The National Catholic Register (NCR), organ of the EWTN media empire, reports that Arkansas has secured the premier position in the 2026 “Religious Liberty in the States” (RLS) index published by First Liberty Institute, achieving a score of 89% for legal “safeguards” protecting religious exercise. Tennessee follows at 85%. The ranking celebrates statutory protections — such as Arkansas’ H.B. 1615 shielding objectors from participation in wedding ceremonies contrary to conscience, and Tennessee’s “exemplary” medical conscience laws — as victories for freedom. New York ranks last at 26%. This panegyric to secular legalism exposes the complete capitulation of the conciliar sect to the Masonic dogma of libertas religionis, a doctrine solemnly condemned by the infallible Magisterium as the “pest” of liberalism and the very engine of the abomination of desolation occupying the Vatican.
The Theological Anatomy of a Condemned Error
The cited article functions as a liturgy of praise for the great heresy of the 19th and 20th centuries: religious liberty. The Syllabus of Errors of Pope Pius IX (1864), binding on all Catholics in perpetuum, explicitly anathematizes the proposition that “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true” (Error 15) 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, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship” (Error 77). The RLS index, by measuring how well states protect the “free exercise” of all religions — including false sects, pagan cults, and Satanic temples — institutionalizes precisely this condemned indifferentism. The “excellent” rating bestowed upon Arkansas signifies only that this state has most effectively entrenched the droit commun of the Masonic city: the equality of truth and error before the law.
Pope Leo XIII, in Immortale Dei (1885), teaches that “The State, constituted as it is, is bound to render to God public worship… it cannot be indifferent to the true religion.” The RLS metric inverts this divine order. It scores states on their neutrality — their refusal to confess Christ the King — and calls this “protection.” The article boasts that Arkansas protects 89% of “safeguards.” In reality, it has erected 89% of the legal barriers preventing the Social Kingship of Christ from being enacted in legislation. It has made the public profession of the Catholic Faith legally optional and the public propagation of error legally secure. This is not liberty; it is licentia — the license of the children of darkness.
The Kingship of Christ vs. The “Conscience” of Man
Pope Pius XI, in the encyclical Quas Primas (1925), provided the definitive theological refutation of the entire framework undergirding the First Liberty Institute report. He declares: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” The RLS index is a ledger of this destruction. It measures the degree to which states have derived authority from men (constitutions, statutes, “conscience protections”) rather than from God.
The article highlights “medical conscience laws” allowing healthcare providers to refuse “medical services because of their religious beliefs.” This language reveals the Protestantized, subjectivist anthropology of the neo-church. Catholic moral theology knows no “right of conscience” opposed to the objective moral law. Conscientia non est facultas eligendi, sed iudicium practicum (Conscience is not a faculty of choosing, but a practical judgment). A “conscience protection” that shields a Jew, a Muslim, a Protestant, or a pagan in following their false conscience is a protection of error. The true right is the jus divinum of the Church to teach and govern; the false “right” is the humanum claim to follow one’s own private judgment. The RLS index celebrates the latter. As Pius XI warns: “The plague is the secularism of our times, so-called laicism… It began with the denial of Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations.” Arkansas, by this index, is the most secularist, the most laicist state in the Union — and the conciliar press applauds it.
The Linguistic Camouflage of Indifferentism
The rhetoric of the article is saturated with the bureaucratic newspeak of the novus ordo establishment: “safeguards,” “legal protections,” “free-exercise rights,” “virtuous cycle,” “stakeholders.” This is the language of the Civitas Diaboli masquerading as the Civitas Dei. Note the category “economic life” among the six measured domains. The reduction of the Church’s mission to a set of legal carve-outs within a secular commercial framework is the essence of the hermeneutic of rupture inaugurated at Vatican II. The “Religious Freedom Restoration Acts” (RFRAs) praised in Georgia and Wyoming are not bulwarks of the Faith; they are statutory admissions that the State is the supreme arbiter of what “religion” is permitted, graciously granting exemptions from its own totalitarian claims. This is the exsequatur condemned by Pius IX (Syllabus, Error 41) — the civil power claiming the right to regulate the Church’s liberty.
The phrase “protecting religious liberty” appears as a mantra. St. Pius X, in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907) and Pascendi Dominici Gregis, condemned the Modernist principle that “The Church listening cooperates… that the Church teaching should only approve the common opinions of the Church listening” (Lamentabili, Prop. 6). The First Liberty Institute / EWTN axis operates precisely on this Modernist premise: they listen to the “common opinions” of the American founding myth (religious liberty as a natural right) and approve them as Catholic teaching. They have transformed the Depositum Fidei into a legal brief for the First Amendment.
The Symptomatic Level: The Neo-Church as Agent of the Masonic Design
Why does the “largest legal organization in the U.S. dedicated exclusively to defending religious liberty” (First Liberty) exist? Why does EWTN/NCR amplify its report? Because the conciliar sect, having abandoned the integral Faith at Vatican II (Dignitatis Humanae), requires a substitute theology. That substitute is Americanism — the synthesis of all heresies condemned by Leo XIII in Testem Benevolentiae (1899). The “Religious Liberty in the States” index is the annual liturgical calendar of this false religion. Its “high feast” is the RFRA; its “saints” are the legislators who pass conscience clauses; its “magisterium” is the Supreme Court of the United States.
The article notes a “virtuous cycle as states learn from what other states have done, emulate them.” This is the dialectic of the Revolution. The “improvement” of New York (26%) to Arkansas (89%) is not a restoration of Christendom; it is the perfection of the Masonic Republic. The Syllabus condemns the proposition: “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (Error 80). The conciliar hierarchy, from the usurper “Pope” Leo XIV (Prevost) down to the “bishops” of Arkansas and Tennessee, has done exactly this. They have reconciled the Church to the Masonic State. They celebrate the State’s “generosity” in allowing Catholics to exist as a tolerated sect among sects.
The Sedevacantist Imperative: No King But Caesar
The Defense of Sedevacantism demonstrates that a manifest heretic loses the papacy ipso facto (St. Robert Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice: “A manifest heretic… by that very fact ceases to be Pope and head… as he ceases to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church”). The line of usurpers from John XXIII to Leo XIV has publicly professed the heresy of religious liberty, taught by Vatican II and the post-conciliar “magisterium.” By Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code (“Publicly defects from the Catholic faith”), they have tacitly resigned the office. The “bishops” quoted or implied in this Arkansas report — those who lobby for these laws — are not successors of the Apostles but functionaries of the paramasonic structure. They possess no jurisdiction (Can. 188.4; Cum ex Apostolatus Officio). Their “defense of religious liberty” is the defense of their own usurped positions within the neo-church, ensuring the flow of government grants and the legal protection of their compromised institutions.
The article concludes with the hope that the project “can help catalyze such gains for years to come.” The only “gain” catalyzed is the further entrenchment of the abomination of desolation in the holy place (Matt 24:15). True Catholics, adhering to the immutable Tradition and the Social Kingship of Christ, reject this index root and branch. We do not seek “protections” from the Masonic State; we demand its conversion and its subjection to Christ the King. “He who gives the Kingdom of Heaven does not take away earthly things!” (Pius XI, Quas Primas, citing the hymn Crudelis Herodes). But the neo-church, content with its “excellent” rating in Arkansas, has bartered the Kingdom of Heaven for a seat at Caesar’s table.
Non est potestas nisi a Deo (There is no power but from God — Rom 13:1). The “Religious Liberty Index” measures the rebellion of the states against this truth. Arkansas is not first; it is merely the most successful rebel. Christus Vincit, Christus Regnat, Christus Imperat.
Source:
Arkansas Tops 2026 Religious Liberty Index (ncregister.com)
Date: 15.07.2026