EWTN News portal reports that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case brought by Catholic preschools in Colorado, which were excluded from a state-funded “universal” preschool tuition program because of their religious requirements for families and staff. The case, St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy, centers on the state’s refusal to allow Catholic institutions to participate if they uphold Church teaching on sexuality and gender identity.
The article presents this as a straightforward religious freedom case, quoting attorneys and parents who frame the issue in terms of “freedom to choose” and “universal” access. However, this framing obscures a far more profound crisis: the systematic exclusion of the Catholic Church from public life by a secular state that demands conformity to its moral revolution as a condition for participation in civil society. The article’s language of “nondiscrimination” and “inclusion” masks a regime of ideological coercion that is fundamentally incompatible with the Social Kingship of Christ and the Church’s divine mandate to teach and govern without interference from civil authorities.
The State as Arbiter of Religious Truth
The Colorado case is not merely a legal dispute over funding; it is a symptom of the modern state’s claim to supreme authority over all aspects of human life, including religion. The state’s “nondiscrimination” clause, which requires schools to conform to secular dogmas on sexual orientation and gender identity, is not a neutral principle but an ideological imposition. It forces Catholic institutions to choose between their mission and their survival in the public square.
This is precisely the error condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors, which rejects the proposition that “the civil authority may interfere in matters relating to religion, morality and spiritual government” (Proposition 44) and that “the best theory of civil society requires that popular schools… should be freed from all ecclesiastical authority, control and interference” (Proposition 47). The Colorado program, by conditioning participation on the abandonment of Catholic moral teaching, enacts these condemned errors in practice.
The article quotes Colorado Governor Jared Polis celebrating the exclusion of Catholic schools as protecting students from “discrimination.” This language reveals the inversion of values characteristic of the modern state: the Church, which teaches the truth about human nature and morality, is recast as a discriminator, while the state, which enforces moral relativism and gender ideology, poses as the protector of inclusion. This is the logic of the abomination of desolation (Matthew 24:15), where the holy is profaned and the profane is hallowed.
The Illusion of “Religious Freedom” in a Secular State
The article frames the case as a defense of “religious freedom,” a concept that, in the modern liberal tradition, is stripped of its Catholic meaning. True religious freedom, as taught by the Church, is the right of the individual and institutions to profess and practice the one true religion without coercion from the state. It does not mean the right to dissent from divine law or to demand state support for error.
Pope Leo XIII, in his encyclical Immortale Dei, taught that “the Almighty, therefore, has given the charge of the human race to two powers, the ecclesiastical and the civil, the one being set over divine, and the other over human, each supreme in its own kind.” The Colorado case illustrates the consequences of rejecting this order: the civil power, having usurped authority over divine matters, now dictates the terms on which the Church may operate in society.
The attorneys for the Catholic preschools, quoted in the article, argue that “the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that states cannot exclude families from government benefits because of their faith.” This argument, while legally pragmatic, concedes the premise that the Church’s participation in public life is contingent on the state’s permission. It forgets the teaching of Pope Pius XI in Quas Primas: “The Church, established by Christ as a perfect society, demands for itself by a right belonging to it, which it cannot renounce, full freedom and independence from secular authority.” The Church does not beg for inclusion on the state’s terms; she demands freedom by divine right.
The Silence on the Supernatural Mission of the Church
The article’s focus on legal and political strategies obscures the supernatural mission of the Catholic school. Catholic education is not merely an alternative pedagogical option; it is an extension of the Church’s salvific mission, ordered toward the formation of souls in the faith and their preparation for eternal life. The requirement that teachers and families pledge to uphold the school’s religious mission is not an act of discrimination but a necessary condition for the integrity of the educational enterprise.
By reducing the dispute to a question of “access” and “funding,” the article ignores the deeper issue: the state’s refusal to recognize the Church’s divine authority and her right to educate according to her own principles. This silence is symptomatic of the post-conciliar mentality, which has largely abandoned the Church’s claim to public authority in favor of a privatized, “spiritualized” faith that poses no challenge to the secular order.
The article quotes parents who say, “All we want is the freedom to choose the best preschool for our kids without being punished for our faith.” While this sentiment is understandable, it falls short of the Catholic principle that the state has no authority to punish or reward religious adherence. The state’s role is to serve the common good, which includes the spiritual welfare of its citizens, not to enforce ideological conformity.
The Roots of Persecution: Modernism and the Apostasy of the Elites
The Colorado case is not an isolated incident but part of a broader pattern of persecution against the Church in the United States and throughout the West. This persecution is the fruit of the modernist apostasy that has infected the Church’s hierarchy and the secular elite alike. The conciliar sect, by embracing the principles of religious liberty, ecumenism, and dialogue with the world, has surrendered the Church’s claim to unique truth and public authority, leaving the faithful vulnerable to the state’s ideological demands.
The article’s reliance on legal strategies and appeals to the Supreme Court reflects the conciliar Church’s accommodation to the liberal order. Instead of proclaiming the Social Kingship of Christ and demanding the state’s submission to divine law, the Church’s representatives beg for tolerance and inclusion within a system that is fundamentally hostile to her mission. This is the fruit of the hermeneutics of continuity, which seeks to reconcile the irreconcilable: the Church’s divine mandate and the secular state’s claim to autonomy.
Conclusion: The Church Does Not Beg; She Commands
The Colorado case exposes the bankruptcy of the modern concept of “religious freedom” and the futility of seeking justice from a state that has rejected the authority of Christ the King. The Church’s response to persecution must not be accommodation but proclamation: the state has no authority to exclude her from public life, for her mission is divine and her rights are not contingent on human law.
Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas, declared: “The state must leave the same freedom to the members of Orders and Congregations, both male and female, 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 Colorado case is a call to reject the liberal order and to reaffirm the Church’s divine right to educate, govern, and sanctify without interference from the secular power.
Let the faithful not be deceived by the language of “inclusion” and “nondiscrimination.” The state that excludes the Church from public life because of her fidelity to divine law is not a neutral arbiter but an enemy of Christ. The Church’s response must be not compromise but resistance, for “we must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).
Source:
Supreme Court to hear Colorado Catholic preschools’ religious freedom suit (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 20.04.2026