The Reduction of Lent to Naturalistic Interiority
The cited article from The Pillar presents an interview with Father Rob Hagan, OSA, prior-provincial of the Province of St. Thomas of Villanova, discussing the “Augustinian approach to Lent” in the context of the post-conciliar “Church.” The article, dated February 18, 2026, centers on themes of personal renewal, interior restlessness, expanding one’s heart for love, and listening—particularly to the poor—under the pontificate of “Pope Leo XIV.” It frames Lent primarily as an opportunity for psychological and communal growth, using the language of “values” applicable to a basketball team. A thorough deconstruction from the perspective of integral Catholic faith, using pre-1958 doctrine as the sole criterion, reveals not a legitimate spiritual guide but a sophisticated presentation of Modernist apostasy. The article’s core error is the complete privatization and naturalization of a liturgical season that, in Catholic doctrine, is fundamentally ordered to the public reign of Christ the King and the combat against sin and heresy.
1. Factual & Theological Deconstruction: The Omission of the Supernatural
The article systematically omits the essential, non-negotiable ends of Lent as defined by the Church’s unchanging Magisterium. Lent is presented as:
* A time for “renewal of mind, body, and spirit” and “refresh[ing]” commitments to Augustinian “rule.”
* An opportunity to “allow God to expand our hearts and capacity for love.”
* A period for “dying to ourselves” to “open ourselves up to the grace and presence of God.”
* A chance to “listen” to God, the Spirit, and “the cry of the poor.”
* A context for “values-based spiritual living” like unselfishness for a basketball team.
What is conspicuously absent is any reference to:
* **The primary purpose of Lent:** making satisfaction for sin, particularly through the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, as a debt of justice to God. The Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566) states: “The season of Lent… is a time for the faithful to mourn their sins, to do penance, and to make satisfaction to God.” The article replaces this with vague “renewal.”
* **The absolute necessity of the Sacraments:** Penance (Confession) is mentioned as an “underappreciated practice” and a nice “experience of grace,” not as a sacramental obligation for all who have committed mortal sin. The 1917 Code of Canon Law (Can. 906) required all the faithful to confess at least once a year. The article’s tone treats it as optional spiritual advice.
* **The combat against error and Modernism:** Lent has historically been a time for catechizing the faithful against heresy. Pope Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors (1864) condemns the idea that “the Church ought to tolerate the errors of philosophy” (Error 11) and that “the method and principles by which the old scholastic doctors cultivated theology are no longer suitable” (Error 13). The article’s “listening” paradigm directly inverts this, implying truth emerges from dialogue rather than from the unchangeable Magisterium.
* **The Social Reign of Christ:** Pope Pius XI’s encyclical Quas Primas (1925), instituting the Feast of Christ the King, explicitly links liturgical seasons to the public recognition of Christ’s authority over nations and societies. The article’s focus is entirely interior and personal, with no mention of Christ’s kingship over laws, governments, or social orders. This is a direct rejection of the doctrine that “the entire human society had to be shaken, because it lacked a stable and strong foundation” when “God and Jesus Christ were removed from laws and states” (Quas Primas).
* **The reality of Hell and Final Judgment:** Lent is a “penitential season” in preparation for the Last Things. The article contains zero references to death, judgment, hell, or heaven. This silence is itself heretical, as it denies the “four last things” which are “necessary to be believed by all” (Council of Trent, Session XXV). It promotes a “gospel of wellbeing” devoid of supernatural terror.
2. Linguistic & Symptomatic Analysis: The Language of Modernism
The vocabulary and tone are textbook Modernist, as condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici gregis (1907) and the decree Lamentabili sane exitu (1907).
* **”Renewal” and “Refresh”:** These are dynamic, evolutionary terms, implying the faith and its practice need constant updating. This contradicts the Catholic doctrine of the depositum fidei being sacred and unchangeable. Lamentabili condemned: “Dogmas, sacraments, and hierarchy… are merely modes of explanation and stages in the evolution of Christian consciousness” (Proposition 54).
* **”Listen” and “Listening”:** The article repeatedly emphasizes “listening to God,” “listening to the Spirit,” and “listening to one another.” This is the precise language of the “listening Church” of Vatican II, which subordinates the Magisterium docens (teaching Church) to the Magisterium credenti (believing Church). Lamentabili condemned: “The Church listening cooperates in such a way with the Church teaching in defining truths of faith, that the Church teaching should only approve the common opinions of the Church listening” (Proposition 6). This inverts the hierarchy of authority.
* **”Values-based spiritual living”:** This is pure naturalism. It reduces Christian asceticism to generic ethics applicable to corporations or basketball teams. It omits the supernatural motive: satisfaction to God and co-redemption with Christ. The article states these values “make for good living” and “a good team,” not that they are necessary for salvation or for repairing the honor of God offended by sin.
* **”Expand our hearts” and “capacity for the divine”:** This is vague, psychological mysticism. Catholic doctrine holds that sanctifying grace, received through the sacraments, infuses the soul with a participation in the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4), not that we “expand” an innate capacity. The article’s phrasing aligns with the Modernist error that “Truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him” (Lamentabili Proposition 58).
* **The “cherry on top” metaphor:** This trivializes the profound theological truth that the joy of reconciliation is the fruit of the Sacrament of Penance, which remits guilt and eternal punishment. It reduces it to a subjective feeling following a “renewed commitment.”
3. Theological Confrontation: Heresy in Plain Sight
The article, through its omissions and affirmations, teaches or implies several condemned propositions:
* **The Naturalistic Reduction of Religion:** By applying Lenten “values” to a basketball team and stating they apply to “a corporation” or “a school,” it promotes the error that religion is merely a moral and social enhancer, not the exclusive path to salvation. This is the “indifferentism” condemned by Pius IX’s Syllabus (Errors 15-17) and the “secularism” Pius XI attacked in Quas Primas: “the secularism of our times, so-called laicism, its errors and wicked endeavors.”
* **The Denial of the Church’s Teaching Authority:** The emphasis on “listening” to the Spirit through “noise in the world” and to “one another” implies that divine revelation is continuously apprehended through communal experience, not through the definitive, closed deposit guarded by the hierarchical Magisterium. This is the Modernist heresy that “revelation was merely man’s self-awareness of his relationship to God” (Lamentabili Proposition 20) and that “dogmas… are a certain interpretation of religious facts, which the human mind has worked out” (Proposition 22).
* **The Trivialization of Sacred Time:** The interview’s speed-round questions about fish dishes and muskrat, and the casual discussion of scheduling Mass around the NCAA tournament, demonstrate a complete failure to grasp the sacredness of the liturgical calendar. Holy Saturday, the day of Christ’s descent into hell and the repose of His body, is treated as a potential conflict with a sporting event. This is a profound sacrilege, reflecting the post-conciliar desacralization condemned by Pius X: “The Church is an enemy of the progress of natural and theological sciences” (misinterpreted as the Church opposing true science, but here the error is the Church’s surrender of sacred time to profane interests).
* **The Heresy of “Disarming Language”:** Father Hagan notes that “Pope Leo” called for “disarming language” and fasting “from words that wound.” This directly contradicts the Catholic duty to defend the faith. Pope Pius IX’s Syllabus condemns the idea that “it is lawful to refuse obedience to legitimate princes, and even to rebel against them” (Error 63), but more relevantly, it condemns the notion that “the civil power may… pass judgment on the instructions issued for the guidance of consciences… by the pastors of the Church” (Error 44). “Disarming language” in the face of doctrinal error is a surrender of the Church’s right and duty to “judge… controversies” (St. Pius X, Lamentabili on Councils 1:10). It is the language of ecumenical compromise, not Catholic combat.
4. The “Pope Leo XIV” Heresy and the Augustinian Order’s Apostasy
The article treats “Pope Leo XIV” (Robert Prevost) as a legitimate pontiff and an Augustinian. From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, this is a fundamental and damning error. The theological arguments in the provided “Defense of Sedevacantism” file, based on St. Robert Bellarmine and Canon 188.4, demonstrate that a manifest heretic cannot be pope. The current occupant of the Vatican, since John XXIII, has promulgated the heresies of Vatican II (e.g., religious liberty, collegiality, ecumenism) which are condemned by pre-1958 Magisterium. Therefore, the See is vacant. To call Prevost “Pope Leo XIV” is to recognize a manifest heretic as the Vicar of Christ, which is impossible. Bellarmine: “A manifest heretic is not a Christian… therefore, a manifest heretic cannot be Pope” (De Romano Pontifice, II:30).
Furthermore, the Augustinian Order itself is in a state of public apostasy. By participating in the conciliar and post-conciliar “Church,” by using the Novus Ordo Missae (a Lutheran service condemned by Pius XII’s Mediator Dei in spirit), and by promoting the “listening” paradigm, the Order has severed itself from the Augustinian tradition of rigid orthodoxy. St. Augustine fought the Donatists and Pelagians with uncompromising doctrinal clarity. The modern Augustinians, as represented by Father Hagan, promote a vague interiority that is the very opposite of the Church Militant. Their approach to Lent is not Augustinian but Bergoglian—emphasizing “mercy” without justice, “encounter” without dogma, and “listening” without submission.
5. The Fatal Omission: Christ the King
The most glaring theological bankruptcy is the complete absence of Quas Primas. Pope Pius XI established the Feast of Christ the King to combat the “secularism” that “removed Jesus Christ and His most holy law from… public life.” Lent, as part of the liturgical year, must prepare the faithful for this public kingship. The article’s Lent is a private, psychological journey. It does not call for the “public veneration and obedience to the reigning Christ” by rulers and states (Quas Primas). It does not warn that “when God and Jesus Christ were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” It does not exhort Catholics to fight for the restoration of the Social Reign of Christ, which is the ultimate purpose of the liturgical cycle. Instead, it promotes a “spirituality” that is perfectly compatible with a secular state, as long as one has an “expanded heart.” This is the essence of the Modernist error: reducing the kingdom of God to an interior state, thereby surrendering the temporal order to the enemies of Christ.
Conclusion: A Lenten Practice for the Apostate
The “Augustinian approach to Lent” described in this article is not Catholic. It is a carefully crafted syncretism of Modernist subjectivism, Jesuitical “discernment” without doctrine, and naturalistic humanism. It takes the shell of Augustinian language (“restless heart”) and empties it of its supernatural content: original sin, the necessity of grace, the horror of mortal sin, the justice of God, the reality of hell, the authority of the Church, and the social kingship of Christ. It is a Lenten program for the “conciliar sect” that has replaced the Catholic Church. It prepares souls not for Calvary and Resurrection, but for a vague, worldly “renewal” that requires no conversion to the one true faith, no submission to the true Magisterium, and no fight against the errors of the day. It is, in the words of St. Pius X, a “synthesis of all errors” applied to the most sacred season of the liturgical year. The authentic Catholic Lent, as taught by the Council of Trent and the Popes before the apostasy, is a time of rigorous penance, doctrinal certainty, sacramental obligation, and public witness to the exclusive reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of kings and Lord of lords.
Source:
An Augustinian Lent: a time for renewal and finding ‘new pleasures’ (pillarcatholic.com)
Date: 18.02.2026