Catholic News Agency reports on a Varsity Catholic event at the SEEK 2026 conference in Columbus, Ohio, where 26,000 attendees gathered under the auspices of FOCUS (Fellowship of Catholic University Students). Washington Nationals pitcher Trevor Williams and retired Atlanta Braves pitcher J.J. Niekro addressed college athletes about finding holiness through “small sacrifices” and athletic discipline, using the Gospel account of the widow’s mite (Mark 12:41-44) as their theological foundation. The article presents this gathering as spiritually edifying while omitting every supernatural element of Catholic life – a perfect embodiment of the conciliar sect’s naturalistic apostasy.
Substitution of Athletic Discipline for Supernatural Grace
The central heresy unfolds in Williams’ analogy comparing bunting in baseball to spiritual sacrifice:
“Bunting is the ‘hardest easy’ thing to do… As athletes, we understand sacrifice with training, practice, and busy schedules. But when we sacrifice for the Lord, we don’t always see an immediate return. That’s why it’s harder.”
This reduces the opus Dei (work of God) to a mere psychological exercise in perseverance, erasing the distinction between natural virtue and sanctifying grace. Pius XI condemned such confusion in Quas Primas, emphasizing that Christ’s kingship demands not merely human effort but “the sweet yoke of Christ” (1925) – meaning adherence to His divinely instituted sacraments and immutable doctrine.
FOCUS operates as a Trojan horse by promoting this athletic Pelagianism. When Niekro states, “My model for life became very simple: Wake up and love Christ,” he epitomizes the subjectivist heresy condemned in Pascendi Dominici Gregis: “Modernists place the foundation of religious philosophy in that doctrine which is called Agnosticism… human reason is confined entirely within the field of phenomena” (St. Pius X, 1907). Nowhere do these speakers mention the necessity of the sacraments (especially Penance and the Eucharist), the intercession of Our Lady, or the Four Last Things – the sine qua non of Catholic spirituality.
The Abomination of False Sanctity
Williams’ reference to “St. Carlo Acutis” as a model exposes the event’s diabolical disorientation. The conciliar sect’s canonization factories manufactured this “saint” to promote Eucharistic irreverence (he called adoration “spam”) and false ecumenism. True Catholic saints like St. John Vianney would weep to see athletes directed to a teenager who owned PlayStations rather than to the heroic sacrifices of martyrs like St. Sebastian. The article’s silence about devotion to the Sacred Heart – the only remedy for modern apostasy according to Leo XIII’s Annum Sacrum (1899) – proves its anti-Catholic essence.
NOVUS, the event’s sponsor, compounds the blasphemy with its motto: “Claim your crown,” twisting James 1:12 into a prosperity gospel. This contradicts the Church’s teaching that “we must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:21) and ignores Pius XI’s warning against “the cult of man” in Quas Primas. The true crown comes not through athletic achievement but through suffering with Christ the King, as countless martyrs demonstrated when they rejected the world’s empty promises.
Eclipse of the Church’s Mission
The article’s grotesque omission of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass – the source and summit of Catholic life – reveals the conference’s apostate character. While 26,000 souls allegedly gathered for “faith,” there’s no mention of whether they attended valid Masses or received sacraments from priests with proper faculties. Instead, the focus remains on motivational speeches and emotional experiences, constituting direct disobedience to Canon 1256 of the 1917 Code: “The primary and indispensable ministers of sacred things are those who have received sacred orders.”
Garrett Bernardo’s statement that athletes find identity as “sons or daughters of Christ” constitutes blasphemous presumption. The Church teaches that divine filiation comes solely through Baptism and state of grace (Council of Trent, Session VI). To suggest otherwise – as this event does by never mentioning sanctifying grace or mortal sin – promotes the Lutheran heresy of universal justification condemned in Exsurge Domine (Leo X, 1520).
Rupture With Tradition
The Varsity Catholic event epitomizes the conciliar sect’s systematic demolition of Catholic asceticism. When Williams urges students to “let your prayer be simple: Lord, all I have is two pennies,” he mocks the Church’s rich tradition of liturgical prayer. Contrast this with Pius XII’s condemnation of improvisation in Mediator Dei (1947): “The Sacred Liturgy does not require mere exterior acts… but especially faith and divine grace.” True Catholic athletes like St. Louis IX or Bl. Bartolo Longo combined physical discipline with daily Rosaries, fasting, and Eucharistic adoration – all anathema to the FOCUS agenda.
J.J. Niekro’s revelation that his Hall of Fame uncle would have “traded his entire career for one more hour with family” inverts the proper hierarchy of values. As Pius XI taught in Casti Connubii (1930), family exists to serve God, not become an idol: “The family is more sacred than the State… Jesus Christ must reign in the family.” This saccharine focus on earthly relationships at SEEK 2026 exposes the conference’s fundamental worldliness, diametrically opposed to Christ’s command: “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me” (Matthew 10:37).
Conclusion: Field of Apostasy
From its naturalized spirituality to its canonization of bourgeois values, the SEEK conference embodies the “abomination of desolation” foretold in Daniel 9:27. Athletes seeking true holiness must flee these neo-modernist circus acts and return to the unchanging Catholic faith preserved by traditional priests and bishops. As Pius XI declared in Quas Primas: “When once men recognize… that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony.” Until then, events like SEEK will remain what St. Pius X called “the synthesis of all heresies” – playing games while Rome burns.
Source:
‘Two pennies and a bunt’: Catholic athletes explore faith at SEEK (catholicnewsagency.com)
Date: 04.01.2026