of Leo XIII (Rerum Novarum), Pius XI (Quadragesimo Anno, Quas Primas), and Pius XII — a science subordinate to theology, aimed at the instaurare omnia in Christo. The SCSS is its caricature. As Pius XI wrote: “If rulers and legitimate superiors will have the conviction that they exercise authority not so much by their own right as by the command and in the place of the Divine King, everyone will notice how religiously and wisely they will use their authority.” The SCSS serves rulers who derive authority from “the consent of the governed,” not from God. It is part of the synagoga Satanae waging war against the Ecclesia Christi. Non praevalebunt.
Source:
Catholic social scientists hold conference blending disciplines and faith (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 23.10.2026