The Naturalistic Distortion of Lenten Penance
The cited article from the *National Catholic Register* (March 12, 2026), penned by David Mills, presents a commentary on St. Gregory of Nazianzus’s Lenten teachings. It reduces the season’s purpose to a psychological exercise in social egalitarianism and personal humility, utterly divorcing it from its supernatural context. This analysis exposes the article as a prime example of the post-conciliar “Church of the New Advent’s” systematic replacement of Catholic asceticism with naturalistic humanism and its silence on the non-negotiable truths of the Faith.
1. Factual and Historical Deformation
The article correctly identifies a fourth-century context but fails to apply the unchanging principle that the Church’s doctrine is immutable. St. Gregory’s admonition against clerical snobbery was grounded in the supernatural reality of the sacramental office, not in a vague “fundamental equality” as the article claims. The archbishop of Constantinople operated within the one, true Church, where the hierarchical structure and sacramental power were divinely instituted and unquestioned. The article’s framing—”we enact in a personal way our fundamental equality”—is a modern, democratic fabrication. It projects contemporary egalitarian ideology onto the patristic era, ignoring the clear hierarchical order St. Gregory himself upheld as archbishop. The article’s source, the *NC Register*, is a flagship organ of the conciliar sect, and its commentary must be judged as part of the ongoing apostasy.
2. Theological Bankruptcy: Omission of the Supernatural
The most damning critique is the article’s complete silence on the *raison d’être* of Lent: satisfaction for sin, reparation for offenses against God, and the combat against the world, the flesh, and the devil. The article discusses “learning about our own sins” as a self-improvement project but never mentions:
- The necessity of sacramental confession for the remission of mortal sins.
- The propitiatory nature of Lenten penance, which makes satisfaction to Divine Justice.
- The supernatural goal of increasing sanctifying grace and virtue.
- The public and social reign of Christ the King, which Lenten penance is meant to support.
This omission is not accidental; it is the hallmark of Modernism. As Pope St. Pius X condemned in Lamentabili sane exitu, Proposition 26: “Faith, as assent of the mind, is ultimately based on a sum of probabilities.” The article reduces faith to a set of moral lessons about getting along, stripping it of its objective, supernatural content. The Lenten disciplines are presented as tools for “taking a little air out of our over-inflated view of ourselves”—a purely psychological, immanentist goal—rather than as acts of adoration, thanksgiving, satisfaction, and petition directed to God.
3. The Heresy of Immanentist Equality
The article’s core theme, “our fundamental equality in the Church,” is a dangerous distortion. Catholic doctrine teaches the fundamental equality of all souls before God in terms of their capacity for salvation and their dignity as redeemed by Christ. However, it absolutely denies any ontological or hierarchical equality. The Church is a society with a divinely ordained, unequal hierarchy: Pope, bishops, priests, religious, laity. As Pope Pius XI taught in Quas Primas, Christ’s kingdom is structured: “He is the Lawgiver, to whom men owe obedience… He possesses… judicial authority… and executive power.” The article’s egalitarianism directly contradicts this. It subtly promotes the error condemned by Pope Pius IX 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 the exclusion of all other forms of worship.” This error flows from the denial of the social reign of Christ the King. By focusing solely on interpersonal attitudes, the article ignores the far more grave sin of the state and society rejecting Christ’s authority, which is the root cause of modern disorder.
4. Symptomatic of the Conciliar Apostasy
The article’s methodology is classic Modernist “ressourcement” (back to the sources) stripped of Tradition. It extracts a patristic quote on humility, removes it from its sacramental and hierarchical context, and re-interprets it through the lens of 21st-century therapeutic culture. This is precisely the “hermeneutics of continuity” fraud: using ancient words to justify novel, naturalistic meanings. The article never once references the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the source and summit of Lenten observance. It never mentions the necessity of fasting and abstinence as obligations binding under pain of sin. It never speaks of the scourges of heresy, schism, and apostasy that have ravaged the post-conciliar “church.” Instead, it promotes a safe, inoffensive, and utterly bloodless “spirituality” that any atheist could endorse. This is the “abomination of desolation” standing in the holy place: a pseudo-Catholic commentary that is silent on the very doctrines that define Catholicism.
5. The Scandal of Accepting Usurpers
David Mills and the NC Register operate within the conciliar structure, acknowledging the antipopes from John XXIII through the current usurper, “Pope” Leo XIV (Robert Prevost). They thus implicitly accept the entire revolution. By commenting on Lenten practice without first denouncing the apostasy of the post-1958 hierarchy and the sacrileges of the New Mass, they scandalize the faithful. They suggest one can be a “good Catholic” while in formal communion with heretics and apostates who deny the Faith defined by Pius IX, Pius X, and Pius XII. As St. Robert Bellarmine, cited in the Defense of Sedevacantism file, proves: a manifest heretic loses his office ipso facto. The conciliar popes, by embracing the errors of Vatican II (religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality), are manifest heretics. Therefore, the See is vacant. To speak of “the sacraments of the Church” as Mills does, without clarifying that they are only validly administered by priests in communion with the true, pre-conciliar hierarchy, is a deliberate deception. It leads souls to believe they can receive grace from the very architects of the apostasy.
Conclusion: A Call to Reject the Neo-Church’s Lent
The article’s message is not one of Catholic humility but of Modernist self-satisfaction. It replaces the awe-inspiring reality of God’s justice and mercy with a cozy, social-workclub ethos. It omits the terrible consequences of sin, the necessity of the Incarnation and Redemption, and the absolute sovereignty of Christ the King over individuals, families, and nations. It is a symptom of the “Church of the New Advent,” which has exchanged the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary for a “table of assembly” and the call to penance for a call to vague “solidarity.”
True Lenten penance, according to the unchanging Faith, is a supernatural act of reparation performed in union with the sacrifice of Christ, through the sacramental system of the true Church, for the conversion of sinners and the triumph of Christ’s social reign. It is not a self-help program for becoming less obnoxious. The faithful must reject this naturalistic commentary and all it represents: the theology of the abomination of desolation. They must turn to the immutable Tradition preserved in the pre-1958 Magisterium, the true sacraments administered by valid priests, and the uncompromising proclamation of Christ’s absolute kingship over every facet of life.
Source:
St. Gregory of Nazianzus Warns: Don’t Think Too Highly of Yourself (ncregister.com)
Date: 12.03.2026