Beware the “Imaginary Christ” of Modernism

In parishes, during homilies and catechism classes, by the clergy and hierarchy and faux Catholic media, the faithful are subjected to the making of a golden calf masquerading as Christ.

In our age of easy feelings and flimsy doctrines, Catholic devotion is often untethered from rock‐solid theology.

Week after week in parishes, during homilies and catechism classes, by the clergy and hierarchy and faux Catholic media, the faithful are subjected to the making of a golden calf masquerading as Christ.

Earlier this week I came across yet another example (the millionth?) of this “imaginary Christ” in the making. This time from Spain, where InfoVaticana ran an article under the headline Pikaza and Estrada at CEU: the ACDP plays with fire.

Admittedly I am not familiar with “Pikaza and Estrada” nor with the CEU or ACDP but a quick internet search told me that “CEU Universities is the largest nonprofit private education group in Spain” and ACDP is the Asociación Católica de Propagandistas or then Catholic Association of Propagandists. The latter was ironically “created in 1909 by a Jesuit, Ángel Ayala, to answer the wave of secularism which, following the model of the III French Republic, tried to expel Catholicism from society”. In what followed in the article it became clear that the ACDP was failing miserably in its original mission.

It also turns out that Xabier Pikaza is a Spanish theologian of Liberation Theology (say no more!) and Juan Antonio Estrada a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Granada. Without delving any deeper into the identity of these two gents it is very clear how they contribute to the “imaginary Christ” just by looking at what they espouse. Or as InfoVaticana rightly pointed out, “Two theologians whose relationship with the Catholic Magisterium is similar to that of Nietzsche with the catechism of St. Pius X”.

According to the article, Messrs Pikaza and Estrada will be the main speakers at a course dubiously titled “Believing in times of credulity or unbelief?”, which will be hosted by ACDP on 17 July.

The course is promoted with the following vignettes:

"We live in a context where secularization manifests itself in religious pluralism, liquid spiritualities and à la carte beliefs."

"The new secularization not only as a threat, but also as an opportunity to renew and purify the Christian faith."

InfoVaticana rightly asks “Purify it of what? Of dogma? Of Revelation? Of Christ?”. It will seem so if one looks at the complete garbage these two contributes to the golden calf.

Pikaza’s contribution will be a talk titled “The hierarchical Church has finished its time”. In the past he has made the following statements:

• "The Trinity is not a dogma to be accepted without further ado, but a symbolic expression that the Church must reinterpret in every age." (The New Age of Spirit, PPC)

• "The Church as hierarchy and magisterium belongs to an outdated paradigm." (Personal blog, 2022)

• "There is no resurrection as a return to life of a corpse. What there is is an Easter experience." (Commentary on Mark, Divine Word)

While Estrada on the other hand will contribute to the course with a talk titled “Unbelief as a Postmodern Virtue”. In the past he has been the author of gems that included:

• "The resurrection is not a historical fact, but a subjective experience of the disciples who interpreted their pain and failure in the light of an eschatological hope." (Theology and secularization, Trotta)

• "It makes no sense today to talk about hell or the devil. They are symbolic figures that must be demystified." (Christology Course, University of Granada)

• "The divinity of Christ cannot be understood as an ontological attribute, but as an existential metaphor." (Christology for times of crisis, Trotta)

Do I need to say more?

It is no wonder then that many Catholics today, even devout ones, unwittingly pray to a Christ of their own making – a figure shaped by sentiment, ideology or convenience rather than by the Tradition of the Church. Because, to put it more bluntly, if your theology isn’t right, then whatever you are devoted to is not Christ, but an imaginary Christ made in your own image.

Too many have embraced a Christ who fits their personal taste, all the while abandoning the teaching of the Faith. This tragic drift—from apostolic doctrine to airy sentiment—leads not to Christ but to an idol. As Pope Pius X thundered in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), the modern errors striking at Catholic faith reduce religion to mere sentiment and novelty. The Modernists, he warned, “are seen to be under the sway of a blind and unchecked passion for novelty, thinking not at all of finding some solid foundation of truth, but despising the holy and apostolic traditions”. In their enthusiasm for the new, they jettison timeless doctrine. This betrays a fundamental mistake: devotion cannot soar on emotion alone. Without the wisdom of true teaching, the heart’s feelings are “a hindrance instead of a help to the discovery of truth”

In other words, sentimentality may soothe the spirit, but it cannot impart divine truth. And where truth is lost, genuine worship vanishes. The Church has always insisted that accurate doctrine (orthodoxy) and authentic devotion go hand in hand. The ancient maxim lex orandi, lex credendi – the law of prayer is the law of belief – reminds us that how we pray depends entirely on what we believe. St. Augustine warned that to have any God other than the true God is to worship an idol. In our terms, if our understanding of Christ deviates from the Church’s Teaching, our devotion to “Christ” is no longer worship of the incarnate Son of God but idolatry. We all feel the pull of building a faith around our preferences: a Jesus who resembles us, comforts us, or advances our agenda. Yet as Pius X sternly insisted, Jesus Christ “is neither liberal nor reformable” – He does not change with our whims. To accept a “Jesus” reshaped by modern culture is ultimately to abandon Him.

The Dangers of Sentimental Religion

In today’s Church, one sees the fruit of this error everywhere. Worshipers sing joyful songs about “Jesus’s love” but ignore the Church’s teachings on sin. Anyone who conjures a warm, fuzzy Christ and then tweaks doctrine to suit those feelings is following a false guide. Pope Pius X diagnosed this “affective” approach, warning that Modernists put religious truth in the heart alone, apart from reason and revelation. He exposed how they claim the sole criterion of religion is “religious sentiment,” pulling Christ down from divine truth into human feeling. In fact, he taught, human emotion cannot replace doctrine. As he observed, “emotion … proves a hindrance instead of a help to the discovery of truth”

Pure sentiment, left unchecked, misleads. We must not bow to mere excitement or spiritualism, but to truth itself, as revealed and guarded by the Church. Sadly, many of today’s errors mimic that pattern. We hear of a “personal relationship” with Jesus, but divorced from His Sacraments and commandments. We hear of “love” but defined in worldly ways, masking compromise or disobedience to Christ’s law. These are not harmless permutations of faith, but symptoms of the very modernism Pius X condemned. He exposed how the Modernist system “despises the holy and apostolic traditions” to embrace “vain, futile, uncertain doctrines”

In plain terms, they toss aside the deposit of faith for untested ideas. But Christ gave us His Church and her doctrines as a sure guide; sentiment alone is no guide at all. Christian devotion must be rooted in Christ as He is taught by His Church, not in our feelings about Christ. Pious feelings without true faith are, at best, a hollow comfort; at worst, they lead to a counterfeit religion. As Pius X warned, basing religion on shifting “sentiment and action” instead of unchangeable truth opens the door wide for error

We cannot confuse the voice of private feeling with the voice of Christ. Devotional zeal without fidelity to doctrine can easily slip into idolatry.

Modernism: A “New Religion” of Error

Beyond sentimentalism lies the ideological error called Modernism – aptly described by Pius X as “the synthesis of all heresies”

Modernism is the beastly offspring of rationalism, secularism, and emotionalism, all mixed into one. It asserts that doctrines can evolve with the times, or even that one’s inner experience is the true source of faith. In effect, Modernism bids us invent our own religion. Pius X left no doubt when he stated that the Modernist system “means the destruction not only of the Catholic religion but of all religion”

If we make Christ according to “modern criteria,” what remains of Christianity? In recent decades, many faithful Catholic voices have warned of what Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre called the “new religion” – a liberal, ecumenical religion born of Vatican II’s errors. Lefebvre lamented that Council reforms forced Catholics to choose between true doctrine and a “new religion.” He declared plainly: “I do not accept that new religion. It is a liberal, modernist religion which has its worship, its priests, its faith, its catechism…”

This “new religion” he scorned, has replaced the unity of the Faith with modern novelties – vernacular liturgies, watered-down creed, and an ecumenical “bible translated jointly by Catholics, Jews, Protestants and Anglicans”

In loving this counterfeit faith, we forsake the true Gospel. According to Lefebvre the reformed Church of our day is not simply an improved Catholicism but a different religion with a different Christ. He observed that Catholics now have “two religions confronting each other,” and we must choose which to follow

He insisted he could not obey those who would abandon “what the Church has taught for two thousand years”

This dramatic testimony shows the stakes. When theology changes, devotion too changes – often toward something alien. A religion that exalts man’s will or feeling above God’s revealed Word has invented an “imaginary Christ” of its own design.

There are so many priests at the altars today who ignore sacramental confession and preaches Christ only as social justice. And Bible teachers who soften Christ’s commands to avoid offending our sensitivities. Though such ministers invoke Christ’s name, the object of their worship has slid from the true Savior to a convenient construct.

Christ is unchanging Truth; any theology that “reforms” Him to fit the age ceases to be Catholic.

Relativism, Indifferentism, and the Loss of Christ

These deviations have deeper roots in religious relativism. The spirit of the age whispers that all paths are equal or that truth is personal. But such notions subvert Christianity at its core. St. Peter reminds us that there is “one God and one mediator, Christ” (1 Tim. 2:5), not a menu of gods to suit our preferences. Pius XI, in his encyclical Mortalium animos (1928), warned sharply against the false hope that all religions are good or that unity can be built by pretending Christian differences are unimportant. He made it clear that to think “all religions are more or less good and praiseworthy” is to distort true religion and inevitably lead souls away from the Gospel

Indeed, Pius XI solemnly taught that “one who supports those who hold these theories…is altogether abandoning the divinely revealed religion”

In other words, to treat Catholic doctrine as optional or to embrace indifferentism is to turn one’s back on the faith Christ gave us. How many Catholics unknowingly practice this? Many are exhorted in the name of love or unity to accept every belief about Christ as basically the same. But the popes have firmly rejected that. Pius IX long ago anathematized the idea that “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion”. The same would apply for the dumpster fire that passes for Catholicism in many parishes today.

Likewise, Quanta Cura (1864) condemned the notion that individuals are free to decide for themselves what God is. In Catholic orthodoxy, Jesus alone is the gateway to God (Jn 14:6), and “outside the Church there is no salvation” (Council of Florence). The path to the true Christ is narrow, not broad. When a person lets go of objective Catholic teaching, they cut themselves adrift from Christ. Loyalties shift from the Church’s Bride to a tide of “modern charity” that often means compromising with error. The result is a sacrilegious parody: Many worship Christ as tolerant new‐age guru who endorses every ideology, instead of Christ as crucified Lord and Redeemer. This is a false devotion, no matter how sincere. St. Paul warned us of those preaching “another Jesus” (2 Cor 11:4); Pius X echoed this by exposing modernists who claim “truth in religion is what I think it to be.” Such personal pontiffs invent a god in their own heart.

Orthodoxy is the only Safeguard of True Worship

Catholic Tradition abounds with the teaching that right belief is essential to right worship. Scripture itself shows that faith without truth is hollow: “How can one invoke the name of the Lord if he has not believed?” (Rom 10:14). The Church does not separate doctrine from devotion; deeds follow creed. This is why Pius XI declared that when false ecumenism “hides a most grave error, by which the foundations of the Catholic faith are completely destroyed,” he could not stand by silently

A ruined foundation cannot support real worship. Conversely, a strong foundation of truth is the sure ground for authentic prayer and devotion. This is not dry theology for the sake of theory. Orthodoxy protects the soul. Through the centuries, saints and councils have taught that love of God is never divorced from assent to His revelation. If I “worship” a Christ stripped of Godhead, or of binding authority, my devotion is vain. Christ said that unless a person is “born of water and the Spirit” (John 3:5), he cannot enter the Kingdom. Today, many profess to serve Christ yet reject even one of His unchanging commands – and all the while their consciences are assured by false theologians that “the Church will never go backward.” But a return to pagan rituals in Christian guise was exactly what Pius X feared when he said modernists would do worse than rationalists: they “applaud [their] most valuable allies”

Right theology is the only guarantee that devotion really reaches Christ. If our beliefs deviate from the unalterable Deposit of Faith, we risk praying to an image of Christ, not Christ Himself. Archbishop Lefebvre put it starkly: either we cling to the 2000-year teaching of the Church or we set off on a novel religion. He chose the former, saying “even the Holy Father cannot ask us to abandon our faith… We cannot be mistaken in clinging to what the Church has taught for two thousand years”

With such clarity, he shows that fidelity to Tradition is not an option but a necessity.

Return to the True Christ

The remedy is clear. We must reject the idols of this age and return wholly to Christ as He is revealed by the Church. (Not, only the idols but also every one of its prophets, such as Pikaza and Estrada and their ilk). This demands humility and courage. We must examine our devotions and scrupulously test them against the Faith. Do our prayers and liturgies flow from Scripture and Tradition, or from a borrowed spirit of the times? Do we yield in tiny increments to modern ideas, or do we resolutely uphold the Faith as it was once delivered?

Our loving God warns through His faithful voices of past generations. (Some) Popes, saints and other great defenders of the faith have insisted that only by obedience to Christ’s authentic teaching can we find salvation. Indifferentism, relativism, emotionalism – these all promise freedom but bring enslavement. As Pius X exhorted, we must nurture hearts and minds with sound doctrine: “religion” isn’t found in subjective emotion but in Christ’s living truth.

So let us embrace the whole Gospel with zeal. Let our Catholic theology be right, so that when we kneel before the crucifix or receive the Eucharist, we meet the true Jesus. Let our devotions be guided by dogma: liturgy, sacraments, the Creed, and the Catechism. In doing so, our spirit worships the Real Christ, not an invention.

We pray for all to see, before it is too late, that faith and worship are inseparable. In these troubled times, we echo the heartfelt appeal of Tradition: return to the true Christ preserved by the Church’s perennial Magisterium. “Be not like the horse or mule,” warned Psalm 32, “which have no understanding” (Ps 32:9). Let reason illuminated by faith guide our devotion. The task may be hard, but so is eternal life. With St. Augustine we affirm: “To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek Him, the greatest adventure; to find Him, the greatest human achievement.” But this romance and adventure must be lived in truth, not fantasy. Our Christ is not an idol; He is the living Son of God who alone is Savior. May we love Him in both Word and life, confess His Name with conviction, and worship Him in Spirit and truth, ever mindful that it is the true theology that makes our devotion valid and fruitful.

Christus vincit!

Christus regnat!

Christus imperat!

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