The National Catholic Register portal reports on the aftermath of state elections in four Indian states, presenting the results as a “split verdict” for the Christian community. While the southern states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu delivered outcomes favorable to Christian interests, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) secured a historic victory in West Bengal and a third consecutive term in Assam, prompting alarm among Christian leaders. The article quotes various Catholic figures expressing relief, frustration, and concern over the political trajectories of these regions. However, beneath the surface of this electoral commentary lies a profound theological and spiritual malaise — a complete capitulation to the liberal democratic paradigm, an abandonment of the social reign of Christ the King, and a reduction of the Church’s mission to mere political lobbying within a system inherently hostile to the Faith.
The Idolatry of “Democracy” and the Abdication of Christ’s Kingship
The most glaring omission in this article — and indeed in the statements of the quoted Catholic clergy — is any mention of the social kingship of Christ. The entire framework of analysis is secular, democratic, and naturalistic. Father Thomas Tharayil of the Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council declares that “the people cannot be misled by propaganda and they have given a clear verdict against it.” But what is this “verdict”? It is the verdict of a democratic electorate operating within a system that Pope Pius XI explicitly identified as one of the fruits of the public rejection of Christ’s reign. In Quas Primas, Pope Pius XI taught with unmistakable 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.”
The article’s framework treats the BJP’s electoral victories as merely a political setback for a religious minority, rather than what they truly manifest: the consequence of a civilization that has expelled Christ and His law from public life. Pope Pius XI warned in the same encyclical: “When God and Jesus Christ — as we lamented — were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, 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.” The “democracy” celebrated and lamented by these Catholic leaders is precisely the system built on the premise that authority derives from men, not from God — a premise condemned repeatedly by the Magisterium.
The Syllabus of Errors of Pope Pius IX condemned the proposition that “the best theory of civil society requires that popular schools open to children of every class of the people… should be freed from all ecclesiastical authority, control and interference, and should be fully subjected to the civil and political power” (Proposition 47). Yet the entire article operates within this very framework, treating the secular democratic order as the natural and legitimate arena within which the Church must operate, rather than as a system that must itself be subordinated to the law of Christ.
The Reduction of the Church to a Political Interest Group
The statements attributed to Catholic leaders reveal a Church reduced to the status of a political interest group, concerned primarily with securing favorable electoral outcomes for its constituents. Father Charles Antony, editor of the New Leader in Chennai, describes the victory of Catholic actor Joseph Vijay’s TVK party as “genuinely historic” and notes that Vijay “visited churches, temples, and mosques alike during the campaign, successfully projecting himself as a leader for all communities.” He adds: “This secular messaging helped his party distance itself from identity-based polarization.”
Here we encounter the very essence of the post-conciliar apostasy. The Church is presented as merely one community among many, and a Catholic politician’s “secular messaging” — his deliberate downplaying of his Catholic identity — is celebrated as a political virtue. Father Antony explicitly states that Vijay’s “Christian identity is incidental to his politics.” This is a direct contradiction of Catholic teaching. Pope Pius XI declared: “It matters not whether individuals, families, or states, for men united in societies are no less subject to the authority of Christ than individuals.” A Catholic who treats his faith as “incidental” to his public life is not a model to be celebrated but a scandal to be condemned.
Furthermore, the ecumenical spirit on display — visiting “churches, temples, and mosques alike” as equal partners in a political project — is precisely the false ecumenism condemned by the pre-conciliar Magisterium. Pope Pius XI in Mortalium Animos condemned those who “endeavor to bring about that ‘union’ which is not the true reunion of Christians in the one true Faith, but a federation of Christian communities, each retaining its own beliefs.” The celebration of a Catholic actor’s interfaith political campaigning as “historic” reveals the depth to which the conciliar sect has absorbed the very errors the true Church condemns.
The article also notes with satisfaction that BJP attacks on Vijay’s Christian identity “paradoxically, may have helped consolidate minority votes.” This is the language of identity politics — a framework utterly foreign to Catholic social teaching. The Church does not seek to consolidate “minority votes”; she seeks the conversion of all nations to Jesus Christ and the establishment of His social kingship. The reduction of Catholic political engagement to the consolidation of blocs within a secular democratic framework is a betrayal of the Church’s divine mission.
The Silence on Disenfranchisement and the Fraud of “Human Rights”
The article reports that in West Bengal, “the controversial, hurried action of the Election Commission of India… disenfranchised more than 9 million, or 12%, of its 76 million voters under a Special Intensive Revision of the voter list.” It further notes that “in constituencies where more than 25,000 voters had been disenfranchised, the BJP had won 95 of 147 seats.” Sunil Lucas, former president of Signis India, calls this “a terrible result many had feared,” while “prominent Church leaders declined to comment.”
The cowardice is palpable. Where is the prophetic voice of the Church? Where is the denunciation of the disenfranchisement of millions? Where is the insistence that justice — not mere electoral outcomes — is the foundation of the common good? Pope Leo XIII taught in Immortale Dei 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 the highest in its kind, and each fixed within definite limits, determined by its own nature and special object.” When the civil power acts unjustly — disenfranchising millions of citizens — it is the duty of the Church to speak with authority. Instead, we hear silence from “prominent Church leaders” and lamentations about electoral losses from others.
Moreover, the concern expressed by Allen Brooks of the Assam Christian Forum — that “when the ruling party with over two-thirds majority has no member of the minorities in the legislature, democracy becomes a failure” — reveals the liberal democratic idolatry at work. The measure of “democracy” is not justice, not the common good, not the reign of Christ, but the proportional representation of “minorities” in a legislative body. This is the language of the post-conciliar Church, which has adopted the categories of liberal democracy as its own, rather than the language of Catholic social teaching, which insists 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” (St. Augustine, quoted by Pius XI in Quas Primas).
The Apostasy of the Post-Conciliar Structures
The very sources quoted in this article — the Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council, Signis India, the Assam Christian Forum — are all institutions of the post-conciliar conciliar sect. They are structures that have accepted the errors of Vatican II: religious liberty, ecumenism, the democratization of the Church, and the subordination of the spiritual mission to temporal political engagement. The “Catholic” identity of these leaders is, in the current ecclesial situation, deeply problematic. As the sedevacantist position articulated in the source documents demonstrates, a manifest heretic loses his office ipso facto, and the post-conciliar “clergy” have repeatedly and manifestly taught heresy — including the very errors of religious liberty and ecumenism that permeate this article.
Pope Paul IV’s Bull Cum ex Apostolatus Officio declares that if any Cardinal or Roman Pontiff “has defected from the Catholic Faith or fallen into some heresy… his promotion or elevation… shall be null, void, and of no effect.” The post-conciliar “popes” and “bishops” have defected from the Catholic Faith by embracing the very errors condemned in the Syllabus of Errors, Lamentabili, and Pascendi. Their institutions — including the bishops’ councils and forums cited in this article — are not organs of the true Church but of the “Church of the New Advent,” the paramasonic structure that occupies the Vatican.
The article’s uncritical presentation of these figures as legitimate representatives of the Catholic Church in India is itself a form of disinformation. The true Church in India — as everywhere — endures in the faithful who profess the integral Catholic faith, who reject the apostasy of Vatican II, and who recognize that the social reign of Christ the King is not a pious aspiration but a binding obligation on all nations and all political systems.
The Illusion of “Secular” Politics as a Framework for Catholic Action
The entire premise of this article — that Catholic engagement with electoral politics within a secular democratic framework is legitimate and desirable — is fundamentally flawed from a Catholic perspective. Pope Pius XI warned in Quas Primas that the “secularism of our times, so-called laicism, its errors and wicked endeavors” began with “the denial of Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations.” The article’s celebration of “secular messaging” and “distance from identity-based polarization” is, in reality, a celebration of the very laicism that Pius XI identified as the plague of modern times.
The Catholic Church does not exist to play the game of democratic politics. She exists to teach, govern, and lead souls to eternal salvation. Her mission is not to secure favorable electoral outcomes for “minorities” but to proclaim that “there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). The reduction of Catholic political engagement to electoral lobbying — celebrating victories, lamenting defeats, and strategizing for the next campaign — is a betrayal of the Church’s supernatural mission.
Pope Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors, condemned the proposition that “in the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship” (Proposition 77). Yet this is precisely the framework within which the quoted Catholic leaders operate — accepting the “secular” state as the neutral ground on which religious communities compete for influence. This is not Catholic teaching; it is liberalism wearing a Catholic mask.
Conclusion: The Only Verdict That Matters
The “split verdict” delivered by India’s state elections is, from the perspective of integral Catholic faith, entirely irrelevant to the only verdict that matters: the final judgment of Christ the King. The article’s concern with electoral outcomes, voter disenfranchisement, and minority representation within secular legislatures is a symptom of the profound spiritual blindness that has afflicted the post-conciliar Church. When the Church ceases to proclaim the social kingship of Christ and instead becomes a player in the democratic game, she has already lost everything.
The true Catholic response to the political situation in India — or anywhere else — is not to lament electoral losses or celebrate electoral victories, but to insist, with Pope Pius XI, that “Christ must reign in the mind of man, whose duty it is to accept revealed truths with complete submission to the divine will and to believe firmly and constantly in the teaching of Christ; let Christ reign in the will, which should obey God’s laws and commandments; let Him reign in the heart, which, having despised desires, must love God above all and belong only to Him; let Him reign in the body and its members, which… should contribute to the inner sanctification of souls.”
Until the Church — the true Church, not the conciliar sect — recovers this proclamation, no electoral outcome will matter, and no political arrangement will bring peace. For as Pius XI taught: “Then at last so many wounds can be healed, then there will be hope that the law will regain its former authority, sweet peace will return again, swords and weapons will fall from hands, when all willingly accept the reign of Christ and obey Him, and every tongue will confess that our Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.”
Source:
India’s State Elections Deliver Split Verdict for Christian Community (ncregister.com)
Date: 06.05.2026