EWTN News portal reports that the conciliar “Archbishop” Ronald Hicks of New York has joined a lawsuit alongside the “Bishop” of Rockville Centre, John Barres, and several orders of post-conciliar religious sisters—Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, Missionary Sisters of St. Benedict, and Little Sisters of the Poor—suing the State of New York over its assisted suicide law. The suit, filed by the naturalist legal firm Becket, argues that the state’s “assisted suicide rules would force them to participate in the process of helping suicidal patients kill themselves.” A federal court has granted a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement against the plaintiffs. Similar litigation proceeds in Illinois involving the “Archdiocese of Chicago” and the “Diocese of Springfield.” The conciliar healthcare entity ArchCare, including Calvary Hospital, is also a plaintiff.
The Farce of “Religious Liberty” Before the Throne of Iniquity
The cited article relates a spectacle as old as the conciliar revolution itself: the self-styled “successors of the apostles” prostrating themselves before the secular magistrate, begging for “exemptions” from laws that flow inevitably from the rejection of Christ the King. This is not the Church Militant wielding the gladius spiritus (sword of the Spirit); it is the Church reduced to a litigant in a Masonic courtroom, arguing not for the social reign of Christ, but for a private conscience clause within the kingdom of Satan.
The Theological Bankruptcy of the “Religious Liberty” Paradigm
The entire legal strategy rests upon the heretical foundation of Dignitatis Humanae, the Vatican II declaration that contradicts the constant teaching of the Church. Pope Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors (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” (Error 77). Pope Leo XIII taught in Immortale Dei (1885) that the State is bound to profess the Catholic religion and to favor it by its laws. Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas (1925), proclaimed 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,” but this freedom is a consequence of the Kingship of Christ, not a concession wrung from a secularist Leviathan by Becket lawyers.
The plaintiffs do not demand that New York recognize the Kingship of Christ, abolish abortion, criminalize sodomy, or restore the Catholic confessional state. They demand only a carve-out for their institutional consciences. They accept the legitimacy of the “assisted suicide regime” for the general populace; they merely wish to be excused from participating. This is the hermeneutic of surrender. It admits the State’s right to authorize murder, provided the conciliar structures are granted a “safe space.” This is not Catholic resistance; it is collaboration with the culture of death under a negotiated truce.
The Illegitimacy of the Litigants: No Authority, No Mission
“Archbishop” Hicks, “Bishop” Barres, and the superiors of the named congregations derive their claimed authority from the line of usurpers beginning with John XXIII. According to the theological principles articulated by St. Robert Bellarmine and confirmed by Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code, a manifest heretic loses all jurisdiction ipso facto. The “Defense of Sedevacantism” file demonstrates that Bellarmine teaches: “A manifest heretic cannot be Pope… he cannot be the head of something of which he is not a member.” The conciliar “bishops” have publicly adhered to the heresies of religious liberty, ecumenism, and collegiality. They are not members of the Catholic Church; therefore, they hold no jurisdiction. Their “lawsuit” is a private legal action by private individuals, devoid of any ecclesiastical authority. The “religious sisters” belong to institutes that have long since abandoned the integral Rule, the traditional habit, and the Catholic faith for the novelties of Perfectae Caritatis. They are not brides of Christ in the canonical sense; they are employees of a paramasonic NGO.
The Naturalistic Reduction of the Supernatural Mission
The article quotes Hicks: “We refuse to allow New York to force us to harm the very ones we’ve been called to care for.” Note the language: “harm,” “care,” “serve.” There is zero reference to salvation of souls, state of grace, Sacraments, Final Judgment, or the Divine Law that binds the civil magistrate. The mission is reduced to palliative humanitarianism. The “Calvary Hospital” is praised as “the only fully-accredited acute care hospital in the U.S. devoted exclusively to palliative care.” Accreditation by the secular state is the badge of honor. The Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary is absent; the “Mass” celebrated in these institutions is the Novus Ordo, a Protestantized meal that denies the propitiatory sacrifice. To fight for the “right” to operate a Catholic hospital without the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and without the true priesthood is to fight for a corpse.
The Symptomatic Level: The Conciliar Church as a Department of the State
This lawsuit reveals the modus operandi of the conciliar sect: total integration into the secular order. They do not challenge the principle of the secularist state; they negotiate their place within it. The firm Becket specializes in “religious liberty” litigation—a Protestant, Enlightenment framework that treats the Church as one interest group among many, seeking “accommodation” from a neutral state. This is the ecumenism of the courtroom. The “victories” in federal court are illusory. A federal judge’s injunction is a revocable privilege, not a recognition of God’s rights. Tomorrow, another judge, another administration, another “emergency” will sweep it away. He who relies on the arm of flesh (the Constitution, the courts, Becket) makes flesh his arm and departs from the Lord (Jer 17:5).
The Silence on the True Remedy: Instaurare Omnia in Christo
What is omitted is the only thing that matters. There is no call for the conversion of New York to the Catholic Faith. No denunciation of the Masonic lodges that engineer these laws. No mention of the Social Kingship of Christ as the sole remedy for the “plague of secularism” (Pius XI, Quas Primas). The “bishops” and “sisters” are content to render unto Caesar what is God’s—the sovereignty over life and death—provided Caesar lets them keep their buildings and their funding. This is the “democratization of the Church” in its terminal phase: the Church begging for tolerance from the enemies of God.
Conclusion: The Lawsuit Is a Confession of Apostasy
The litigation is not a sign of vitality; it is the death rattle of a counterfeit church that has forgotten its King. True Catholic resistance to the culture of death is not a motion for a preliminary injunction in a federal district court. It is the public proclamation of the Royal Rights of Jesus Christ, the condemnation of the iniquitous law as null and void ab origine (lex injusta non est lex), the refusal to obey grounded in the authority of Christ the King, and the acceptance of persecution, confiscation, and martyrdom rather than cooperation with evil. The conciliar plaintiffs have chosen the wide gate and the broad way that leads to destruction (Mt 7:13). They have their reward: a temporary injunction from a Masonic judge.
Source:
New York archbishop joins religious sisters in suing state over assisted suicide law (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 31.10.2026