The Desacralized Lenten Season: Naturalism Masquerading as Spirituality

Summary: The Vatican News portal publishes a Lenten reflection by Jenny Kraska, Executive Director of the Maryland Catholic Conference, which promotes a spirituality centered on naturalistic humanism, therapeutic self-attention, and sentimental animal analogies, completely devoid of supernatural Catholic doctrine on sin, penance, and the social reign of Christ. The article’s core error is the reduction of the Lenten season—a time of rigorous mortification, reparation for sin, and focus on the Passion—to a vague exercise in “listening” and “attention” modeled on secular psychology and pastoral sensitivity. This represents the ultimate bankruptcy of the post-conciliar “Church,” which has exchanged the immutable truths of the faith for the vapid philosophies of the world.