Lenten Campaign Preaches Naturalism, Not Christ the King
The Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops (KCCB), operating within the post-conciliar structure, has launched its 2026 Lenten Campaign under the theme “Building a Just, Peaceful and United Kenya: Upholding Human Dignity.” The statement, delivered by Archbishop Maurice Muhatia Makumba at the Immaculate Conception Shrine in Lodwar, calls for justice, peace, national cohesion, and electoral preparedness ahead of Kenya’s 2027 elections. Quoting Isaiah 1:17, the bishops frame the campaign as a “spiritual mandate and a national wake-up call,” emphasizing prayer, repentance, reconciliation, and solidarity with the poor. They warn against divisive politics, corruption, and human rights violations, urging ethical leadership and youth engagement in democratic processes. The campaign’s focus remains entirely on socio-political naturalism—human dignity, governance, and national unity—with no reference to the supernatural ends of the Lenten season: the reparation of sin, the conversion of souls, the public and social reign of Christ the King, or the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation. This omission is not accidental but symptomatic of the modernist apostasy that has infected the conciliar sect.
A Campaign of Naturalistic Humanism, Not Catholic Penance
The bishops present a Lenten call to action that is fundamentally a program of secular humanism in religious language. Their “spiritual mandate” is reduced to a checklist of naturalistic goals: justice (understood as socio-economic equity), peace (as absence of conflict), and unity (as national cohesion). The sole biblical citation, Isaiah 1:17, is ripped from its prophetic context, which calls the people of Israel to repentance for their sins and fidelity to the covenant, not to a generic program of social reform. The Lenten season, in the Catholic tradition, is a time for mortification, penance, and almsgiving performed in a spirit of contrition for sin, with the ultimate aim of uniting the soul more perfectly to Christ crucified. The 1917 Code of Canon Law (can. 1251) strictly prescribes fasting and abstinence as obligations of divine law, binding the faithful to a supernatural discipline that orders the body to the spirit and makes satisfaction for sin. The KCCB statement contains not a single mention of these penitential practices, nor of the necessity of sacramental confession. Instead, it substitutes “concrete acts of solidarity with the poor and vulnerable” for the works of penance, thereby transforming the Lenten observance into a mere socio-economic project. This is a direct echo of the modernist error condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu: the reduction of religion to a “certain religious movement, applied or applicable to different times and places” (Proposition 59), and the interpretation of dogmas “according to their practical function, i.e., as binding in action, rather than as principles of belief” (Proposition 26). The bishops have made the Lenten campaign a tool for naturalistic “progress,” not for the supernatural renovation of the individual soul through grace.
The Omission of Christ’s Kingship: A Silent Apostasy
The most glaring and damning omission is the complete silence on the Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Pope Pius XI, in his 1925 encyclical Quas Primas, instituted the feast of Christ the King precisely to counter the secularism and laicism that were then poisoning society. Pius XI taught that the “plague” of the modern world began “with the denial of Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations” and that “when God and Jesus Christ were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed” (Quas Primas, 32). He declared that Christ’s reign “encompasses all men” and 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” (Quas Primas, 28). Therefore, rulers and governments have the duty to “publicly honor Christ and obey Him,” and to order all laws and institutions on the basis of God’s commandments (Quas Primas, 31).
The Kenyan bishops, however, speak of “human dignity” as an inherent, non-negotiable right, but they never root this dignity in its sole source: the Incarnation and Redemption. They do not proclaim that every human person is dignified because they are created imago Dei and redeemed by the Precious Blood of Christ. More importantly, they utterly fail to declare that this dignity demands the public recognition of Christ’s law and His social kingship. Their call for “justice” and “accountability” is divorced from the principle that all law must derive from the eternal law of God as manifested in the Church. The Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX (1864) anathematizes the proposition that “the civil power may interfere in matters relating to religion, morality and spiritual government” (Error 44), but also condemns the contrary error that the state can be completely separated from the Church (Error 55). The Catholic doctrine, as restated by Pius XI, is that the state must recognize the “full freedom and independence” of the Church and must itself be subject to the “royal dignity and authority” of Christ (Quas Primas, 35). By advocating for a “just, peaceful and united Kenya” without any reference to the Social Reign of Christ, the bishops are promoting the very secularism that Pius XI called a “plague.” They are building a nation on the sand of natural rights, not on the rock of Christ the King. This is not a Catholic Lenten message; it is a surrender to the modernist, masonic principle of the separation of Church and State, which the Syllabus condemned as an error (Error 55).
The Heresy of “Human Dignity” Detached from the Faith
The bishops’ central theme, “upholding human dignity,” is presented as an absolute, self-evident good. However, from the integral Catholic perspective, this phrase, as used in the post-conciliar church, is a Trojan horse for religious indifferentism and the denial of the exclusive salvific role of the Catholic Church. The dignity of the human person is not a naturalistic abstraction; it is a supernatural reality conferred by Baptism and lived in the state of grace. Outside the Church, there is no true dignity, because there is no sanctifying grace. The Syllabus of Errors condemns the notion that “man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation” (Error 16) and that “good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ” (Error 17). By speaking of “human dignity” as a universal, non-negotiable right applicable to all Kenyans regardless of their religious profession, the bishops implicitly endorse the indifferentist error that all men possess an equal dignity that demands equal social recognition, irrespective of their membership in the one true Church. This is the foundational error of the conciliar document Dignitatis Humanae, which heretically proclaimed a “right” to religious freedom, a right that Pius IX had condemned as “an insanity” (Syllabus, Error 15). The bishops’ concern for the “poor and vulnerable” is commendable in the natural order, but it becomes a hollow, Pelagian gesture if it is not rooted in the supernatural charity that seeks first the salvation of souls and the conversion of the nation to the Catholic faith. Their silence on the primary spiritual poverty—the loss of sanctifying grace through mortal sin and the absence of the true sacraments—is a damning indictment of their priorities. They are concerned with the material welfare of the body while the souls of Kenyans are perishing in the false church of the neo-Vatican.
The Conciliar Roots of the Error: From “Signs of the Times” to Apostasy
This Lenten campaign is not an isolated error but a perfect fruit of the conciliar revolution. The Second Vatican Council’s pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes famously shifted the Church’s focus from the supernatural end of man to “the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the men of this age” (GS 1). This “reading of the signs of the times” in a purely naturalistic key is the wellspring of the modernist theology condemned by St. Pius X. The bishops’ statement is pure Gaudium et Spes applied to Kenya: an analysis of social problems (poverty, corruption, electoral violence) with a corresponding set of “pastoral” solutions (ethical leadership, civic engagement, youth participation). There is not a trace of the Catholic doctrine that society must be organized according to the principles of the Social Kingship of Christ, as taught by Leo XIII and Pius XI. The bishops operate entirely within the framework of the “abomination of desolation” standing in the holy place (Matthew 24:15)—the conciliar church, which has replaced the Catholic Church with a humanistic, ecumenical, and democratic institution.
Furthermore, the bishops’ appeal to “national cohesion” and “unity” in the context of ethnic politics mirrors the conciliar obsession with “dialogue” and “encounter,” which are euphemisms for the compromise of truth. The true Catholic unity is unity in the one faith, which requires the conversion of all Kenyans to the Catholic Church. The bishops’ call for unity “over division” implicitly accepts the legitimacy of non-Catholic religions and ideologies as part of the Kenyan social fabric, thereby betraying the exclusive claim of the Catholic Church. This is the ecumenism of the post-conciliar sect, which Pius XI in Mortalium Animos (1928) condemned as a “false opinion” that “all religions are equally good and praiseworthy” because they “all lead to God.” The Kenyan bishops, by not demanding the Catholic faith as the sole foundation for a just society, are complicit in this apostasy.
The Sedevacantist Diagnosis: A Hierarchy in Formal Heresy
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, the authors of this document—Archbishop Muhatia and the KCCB—are not legitimate pastors but Modernist heretics occupying Catholic sees. The theological arguments for sedevacantism, as summarized in the provided file, demonstrate that a manifest heretic loses all ecclesiastical jurisdiction ipso facto. St. Robert Bellarmine, citing the Fathers, states: “a manifest heretic… by that very fact ceases to be Pope and head… a manifest heretic cannot be Pope. It cannot be objected that the character remains in him, because if he remained Pope because of the character, since it is indelible, he could never be deposed” (Defense of Sedevacantism). Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law provides: “Every office becomes vacant by the mere fact… if the cleric:… 4. Publicly defects from the Catholic faith.” The bishops’ public teaching, which contradicts defined Catholic doctrine on the Social Kingship of Christ, religious liberty, and the supernatural end of Lent, constitutes a public defection from the faith. Their document is a manifesto of Modernism, the “synthesis of all heresies” condemned by St. Pius X. Therefore, they possess no teaching authority. Their “Lenten Campaign” is not a Catholic pastoral initiative but a heretical program of naturalistic reform emanating from a false hierarchy. To follow their guidance is to follow Modernist wolves in shepherd’s clothing.
Conclusion: The Call to Integral Catholicism
The Kenyan bishops’ Lenten Campaign is a stark revelation of the apostasy that has taken hold of the post-conciliar church. It replaces the cross of Christ with the banner of human rights, the Sacrifice of the Mass with social activism, and the salvation of souls with the betterment of the temporal order. It is a Lent without penance, a spirituality without the supernatural, and a call to unity without truth. This is the logical outcome of the conciliar principles of aggiornamento and dialogue, which have emptied the Church of her divine mission to be “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). True Lenten observance demands a rejection of this naturalistic humanism. It demands a return to the immutable Tradition: the fasting and abstinence prescribed by Canon Law, the frequent confession of sins, the ardent devotion to the Passion of Christ, and the uncompromising proclamation of His exclusive Kingship over individuals, families, and nations. The only “human dignity” that matters is the dignity of being a member of the Mystical Body of Christ, which requires Catholic faith, hope, and charity. The bishops have built their campaign on the shifting sands of modern ideology. The true Catholic must build on the rock of Christ the King, as Pius XI commanded: “Let all men… allow themselves to be governed by Christ… Then at last… the law will regain its former authority, sweet peace will return again” (Quas Primas, 33). This is the Lenten message that is sacred, Catholic, and salvific. All else is the noise of the apostasy.
Source:
Lent: Bishops rally Kenyans to defend human dignity and safeguard unity (vaticannews.va)
Date: 18.02.2026