Summary: VaticanNews reports (February 23, 2026) that “Bishop” Erik Varden delivered a Lenten reflection for “Pope Leo XIV” and the Roman Curia on the theme “God’s Help,” using Mary Ward’s maxim “Do your best and God will help” and the Book of Job to propose a spirituality of enduring suffering without expecting perceptible divine intervention. The reflection frames God’s help as an internal “habitat” and a journey through “Lament and Menace” toward a “deeper level” of gracious living. This analysis, from the perspective of integral Catholic faith, exposes Varden’s teaching as a quintessential product of the conciliar apostasy: a naturalistic, psychological, and individually focused spirituality that systematically omits the entire supernatural framework of Catholic doctrine—the sacrificial Mass, the sacraments, the hierarchical Church, the kingship of Christ over societies, and the final judgment. It replaces the objective, juridical, and sacramental reality of God’s grace with a subjective, immanentist experience, thereby propagating the Modernist heresies condemned by St. Pius X.
The Substitution of Catholic Doctrine with Psychological Spirituality
The reflection presented by “Bishop” Erik Varden is not a Catholic homily but a specimen of post-conciliar theological decay. It takes a biblical theme—God’s help—and drains it of all supernatural content, reducing it to a psychological mechanism for coping with suffering. The foundational error is the substitution of doctrinal truth with personal experience, a hallmark of Modernism explicitly condemned in Lamentabili sane exitu. Proposition 25 of that decree states: “Faith, as assent of the mind, is ultimately based on a sum of probabilities.” Varden’s entire presentation operates on this probabilistic, non-dogmatic plane: God’s help is not a certainty defined by Revelation and the Church’s Magisterium but a “habitat” one may or may not perceive, a journey through emotional states (“Lament,” “Menace,” “Grace”) that culminates in a subjective feeling of living “graciously at a deeper level.” This is the “synthesis of all heresies” in action: the internalization of faith to the exclusion of its objective, external, and hierarchical foundations.
The Erasure of Christ’s Objective Kingship
Varden’s God is a vague “helper” who forms an internal environment. This is a direct contradiction of the Catholic doctrine of Christ’s Kingship, defined with crystalline clarity by Pope Pius XI in the encyclical Quas Primas, issued to establish the feast of Christ the King precisely as a remedy against the secularism Varden’s spirituality embodies. Pius XI taught that Christ’s reign consists of a “threefold authority”: legislative, judicial, and executive. Christ is “King of hearts because of His love,” but also “Lawgiver, to whom men owe obedience,” and He possesses “the right of the judge to reward and punish men even during their lifetime.” The Kingdom of Christ “encompasses all men” and demands that “states… recognize the reign of our Savior.” Where is this juridical, universal, and social kingship in Varden’s reflection? It is absent. Instead, we have a privatized, internalized “help” that has no bearing on law, society, or the public order. This omission is not accidental; it is the very essence of the “secularism of our times” which Pius XI identified as the plague poisoning society. Varden’s God helps one *feel* better amidst personal collapse, but does not reign over nations, laws, or the public worship due to Him. This is the “diversion from apostasy” noted in the analysis of the Fatima apparitions: focusing on personal, internal states while ignoring the “main danger: modernist apostasy within the Church” and the warnings of St. Pius X against “enemies within” who undermine the social reign of Christ.
Job Without the Cross: Decontextualizing Suffering
Varden uses Job as a “symphony in three movements” to illustrate a personal journey from complaint to a mysterious “experience of Grace.” This is a profound deformation of Scriptural typology. In Catholic theology, Job is a type of Christ. His suffering prefigures the suffering of the God-Man. The “help” Job ultimately receives is not a change in his emotional state but a theophany—God speaking from the whirlwind (Job 38-41) and restoring him after he has been justified by faith and patience (James 5:11). The “help” is Christ Himself, the Redeemer, whose sacrifice on the Cross is the definitive answer to human suffering. Varden’s Job is a proto-Protestant individualist, heroically refusing his friends’ “rationalisations” and finding a “deeper level” within himself. This strips the Book of Job of its Christological center, a error condemned by the Holy Office in Lamentabili. Proposition 31 states: “The teaching about Christ transmitted by Paul, John, and by the Councils of Nicaea, Ephesus, and Chalcedon does not correspond to the teaching of Jesus, but is a teaching about Jesus formulated by Christian consciousness.” Varden’s interpretation, by detaching Job’s story from its fulfillment in the Passion and Resurrection of Christ, implicitly endorses this Modernist principle: that the “real” religious experience is the individual’s inner journey, not the objective historical facts of Revelation. The Catholic reading, from the Fathers through the Magisterium, sees Job’s suffering as a participation in the sufferings of Christ, whose “help” is the grace of the Cross and the hope of the Resurrection—sacramental realities administered by the Church.
Silence on Sacramental Grace and Hierarchical Authority
The gravest accusation against Varden’s reflection is its total silence on the means by which God actually helps souls according to Catholic doctrine. The “help” of God is not a vague immanence but is concretely and objectively dispensed through the sacraments of the Church, instituted by Christ as necessary channels of grace. Baptism washes away original sin; Confession restores sanctifying grace; the Eucharist is the “source and summit” of Christian life, the true “help” of God made physically present. Where are these in Varden’s “habitat”? They are nonexistent. This omission aligns perfectly with the errors of the “Syllabus of Errors” of Pope Pius IX. Error #41: “The civil government, even when in the hands of an infidel sovereign, has a right to an indirect negative power over religious affairs.” By presenting a “help” that operates independently of the sacramental and hierarchical structure of the Church, Varden’s spirituality implicitly cedes the territory of grace to the individual’s interiority, making the Church’s visible, sacramental authority superfluous. This is the naturalistic religion of the “inner impulse” condemned in the Syllabus (#41) and the “dogmaless Christianity” of Modernism condemned in Lamentabili #65. Furthermore, Varden addresses “Pope Leo XIV” and the “Roman Curia” as legitimate authorities. From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, this is a formal act of schism and apostasy. As proven in the file on the Defense of Sedevacantism, a manifest heretic (and “Leo XIV” is a manifest heretic, as shown by his actions and those of his predecessors since John XXIII) ipso facto loses the papal office. The Bull Cum ex Apostolatus Officio of Paul IV declares that the election of a heretic is “null, void, and of no effect.” Therefore, the “Roman Curia” Varden addresses is not the hierarchy of the Church but the administration of the conciliar sect. His reflection, delivered to these usurpers, is inherently invalid and part of the “abomination of desolation” standing in the holy place.
The Modernist Hermeneutics of ‘Help’
Varden’s methodology is pure Modernist hermeneutics. He takes a biblical concept (“God’s help”) and “develops” it through a historical-critical, psychological lens, stripping it of its supernatural, dogmatic content. This is precisely the error condemned in Lamentabili:
– #1: “Ecclesiastical law… does not apply to authors engaged in scientific criticism…” (Varden’s “symphony” movement is a critical, not a doctrinal, approach).
– #12: “The decrees of the Apostolic See… impede the true progress of science.” (The defined doctrine of grace is replaced by a “deeper” experiential understanding).
– #58: “Truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him.” (The timeless truth of God’s help as sacramental grace is “developed” into a personal, evolving “habitat”).
The language itself is symptomatic: “habitat,” “symphony,” “deeper level,” “graciously.” This is the language of liberal theology and humanistic psychology, not of the Council of Trent or the Roman Catechism. It reduces the economy of salvation to an interior drama. The Catholic soul is taught to seek God’s help in the confessional, at the altar, through the priestly ministry, and in obedience to the Church’s laws. Varden’s soul is taught to look inward, to navigate its own emotional landscape, with God as a vague sustaining presence. This is the “cult of man” replacing the worship of God.
Conclusion: The Bankruptcy of Post-Conciliar Spirituality
Bishop Varden’s reflection is a perfect distillation of the theological and spiritual bankruptcy of the post-conciliar “church.” It is:
1. **Naturalistic:** It replaces supernatural grace (sanctifying grace, actual graces, sacraments) with a naturalistic concept of “help” as sustenance or environment.
2. **Individualistic:** It privatizes salvation to an interior journey, ignoring the social and hierarchical nature of the Church as the sacrament of salvation.
3. **Ahistorical:** It decontextualizes Job from salvation history and the Cross of Christ, making Scripture a mirror for self-discovery rather than a record of God’s definitive actions.
4. **Schismatic:** It acknowledges and gives spiritual credibility to the usurpers occupying the Vatican, thereby endorsing the antipapal line that began with John XXIII and continues with “Leo XIV.”
5. **Silent on Judgment:** It says nothing of the “final judgment, in which Christ… will very severely avenge these insults,” as Pius XI warned in Quas Primas. A spirituality that omits the Four Last Things—Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell—is not Catholic but humanistic.
The only “help” for souls in this desperate time is the integral Catholic faith, preserved in the true Church that endures in those who reject the conciliar errors and are shepherded by valid bishops and priests in communion with the pre-1958 Magisterium. The “help” is the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the sacraments, the immutable doctrine, and the reign of Christ the King over all aspects of life—public and private. Varden offers a gilded cage of subjectivity; the Church offers the solid rock of objective truth and grace. “Do your best and God will help” is a Pelagian slogan, not Catholic doctrine. Catholic doctrine is: “Without Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5), and the “Me” is Christ, present in His Church through the sacraments, not as a feeling but as a person, a priest, a victim, and a king.
Source:
Lenten Retreat: Bishop Varden reflects on 'God's help' (vaticannews.va)
Date: 23.02.2026