The National Catholic Register reports that Apache Stronghold, a Native American coalition, has filed yet another legal challenge to block the transfer of Oak Flat in Arizona to Resolution Copper, a multinational mining operation. The group, having lost at every judicial level including a denied Supreme Court appeal in October 2025, now pursues an amended lawsuit alleging violations of the First Amendment, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), and the 1852 Treaty of Santa Fe. The article highlights that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and the Knights of Columbus have filed amicus briefs in support of the Apache coalition, arguing that the lower court decisions represent “a grave misunderstanding” of religious freedom law. Becket, a religious liberty law firm representing Apache Stronghold, accuses the federal government of having “rushed the Oak Flat transfer through under cover of darkness.” This entire episode reveals the catastrophic theological confusion and doctrinal bankruptcy of the post-conciliar structures occupying the Vatican, which have abandoned the Church’s immutable teaching on the exclusive salvific mission of the Catholic Church and the limits of religious liberty, substituting it with a naturalistic, egalitarian framework indistinguishable from the Masonic principles condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors.
The Church’s Immutable Teaching: One True Religion, One True Church
The most fundamental and damning error underlying the USCCB’s intervention is the complete inversion of Catholic doctrine on religious freedom. The Church has always taught, with the full weight of her infallible Magisterium, that the Catholic Church is the one true religion established by God, and that the State has the duty to recognize this truth and protect it, while tolerating only those false religions whose practice does not endanger the common good. This is not a matter of opinion but of defined dogma.
Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), condemned the following proposition: “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true” (Error 15). He further condemned the notion that “Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation, and arrive at eternal salvation” (Error 16), and that “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” (Error 18). These condemnations are not relics of a bygone era; they are the perennial teaching of the Church, reaffirmed by every Pope until the conciliar revolution.
The same Pontiff, in his encyclical Quanto conficiamur moerore (1863), while acknowledging that those invincibly ignorant of the Catholic faith could be saved through the workings of divine grace, simultaneously declared that “the Catholic Church alone is the true religion, outside of which no one can be saved”, and that those who persist in rejecting her authority and teachings are on the path to eternal perdition. This is the doctrine of extra Ecclesiam nulla salus — outside the Church there is no salvation — a truth defined by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), the Council of Florence (1438-1445), and reiterated by countless Popes and Councils.
The USCCB’s support for the religious liberty claims of a pagan Apache group, grounded in the RFRA — a purely secular, American legal statute — represents a total repudiation of this doctrine. It places the worship of false gods on the same juridical and moral plane as the worship of the one true God in His Holy Catholic Church. This is precisely the error of indifferentism, which Pius IX condemned without equivocation. The post-conciliar “bishops” have effectively declared that the religious practices of paganism deserve the same legal protection as the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the administration of the sacraments, and the public profession of the Catholic faith.
The Conciliar Heresy of Religious Liberty: Dignitatis Humanae
The root of this scandal lies in the conciliar document Dignitatis Humanae (1965), promulgated by the usurper Paul VI, which proclaimed a “right to religious freedom” grounded in the dignity of the human person. This document, as every faithful Catholic knows, is a direct contradiction of the perennial Magisterium. Gregory XVI, in Mirari Vos (1832), condemned the notion that “liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone” as “a deliramentum” — a delirium. Leo XIII, in Immortale Dei (1885), taught that the State’s duty is to profess and protect the Catholic religion, and that the unrestricted public exercise of false religions cannot be approved by the civil authority.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas (1925), explicitly stated that the reign of Christ the King extends over all nations and all aspects of civil life, and that rulers and governments have the duty to publicly honor Christ and obey Him. He wrote: “The state is happy not by one means, and man by another; for the state is nothing else than a harmonious association of men” — meaning that the State, no less than the individual, is subject to the authority of Christ and must order its laws according to divine revelation. The idea that a Catholic body would support a pagan group’s claim to a “sacred” site against the lawful authority of the civil government is a direct consequence of the conciliar abandonment of the Social Kingship of Christ.
The USCCB’s invocation of RFRA — a law born of the liberal, Masonic constitutional order that the Church has always opposed — as a vehicle for defending pagan worship is a grotesque perversion of any authentic concept of religious liberty. True religious liberty, as taught by the Church, means that no man can be coerced against his conscience in matters of faith (invincible ignorance), but it does not mean that false religions have a “right” to public exercise, nor that the State must treat all religions as equally valid or equally deserving of protection. The USCCB has adopted the very liberalism and indifferentism that the pre-conciliar Popes condemned as heresy.
The Nature of Pagan Worship: Idolatry, Not “Religion”
The article refers to Oak Flat as a “sacred site” for the Western Apaches. The USCCB’s amicus brief treats the Apache religious claims as legitimate exercises of “religious freedom” deserving of judicial protection. This reveals a profound theological blindness — or worse, a deliberate suppression of the truth.
The worship practiced by Native American groups at Oak Flat is paganism — the worship of creation rather than the Creator, the veneration of spirits and natural forces in place of the Triune God. The Church has always taught that such worship is idolatry, a grave sin against the First Commandment. St. Paul, in Romans 1:21-25, describes the descent of pagan nations into idolatry as a punishment for their refusal to acknowledge the true God: “They changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of a corruptible man, and of birds, and of four-footed beasts, and of creeping things.”
The Church’s missionary mandate, as expressed by Leo XIII in Sancta Dei Civitas and Pius XI in Rerum Ecclesiae, is precisely to convert pagan nations to the Catholic faith, not to facilitate and legally protect their false worship. The USCCB’s intervention on behalf of Apache Stronghold is not an act of “justice” or “religious liberty” — it is a betrayal of the Church’s divine mandate to preach the Gospel to all nations and to lead souls out of the darkness of idolatry into the light of Christ.
The Treaty of Santa Fe: Secular Legalism Over Divine Law
The Apache coalition’s invocation of the 1852 Treaty of Santa Fe as a legal basis for their claim further exposes the secular, legalistic framework that the post-conciliar “Church” has adopted. The USCCB’s support for this treaty-based argument reveals that these “bishops” operate entirely within the categories of secular jurisprudence, not Catholic moral theology.
The Church has always taught that civil law must conform to divine law and natural law. A treaty between the United States government and a pagan tribe, negotiated within the framework of a Masonic constitutional republic, has no binding force in the forum of conscience if it conflicts with the demands of the common good as understood by Catholic social teaching. The USCCB’s willingness to invoke such a treaty in defense of pagan worship demonstrates that these men have abandoned the supernatural mission of the Church in favor of a purely naturalistic, legalistic approach indistinguishable from that of any secular advocacy group.
The Knights of Columbus: From Catholic Fraternal Order to Liberal Advocacy Group
The involvement of the Knights of Columbus in this affair is particularly scandalous. Founded in 1882 to defend the Catholic faith and support the Church in an era of anti-Catholic bigotry, the Knights of Columbus have, like virtually every Catholic institution, been thoroughly penetrated by the conciliar revolution. Their filing of an amicus brief in support of Apache Stronghold’s pagan religious claims represents the complete capitulation of a once-Catholic organization to the spirit of the age — the very indifferentism and religious relativism that the pre-conciliar Church condemned as heresy.
The Knights of Columbus, by arguing that the lower court’s decision applies an “atextual constraint” to RFRA, have placed themselves in the position of defending the “religious liberty” of pagans against the lawful exercise of civil authority. This is the logical endpoint of the conciliar embrace of Dignitatis Humanae — the transformation of Catholic institutions into instruments of the liberal, secular order, working to ensure that all religions, true and false alike, receive equal treatment under the law.
The Silence on the Supernatural: The Defining Characteristic of the Conciliar Sect
Perhaps the most revealing aspect of this entire episode is what is not said. There is no mention in the article — and presumably none in the USCCB’s amicus brief — of the supernatural destiny of man, the necessity of baptism, the reality of sin and conversion, the exclusive salvific mission of the Catholic Church, or the duty of all men to embrace the true faith. The entire discussion is conducted in the language of secular jurisprudence: “religious freedom,” “judicial review,” “amicus briefs,” “federal law.”
This silence is the defining characteristic of the conciliar sect and its institutions. The USCCB, the Knights of Columbus, and the entire apparatus of post-conciliar “Catholicism” have reduced the Church’s mission to that of a secular NGO, advocating for “justice,” “religious liberty,” and “human rights” within the framework of the liberal democratic order. They have abandoned the supernatural mission of the Church — the salvation of souls through the preaching of the Gospel, the administration of the sacraments, and the submission of all nations to the reign of Christ the King — in favor of a purely naturalistic program indistinguishable from that of the United Nations or the American Civil Liberties Union.
The Duty of the Faithful: Rejection of the Conciliar Apostasy
The faithful Catholic, guided by the unchanging teaching of the pre-conciliar Church, must reject the USCCB’s intervention in this affair as a manifestation of the conciliar apostasy. The Church has always taught that the Catholic religion is the one true religion, that the State has the duty to recognize and protect it, and that false religions may be tolerated only when the common good requires it — never granted equal status or equal protection with the true faith.
Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors, condemned the proposition that “the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (Error 80). The USCCB’s embrace of secular religious liberty law in defense of pagan worship is precisely this condemned reconciliation with liberalism and modern civilization. It is a betrayal of the Church’s divine mission and a scandal to the faithful.
The true Church — the Catholic Church as she existed before the conciliar revolution, guided by the immutable teaching of the Popes, the Councils, and the Fathers — must continue to proclaim the exclusive truth of the Catholic faith, the necessity of conversion, and the duty of all nations to submit to the reign of Christ the King. The post-conciliar structures, including the USCCB and the Knights of Columbus, have forfeited any claim to represent the Catholic Church. They are instruments of the liberal, Masonic order, working to ensure that the Catholic faith is reduced to one “religion” among many, deserving of no special recognition or protection.
Let the faithful reject these false shepherds and remain steadfast in the integral Catholic faith, outside of which there is no salvation, and in which alone is found the fullness of truth, the means of grace, and the path to eternal life.
Source:
Native American Group Backed by U.S. Bishops Seeks Court Review of Sacred Site Sale (ncregister.com)
Date: 23.04.2026