The Apostate Re-definition of Freedom in the Vatican’s Lenten Retreat
[Source: Vatican News portal, February 24, 2026] The Vatican News portal reports on the fourth reflection delivered by Bishop Erik Varden, OCSO, during the 2026 Lenten Spiritual Exercises for “Pope” Leo XIV, cardinals, and heads of dicasteries. Varden’s theme, “Becoming Free,” offers a summary of his reflection on the contested modern notion of freedom. He contrasts what he calls the natural, fallen desire for autonomy—”to have things our way, to satisfy our desires”—with a Christian freedom rooted in the “Son’s Yes! to the Father’s will.” This Christian freedom, he states, is “not about seizing the world with force; it is about loving the world with a crucified love magnanimous enough to make us freely wish, one with Christ, to give our lives for it.” He cautions against freedom being “manipulated as a means to legitimate the doings of impersonal subjects like ‘the Party’, ‘the Economy’, or even ‘History’,” asserting that “the only meaningful freedom is personal; and one person’s freedom cannot cancel another’s.” He concludes that to subscribe to this Christian idea of freedom “is to consent to pain,” referencing Christ’s command to “Resist not evil” as a model where justice is sometimes “best served by suffering for it, refusing to meet force with force.” The article presents this reflection as guidance for the highest echelons of the post-conciliar hierarchy.
This reflection is not a call to authentic Catholic liberty but a sophisticated re-definition of freedom that systematically excludes the social reign of Christ the King, the Church’s right and duty to judge and punish errors, and the primacy of God’s laws over human societies. It is a perfect symptom of the theological and spiritual bankruptcy of the conciliar sect, presenting a naturalistic and individualistic pietism as the summit of Christian freedom while remaining utterly silent on the obligations of the corpus mysticum and the temporal power of the Church.
The Omission of Christ’s Social Kingship: The Core Apostasy
The most damning silence in Varden’s entire reflection is the complete absence of any reference to the doctrine so clearly and repeatedly defined by the pre-conciliar Magisterium: that Christ is King not only of souls but of individuals, families, and states. Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical Quas Primas (1925), which established the feast of Christ the King, explicitly condemned the secularism Varden’s framework implicitly accepts.
“His reign, namely, extends not only to Catholic nations or to those who, by receiving baptism according to law, belong to the Church… but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ… It matters not whether individuals, families, or states, for men united in societies are no less subject to the authority of Christ than individuals.”
Varden’s “freedom” is confined to the personal, interior sphere of the individual’s relationship with suffering. He reduces the Christian’s mission to a passive, cruciform love that “gives its life” in a purely spiritual sense, utterly divorcing it from the Church’s mandate to teach, govern, and lead all to eternal happiness, which necessarily involves ordering societies according to divine law. This is a direct repudiation of Pius XI’s teaching that the state must publicly honor Christ and obey Him, and that the Church demands “full freedom and independence from secular authority” to fulfill her mission. By framing freedom as a personal, non-political stance against “impersonal subjects,” Varden legitimizes the very secular order that Quas Primas declares the source of societal ruin: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” The “pain” Varden consents to is not the pain of battling for Christ’s rights in the public square, but the pain of a privatized, inward-looking mysticism that cedes the temporal order to the enemies of God.
The Heresy of Privatized Freedom vs. The Catholic Doctrine of Liberty
Varden’s central thesis—that true Christian freedom is about “loving the world with a crucified love” and “refusing to meet force with force”—is a dangerous distortion. It inverts the proper Catholic hierarchy of values and misrepresents the nature of justice. The Syllabus of Errors (1864) of Pope Pius IX anathematizes the very separation of the spiritual and temporal orders that Varden’s dichotomy enshrines.
Error #55 of the Syllabus states: “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.” Varden’s framework, by locating freedom solely in the personal response to evil and explicitly warning against using freedom to legitimate the doings of “impersonal subjects,” creates a de facto separation. It implies that the Christian’s primary political duty is not to fight for the rights of the Church and the laws of God in the public sphere, but to adopt a stance of non-resistant suffering. This is not the Catholic doctrine of liberty.
True Catholic liberty, as defined by the Church, is the freedom of the children of God to serve Him without impediment, which includes the liberty of the Church to exist, teach, and govern independently of the state. It also includes the freedom of the state to recognize its subordination to the Divine King. Varden’s “freedom” is a slave’s freedom—the freedom to suffer unjustly without resistance—which the Church has never taught as a universal political principle. St. Robert Bellarmine, defending the Church’s rights, taught that even a manifest heretic pope loses his office ipso facto; the Church possesses the authority to judge and depose. Where is this authority in Varden’s schema? It is absent, replaced by a personalized, cruciform passivity that leaves the “impersonal subjects” (the modern state, the economy) free to promulgate laws against God and His Church.
The Language of Modernism: “Personal Freedom” and the Death of Objective Truth
The linguistic choices in Varden’s reflection are not neutral; they are the precise vocabulary of post-Vatican II Modernism condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici gregis and Lamentabili sane exitu. His emphasis on the “personal” as the only “meaningful freedom” echoes the Modernist subjectivism that reduces truth and morality to personal experience.
“The only meaningful freedom is personal; and one person’s freedom cannot cancel another’s.”
This sounds like a paraphrase of the condemned proposition from Lamentabili: “Truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him” (Prop. 58). By making “personal freedom” the sole criterion, Varden implicitly rejects objective, public, juridical truths—such as the rights of the Church, the binding force of divine law on states, and the objective sinfulness of religious indifferentism. One “person’s freedom” (e.g., a Catholic ruler’s duty to establish the Catholic religion) cannot be “cancelled” by another’s (e.g., a heretic’s “freedom” to propagate error), but Varden’s formulation suggests a relativistic stalemate where no public, objective order based on truth can be established. This is the language of the “abomination of desolation” standing in the holy place: it replaces the lex divina with a nebulous, internalized “freedom” that has no purchase on the building of the City of God in the temporal sphere.
Furthermore, his caution against “impersonal subjects” like “History” or “the Economy” is a red herring. The Syllabus condemns the idea that the state is “the origin and source of all rights” (Error #39). The true impersonal subject to be resisted is the modern secular state, which claims sovereignty from God. Varden’s critique is aimed at abstract concepts, not at the concrete, organized apostasy of the post-conciliar structures that actively persecute the true faith. His is a safe, spiritualized criticism that leaves the actual powers of the Antichrist unchallenged.
The Silencing of the Church’s Judicial and Coercive Power
A cornerstone of Catholic doctrine, brutally attacked by the errors of the Syllabus and defended by Bellarmine, is the Church’s inherent right to use spiritual and, when necessary, temporal coercion to defend the faith and punish heresy. Varden’s entire reflection is a study in the deliberate omission of this doctrine.
He presents Christ’s “Resist not evil” as a model for Christians, ignoring the context: Christ was speaking to individuals in the face of personal injustice, not to the Church as a society facing organized heresy and apostasy. The Church has always taught that she possesses the power to bind and loose, to excommunicate, and to depose rulers who attack the faith. Pope Pius IX, in the Syllabus, condemns the errors that:
* The Church has no temporal power, direct or indirect (Error #24).
* The Church cannot use force (Error #24).
* Civil authority can rescind concordats (Error #43).
* Ecclesiastical immunity originates from civil law (Error #30).
Varden’s “freedom” is a freedom from the duty to resist these errors with the full authority of the Church. By reducing Christian freedom to an interior disposition of non-resistant love, he effectively disarms the Church. The “pain” he speaks of becomes an end in itself, a substitute for the militant, painful, and yes, sometimes coercive work of defending the faith. This is the theology of the “suffering servant” stripped of its prophetic and kingly dimensions. It is the theology of a Church that has abdicated her authority to teach, govern, and sanctify with the full powers given by Christ, leaving the field to the “impersonal subjects” of Modernity.
Symptomatic of the Conciliar Sect’s Apostasy
This reflection is not an anomaly; it is the logical fruit of the conciliar revolution. The “hermeneutics of continuity” is exposed here as a fraud. There is no continuity between the Quas Primas of Pius XI and the privatized, cruciform “freedom” of Varden. Pius XI demanded that rulers publicly obey Christ the King; Varden suggests the Christian’s public role is to suffer under rulers who reject Christ. Pius XI saw the feast of Christ the King as a remedy against the “secularism… which has long been hidden in the soul of society”; Varden offers a spiritualized personalism that accommodates that secularism by withdrawing the Christian from the public battle.
The “liturgical renewal” and “spiritual exercises” of the conciliar sect are designed to produce precisely this kind of subjectivity: a deep, personal, affective religiosity that is utterly harmless to the New World Order. The focus on “becoming free” internally, while the external structures of society become ever more demonic and anti-Catholic, is the ultimate goal of the Modernist infiltration. It creates Catholics who feel spiritually fulfilled while their children are indoctrinated with gender ideology, their churches are profaned, and their societies are governed by laws against the law of God. This is the “peace” of the Antichrist: the peace of a neutered, interiorized faith that poses no threat to the kingdom of Satan.
Conclusion: A Call to Return to the Uncompromised Faith
Bishop Erik Varden’s reflection is a masterclass in the apostate re-definition of core Catholic concepts. It takes the noble idea of Christian charity and the cross, empties it of its social and juridical content, and presents it as the totality of the Christian response to evil. This is not the faith of the saints who defended the rights of the Church with their writings, their councils, and, when necessary, their swords. It is the faith of the conciliar sect, which has exchanged the glorious, public, and triumphant reign of Christ the King for a private, suffering, and defeated “freedom” that leaves the world to the devil.
The true Catholic, clinging to the integral faith as it was before the revolution of John XXIII, must reject this teaching with utter contempt. We must return to the unyielding doctrine of Quas Primas, the Syllabus of Errors, and the teachings of Bellarmine. We must affirm that Christ is King of all nations, that the Church has the right and duty to judge and punish errors, and that the ultimate freedom is the freedom of the City of God to govern the City of Man according to the laws of the Creator. The “pain” of the true Catholic is not the passive suffering advocated by Varden, but the pain of being a sign of contradiction in a world that has rejected its King, and the pain of fighting—with prayer, penance, and, when called by legitimate authority, with all available means—for the restoration of all things in Christ.
Source:
Lenten Retreat: Bishop Varden reflects on 'becoming free' (vaticannews.va)
Date: 24.02.2026