National Catholic Register portal reports that nearly 500 “faith leaders” — including actors, politicians, and self-styled Catholic advocates — will gather in Washington, D.C., to read the King James Version aloud at the Museum of the Bible, in a weeklong spectacle dubbed “America Reads the Bible,” timed to coincide with the nation’s 250th anniversary. The event, organized by the Protestant evangelical group Christians Engaged and featuring Catholic figures such as Marco Rubio, Sean Duffy, Greg Abbott, Ted Cruz, Patricia Heaton, and CatholicVote president Kelsey Reinhardt, is presented as a “spiritual celebration of our nation’s founding ideals.” This grotesque pageant is not a Catholic act of worship but a suffocating synthesis of Americanism, indifferentism, and the worship of the democratic state — a textbook example of the very errors Pope Leo XIII condemned in *Testem Benevolentiae* and which the *Syllabus of Errors* anathematized over a century and a half ago.
The King James Bible: A Protestant Corruption Crowned as Sacred
The most immediately glaring defect of this entire enterprise — and one that the article passes over in enthusiastic silence — is the choice of text: the King James Version. This is not a Catholic Bible. It is the product of the Anglican schism, commissioned by a Protestant monarch, and it is missing seven books of the Old Testament — Tobias, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, and First and Second Maccabees — along with passages in Daniel and Esther. The Council of Trent solemnly defined the canon of Scripture, declaring: “Si quis autem libros ipsos integros cum omnibus paribus, prout in Ecclesia Catholica legi consueverunt, et in veteri vulgata Latina editione habentur, pro sacris et canonicis non susceperit… anathema sit” (“If anyone does not accept as sacred and canonical these entire books with all their parts, as they have customarily been read in the Catholic Church and are contained in the old Latin Vulgate edition… let him be anathema” — Session IV, 1546).
That Catholic speakers — including men who hold or have held the highest offices in the United States government — will stand before the public and read from a mutilated Protestant bible, without a word of correction, without a whisper of the Church’s definitive teaching on the canon, is not merely an oversight. It is a public repudiation of the Council of Trent, whether conscious or through culpable ignorance. It is the practical enactment of indifferentism: the idea that it does not matter which version of Scripture one reads, which canon one accepts, or indeed whether one is Catholic or Protestant at all. This is precisely the error condemned in the *Syllabus of Errors*, Proposition 18: “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion, in which form it is given to please God equally as in the Catholic Church.”
The Catholic Church has her own Bible — the Vulgate, confirmed by Trent, and the great English Catholic translations derived from it, such as the Douay-Rheims. That no mention of this appears in the article, and that no Catholic participant is reported to have objected to the use of the King James Version, reveals the depth of the apostasy: Catholics who have so thoroughly absorbed the spirit of the conciliar revolution that they can no longer distinguish between the Church’s own sacred books and the corruptions of heretics.
The Religion of “American Founding Idolatry”
The article describes the event as “a spiritual celebration of our nation’s founding ideals and a call to rediscover the truth that still anchors us today.” This language is not Catholic. It is the language of American civil religion — the heresy that Leo XIII identified and condemned in *Inscrutabili Dei Consilio* and, more pointedly, in his letter to Cardinal Gibbons, *Testem Benevolentiae* (1899), where he warned against the error of adapting the Church’s faith and discipline to the spirit of American democracy.
What are these “founding ideals” that the event proposes to celebrate? The American founding was rooted in Enlightenment naturalism, religious indifferentism, and the explicit rejection of the social reign of Christ the King. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution — the very document whose anniversary this event implicitly celebrates — enshrines the principle that Congress shall make no law “prohibiting the free exercise” of religion, a principle that Pius IX condemned in the *Syllabus of Errors*, Proposition 77: “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to exclusion of all other forms of worship.” And Proposition 79: “It is false that the civil liberty of every form of worship, and the full power, given to all, of overtly and publicly manifesting any opinions whatsoever and thoughts, conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people, and to propagate the pest of indifferentism.”
Pius XI, in *Quas Primas*, taught with absolute clarity: “His reign, namely, extends not only to Catholic nations or to those who, by receiving baptism according to law, belong to the Church, even though their erroneous opinions have led them astray or discord has separated them from love, but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” And further: “The state is happy not by one means, and man by another; for the state is nothing else than a harmonious association of men.” The duty of rulers is not to celebrate “founding ideals” rooted in Enlightenment philosophy but to “render public veneration and obedience to the reigning Christ” and to recognize that “the foundations of that authority were destroyed, because the main reason why some have the right to command and others have the duty to obey was removed” when God and Jesus Christ are removed from laws and states.
This event does the opposite. It baptizes the American founding. It treats the democratic republic — a political order born of revolution against legitimate Catholic monarchy and grounded in the Lockean principle of religious tolerance — as a quasi-sacred reality worthy of “spiritual celebration.” This is Americanism in its purest form: the heresy that Leo XIII warned would lead men to believe that “the Church should shape her teachings and practices to conform to the spirit of the age” and that “the new rights of man” are compatible with the Gospel without the need for the Church’s authority to teach, govern, and sanctify.
The Museum of the Bible: A Temple of Biblical Modernism
The event is held at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., an institution founded by Steve Green, the evangelical Protestant owner of Hobby Lobby. This museum has been widely criticized even by non-Catholic scholars for its historically dubious artifacts, its ecumenical approach to Scripture that treats all religious traditions as equally valid paths to understanding the Bible, and its implicit message that the Bible is a cultural artifact to be celebrated rather than the inspired, inerrant Word of God to be believed, obeyed, and submitted to the authoritative interpretation of the Catholic Magisterium.
The Catholic Church teaches, against the modernist errors condemned in *Lamentabili Sane Exitu* and *Pascendi Dominici Gregis*, that “God is the true Author of Holy Scripture” (condemning the contrary as “excessive naivety or ignorance” — Proposition 9), that “divine inspiration does not extend to the whole of Holy Scripture to such an extent that all and individual parts of it are protected from every error” is a condemned proposition (Proposition 11), and that “the Magisterium of the Church cannot, even by dogmatic definitions, determine the proper sense of Holy Scripture” is likewise condemned (Proposition 4). St. Pius X, in *Pascendi*, identified the modernist method as one that treats Scripture as a purely human document, subject to the “assured results” of secular criticism, and strips it of its supernatural character.
That Catholic speakers will lend their names and voices to an event housed in a museum whose very mission embodies the modernist approach to Scripture — treating the Bible as a cultural treasure to be displayed rather than as the Word of God to be believed under the authority of the Church — is a scandal of the first order. It reveals that these so-called Catholic leaders have internalized the modernist hermeneutic so completely that they cannot perceive the contradiction between the Church’s teaching on Sacred Scripture and the spirit of the institution they are endorsing.
The Participation of Catholic Politicians: Caesar Worship in Vestments
The article lists among the Catholic participants Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, and Texas Governor Greg Abbott. These are men who hold public office in a government whose founding principles are incompatible with the social reign of Christ the King. They are men who have sworn to uphold a Constitution that enshrines religious indifferentism as a fundamental right. And they will stand before the public, read from a Protestant Bible, and celebrate “American founding ideals” — all while claiming the name of Catholic.
Pius IX, in the *Syllabus of Errors*, condemned the proposition that “the Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church” (Proposition 55). He condemned the idea that “the civil power has authority to rescind, declare and render null, solemn conventions, commonly called concordats, entered into with the Apostolic See” (Proposition 43). He condemned the proposition that “Catholics may approve of the system of educating youth unconnected with Catholic faith and the power of the Church” (Proposition 48). Every one of these condemned errors is embedded in the very fabric of the American constitutional order that these Catholic politicians have sworn to uphold and that this event proposes to celebrate.
The participation of Rubio, Duffy, and Abbott in this event is not merely a personal failing. It is a public act of apostasy — a visible, tangible repudiation of the Church’s teaching on the social reign of Christ the King and the duty of Catholic rulers to govern in accordance with God’s law. It is the practical enactment of the error condemned in the *Syllabus*: “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (Proposition 80) — an error that Pius IX condemned in the strongest possible terms.
The Ecumenical Abyss: Catholics and Protestants United in Apostasy
The event brings together “more than 100 national ministries” from across the Protestant-Catholic spectrum. CatholicVote, an organization that has consistently promoted the conciliar revolution’s false understanding of religious liberty and the “spirit of Vatican II,” is a partner. Catholic Book Publishing, a company that has published materials aligned with the post-conciliar apostasy, is sending speakers. Catholic actress Patricia Heaton and Catholic author Allan Wright will read alongside evangelical Protestants, Latter-day Saints, and others — all united in the celebration of a Protestant Bible and American civil religion.
This is the ecumenism of Vatican II made flesh. This is the “dialogue” that the pre-conciliar Church condemned as a betrayal of her divine mission. Pius XI, in *Mortalium Animos* (1928), taught: “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, for in the past they have unhappily left it.” The Church has never taught that Catholics and Protestants should come together to read a Protestant Bible and celebrate their shared “American values.” She has taught that Protestants must convert — must enter the one true Church, submit to the authority of the Magisterium, accept the full canon of Scripture, and receive the sacraments validly administered by Catholic priests.
What this event represents is not unity but the dissolution of all doctrinal distinctiveness in the acid bath of indifferentism. It is the practical implementation of the error condemned in *Lamentabili*, Proposition 18: “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion.” When Catholic politicians and Catholic organizations stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Baptists, Methodists, and Pentecostals to read the King James Bible and celebrate American democracy, the message is clear: it does not matter what you believe, as long as you are a “person of faith” and a patriot. This is the religion of the Antichrist — a religion without dogma, without sacraments, without the Cross, and without Christ the King.
The Omission of the Church’s Mission: Silence as Apostasy
What is most damning about this event — and about the article that reports it — is not what is said but what is omitted. There is no mention of the Catholic Church’s teaching on the canon of Scripture. There is no mention of the Council of Trent. There is no mention of the social reign of Christ the King. There is no mention of the duty of Catholic rulers to govern in accordance with God’s law. There is no mention of the Church’s exclusive claim to be the one true religion. There is no mention of the necessity of conversion for Protestants. There is no mention of the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the sacraments, the papacy, or any of the doctrines that distinguish the Catholic religion from every form of Protestantism.
This silence is not accidental. It is the defining characteristic of the conciliar revolution: the systematic suppression of Catholic truth in favor of a naturalistic, humanitarian, and ecumenical message that offends no one and converts no one. It is the spirit of *Dignitatis Humanae* — the conciliar declaration on religious freedom that contradicted the unanimous teaching of the pre-conciliar Magisterium — made manifest in a public spectacle. It is the spirit of the “New Evangelization” that evangelizes nothing, because it has nothing definite to proclaim.
St. Pius X, in *Pascendi*, described the modernist as one who “cloaks himself in ambiguity” and “speaks in such a way that his words can be interpreted in multiple directions.” The article about this event is a masterpiece of such ambiguity. It speaks of “faith,” “Scripture,” “discipleship,” and “the nation’s founding ideals” — but never once does it speak of the Catholic faith, the Catholic Bible, the Catholic Church, or the Catholic understanding of the state’s duty to Christ. The omission of Catholic truth is the most eloquent testimony to the completeness of the apostasy.
Conclusion: The Abomination of Desolation in the Nation’s Capital
This event — “America Reads the Bible” — is not a Catholic act. It is not a Christian act in any meaningful sense. It is a civic ritual of the American civil religion, dressed in the borrowed garments of Scripture, performed by men and women who have abandoned the faith of their baptism in favor of the worship of the democratic state. It is the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place — not the Temple of Jerusalem, but the Museum of the Bible, a temple of modernist biblical scholarship and ecumenical indifferentism.
The Catholic Church teaches that there is no salvation outside the Church (*Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus*), that the Catholic Church is the only true religion, that Christ the King reigns over all nations and demands the obedience of rulers and states, that Sacred Scripture must be read in the light of the Church’s Magisterium and in the authentic canon defined by the Council of Trent, and that ecumenism — in the sense of joint worship or joint celebration with heretics and schismatics — is a betrayal of the faith.
Every one of these teachings is contradicted by the event described in this article. Every one of these teachings is betrayed by the Catholic politicians, authors, and organizations that participate in it. And the National Catholic Register — a portal that claims to report on Catholic news — presents this spectacle with breathless enthusiasm, without a single word of correction, without a single reference to the Church’s actual teaching.
This is the neo-church of the Antichrist: a church that celebrates Protestant Bibles, American democracy, and ecumenical unity while remaining silent about the Mass, the papacy, the sacraments, the social reign of Christ the King, and the necessity of conversion. It is not the Church of Christ. It is the synagogue of Satan dressed in Catholic vestments. And the faithful who wish to remain Catholic must reject it utterly, return to the unchanging Tradition of the pre-conciliar Church, and pray for the conversion of those who have been led astray by this abomination.
Source:
Nearly 500 Leaders Will Gather in Washington, D.C., to Read the Entire Bible Aloud (ncregister.com)
Date: 15.04.2026