The article reports that Bishop Erik Varden, a Cistercian, delivered the opening meditation for the 2026 Lenten spiritual exercises for Pope Leo XIV and the Roman Curia at the Vatican. Varden warned against using the Gospel as a weapon in culture wars, urging Christians to measure authentic faith by fidelity to Christ and the peace believers embody. He cited St. John Climacus on anger as a spiritual obstacle and described Lent as a program of clarity and peace. The core message was that Christian peace is not ease but a condition for transformed society, and that instrumentalizations of Christian language must be challenged by teaching authentic spiritual warfare. This presentation, emanating from the highest levels of the post-conciliar hierarchy, constitutes a profound betrayal of integral Catholic doctrine, reducing the Gospel to a vague ethical sentiment and willfully ignoring the absolute and universal kingship of Jesus Christ over all nations and every aspect of human life.
The Peace of Christ Versus the Modernist “Peace” of the World
Bishop Varden’s central theme—that fidelity is measured by the peace believers embody—is a deliberate inversion of Catholic teaching. He quotes, “The extent of the peace we embody—that signal peace ‘which the world cannot give’—indicates Jesus’ abiding presence in us.” This phrasing, while superficially scriptural (Jn 14:27), is emptied of its supernatural content. The peace Christ gives is a *supernatural* fruit of grace, a *tranquillitas ordinis* rooted in the submission of all souls and societies to His law. It is not an “embodied” condition measured by worldly perceptions of harmony. Pius XI, in *Quas Primas*, defined the peace of Christ’s kingdom as the result of all men and states publicly recognizing and obeying Christ’s royal authority: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed… the entire human society had to be shaken.” Varden’s silence on this is deafening. He speaks of peace without mentioning the *cause* of true peace: the public and legal reign of Christ the King over all societies, as defined by the 1925 encyclical instituting the feast. His “peace” is a naturalistic, immanentist ideal, a “condition for transformed society” achieved through internal disposition, not through the external, juridical ordering of all things to God. This is the peace of the world, not the peace of Christ.
Reduction of the Gospel to Ethical Sentiment and the Denial of Its Social Reign
The command, “Don’t use the Gospel as a weapon,” is a modernist slogan. It rejects the Church’s perennial right and duty to use the Gospel to *judge* all human actions, institutions, and laws. The Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX anathematized the proposition that “the civil authority may interfere in matters relating to religion, morality and spiritual government” (Error 44) and that “the Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church” (Error 55). The opposite is Catholic doctrine: the State must recognize the Catholic Church as the sole true religion and govern its laws according to the divine law revealed by Christ. To “use the Gospel as a weapon” in this sense is to employ it as the standard by which all human laws and societies are measured and found wanting. Varden’s warning is a direct echo of the “indifferentism” (Syllabus, Errors 15-17) and “secularism” condemned by Pius XI in *Quas Primas*: “the secularism of our times, so-called laicism… began with the denial of Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations.” By framing the application of Gospel principles to public life as a “culture war” tactic, Varden implicitly accepts the secularist premise that religion is a private matter, not the public rule of life. He reduces the Gospel’s mission to fostering an interior “peace” while remaining silent on its demand for the social reign of Christ.
The Omission of Supernatural Realities: The Mark of Modernism
A thorough analysis must expose what Varden *omits*. His entire meditation is a masterclass in the “silence about supernatural matters” that characterizes apostasy.
* **No mention of sin:** He speaks of “vice and harmful passions” but never names mortal sin, the offense against God that ruptures the state of grace and merits eternal damnation. This is the language of psychology, not theology.
* **No mention of grace:** The “peace” he describes is presented as a condition believers “embody,” not as a *supernatural* habit infused by God, requiring the sacraments.
* **No mention of the sacraments:** The Lenten “discipline” is described as “abstinence of the senses” and “battle vice,” with no reference to the Sacrifice of the Mass, Confession, or the Eucharist as the source and summit. This is the “sacramental-less” religion of Modernism, condemned by Pius X in *Pascendi Dominici gregis*.
* **No mention of the Final Judgment:** The driving force of Christian asceticism is not a vague “transformed society” but the absolute certainty of the particular and general judgments. The “yes, yes; no, no” of Lent must be the soul’s definitive “yes” to Christ’s law and “no” to sin, motivated by the terror of hell and the hope of heaven. Varden’s framework is entirely this-worldly.
* **No mention of the Church’s juridical authority:** He does not say that the Church has the right and duty to teach all nations, to make laws, and to govern them for eternal salvation (*Quas Primas*). The “authentic spiritual warfare” he proposes is a personal, interior battle, not the Church’s militant, public combat against error and the “kingdom of Satan.”
This systematic omission is not accidental; it is the very essence of the Modernist heresy. St. Pius X, in *Lamentabili sane exitu*, condemned propositions that reduce faith to a “practical function” (Prop. 26) and that make dogma subject to “continuous and indefinite progress” (Prop. 5). Varden’s Gospel is a “dogmaless” (Prop. 65 of *Lamentabili*) set of ethical maxims, stripped of its supernatural, juridical, and social content.
The “Spiritual Warfare” of Modernism: A Battle Without Enemies or Dogma
Varden calls for “teaching the terms of authentic spiritual warfare.” But what is this warfare? Against whom? His only cited enemy is “anger,” a personal passion. The authentic Catholic spiritual warfare, however, is a three-front battle: against the *world* (the anti-God society), the *flesh* (concupiscence), and the *devil* (Satan and his demons). More specifically, it is the Church’s war against heresy, schism, apostasy, and the “errors of Modernism” (Pius X). Varden’s framework has no place for the Syllabus’s condemnation of “secret societies” (Error IV), “religious indifference” (Error III), or the “secular power” usurping the Church’s rights (Errors V & VI). His “spiritual warfare” is a pacified, interiorized struggle that leaves the structures of apostasy—the conciliar sect’s embrace of religious liberty, ecumenism, and collegiality—untouched. It is a warfare that accepts the enemy’s premises (the separation of Church and State, the privatization of religion) and thus cannot win. This is the “peace” of the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place (Mt 24:15).
The Cistercian Context: From Contemplation to Apostasy
Bishop Varden’s Cistercian background makes his message particularly insidious. The Cistercian reform was a return to the primitive, strict observance of the Benedictine Rule, focused on the *opus Dei* and asceticism. Yet here, a Cistercian bishop uses his platform to preach a Gospel stripped of its social kingship and its demand for public confession of Christ. This mirrors the broader apostasy: religious life, once a fortress of orthodoxy and penance, has become a vehicle for disseminating Modernist, naturalistic “spirituality.” The “monastic-style retreat” for the Curia, as the article notes, is itself a symptom—a return to *form* without *content*, to silence without the preaching of the hard truths of the faith.
Conclusion: The Systematic Rejection of Christ the King
Bishop Varden’s meditation is a perfect distillation of the post-conciliar religion. It takes the language of piety—peace, fidelity, spiritual warfare—and systematically evacuates it of its Catholic, supernatural, and social meaning. It presents a Christ who is a moral teacher and interior companion, not the King of kings whose rights over nations and laws are absolute and non-negotiable. It presents a Church whose mission is to “embody peace” and “transform society” through example, not to proclaim *extra Ecclesiam nulla salus* and demand the conversion of all peoples and rulers to the Catholic faith. This is not a “development of doctrine” but its negation. It is the precise “dogmaless Christianity” condemned by St. Pius X (*Lamentabili*, Prop. 65), a “broad and liberal Protestantism” occupying the Vatican. The faithful are called not to this false peace, but to the battle cry of Pius XI: “Let all men recognize Christ’s royal authority over themselves, both privately and publicly… Then at last… swords and weapons will fall from hands, when all willingly accept the reign of Christ.” The “Lenten spiritual exercises” led by a bishop of the conciliar sect are a sacrilegious parody, substituting the penance and reparation demanded by God for the sins of the world with a soothing, subversive pacifism that aids the ongoing apostasy.
Source:
Varden: Don’t use the Gospel as a weapon (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 23.02.2026