The National Catholic Register portal, in a piece dated May 15, 2026, presents a Sunday guide for the Feast of the Ascension authored by Msgr. Charles Pope, a “priest” of the Archdiocese of Washington, DC. The article, framed as a devotional meditation on the Ascension of Our Lord Jesus Christ, recounts the biblical narrative of Christ’s ascent into heaven and draws upon Ephesians 4:8ff to describe a “great procession” of the just entering heaven behind Him. It concludes with the exhortation: “We too, if we are faithful, will one day ascend to joys unspeakable and glories untold.” Yet beneath this veneer of piety lies a characteristically conciliar void: the near-total silence on the supernatural realities that alone give the Ascension its salvific meaning — the state of grace, the necessity of the true sacraments, the reality of sin and judgment, and the exclusive mediation of the Catholic Church as the sole ark of salvation. What is presented as a meditation on Christ’s Ascension is, in substance, a naturalistic homily that could be delivered in any Protestant church or Unitarian assembly, stripped of every doctrinal element that distinguishes Catholic truth from religious sentimentality.
The Ascension Without the Supernatural: A Christ Stripped of His Kingdom
The article opens with a description of the biblical scene: “As they were looking on, he was lifted up and a cloud took him from his sight … they were looking intently in the sky as he was going” (Acts 1:9). Msgr. Pope notes that “the Lord, by his own power, ascends to heaven” and that “in so doing, Jesus opens a path for us, too.” He adds: “In Christ, man returns to God.” These statements, while superficially orthodox, are presented in a theological vacuum so profound that they become functionally meaningless. How does Christ open a path? What is required of man to walk it? Which Christ — the Christ of Catholic dogma or the demythologized Christ of modernist exegesis? These questions are not merely left unanswered; they are not even acknowledged as questions.
The Christ who ascends in Msgr. Pope’s account is a Christ without a Kingdom. Nowhere in this “Sunday guide” is there any mention of the royal dignity of Christ, the very reality that Pius XI solemnly defined as inseparable from the mystery of the Ascension. In the encyclical Quas Primas (1925), Pius XI taught with the full weight of his Apostolic authority that “the name and authority of king in the proper sense belong to Christ the Man; for it is only of Christ the Man that it can be said that He received power and honor and a kingdom from the Father” (Dan. 7:13-14). The encyclical further declares that “His reign, namely, extends not only to Catholic nations or to those who, by receiving baptism according to law, belong to the Church, even though their erroneous opinions have led them astray or discord has separated them from love, but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” This is the Christ who ascends — not merely a moral exemplar or a spiritual symbol, but the King of kings and Lord of lords (Rev. 19:16), who “must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet” (1 Cor. 15:25).
Yet Msgr. Pope’s meditation is silent on this threefold authority — legislative, judicial, and executive — that Pius XI identified as essential to Christ’s kingship. There is no mention that Christ the King demands the obedience of nations, that rulers have a duty to publicly honor Him, that “the state is happy not by one means, and man by another; for the state is nothing else than a harmonious association of men” (St. Augustine, Letter to Macedonius, c. III). The Ascension, in Catholic theology, is the enthronement of the God-Man as universal King. In the conciliar desert, it has been reduced to a picturesque scene inspiring vague spiritual aspiration.
The “Great Procession” Without the Doctrine of Grace
Msgr. Pope’s most elaborate passage concerns the “great procession” of the just entering heaven behind Christ, drawing on Ephesians 4:8: “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.” He describes Christ’s descent to Sheol, the awakening of the dead, and the preaching of the Gospel to them (1 Peter 4:6), followed by the ascent of the justified as a “host,” as an “army of former captives now set free.” He lists the members of this procession: “Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Rachel, Judith, Deborah, David, Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Malachi, John the Baptist!”
This is, admittedly, a vivid and rhetorically effective image. But what is its theological content? The article is entirely silent on how these souls were justified. There is no mention of baptism, the sole ordinary means of incorporation into Christ. There is no mention of the sacrament of penance, by which the justified soul restored itself after mortal sin. There is no mention of sanctifying grace, the supernatural habit that alone renders the soul capable of the beatific vision. There is no mention of the distinction between the state of grace and the state of mortal sin — the most fundamental distinction in the spiritual life, without which the entire economy of salvation collapses into incoherence.
The Council of Session VI, Chapter VII, taught that justification is not merely the remission of sins but “the sanctification and renewal of the interior man through the voluntary reception of the grace and gifts whereby an unrighteous man becomes righteous.” Canon 9 of the same session anathematizes anyone who says that the sinner is justified by faith alone, “meaning that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to obtain the grace of justification.” Yet Msgr. Pope’s account of the “great procession” could be read as a kind of universalism — all these patriarchs and prophets simply enter, with no mention of the supernatural dispositions required. The silence is not accidental; it is the hallmark of a theology that has abandoned the dogmatic precision of Trent in favor of a warm, inclusive, and doctrinally vacuous spirituality.
Furthermore, the article presents Christ’s descent to Sheol and His preaching to the dead as though these were self-explanatory events requiring no doctrinal framework. But the Catholic teaching on the descensus ad inferos is inseparable from the doctrine of the communion of saints, the reality of purgatory, and the particular judgment. The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches that Christ descended not to liberate the damned or to offer a second chance of salvation, but to bring the light of His glory to the just who awaited their redemption. Without this framework, the descent becomes a mere narrative detail — a colorful episode in a story rather than a dogmatic reality with precise theological content.
“We Too, If We Are Faithful” — But Faithful to What?
The article’s concluding exhortation — “We too, if we are faithful, will one day ascend to joys unspeakable and glories untold” — is the most revealing sentence in the entire piece. It encapsulates the conciliar approach to salvation: a vague appeal to “fidelity” with no definition of its content. Faithful to what? To the teaching of Christ? To the Magisterium of the Church? To the commandments of God? To the sacramental life? None of this is specified.
The Catholic faith teaches that faith is the first of the theological virtues, and that “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb. 11:6). But faith is not a mere sentiment or disposition; it is the assent of the intellect to revealed truths on the authority of God who reveals. The First Vatican Council, in Dei Filius, defined that “the Catholic Church possesses all those things which pertain to the integrity of the faith” and that “all those things are to be believed with divine and Catholic faith which are contained in the word of God, written or handed down, and which the Church, either by a solemn judgment or by her ordinary and universal Magisterium, proposes for belief as having been divinely revealed.” Faith, in Catholic doctrine, has content — specific, defined, unchangeable content.
Msgr. Pope’s “fidelity” has no such content. It is the fidelity of indifferentism — the very error condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors, Proposition 15: “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true,” and Proposition 17: “Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ.” The conciliar sect has systematically replaced the defined faith of Catholicism with a vague “fidelity” that demands nothing specific, excludes no error, and requires no submission to the authority of the true Church. This is not fidelity; it is infidelity dressed in the garments of piety.
The Liturgical and Sacramental Void
Perhaps the most damning omission in Msgr. Pope’s article is its silence on the sacramental life as the means by which the faithful ascend with Christ. The Ascension is not merely a historical event to be contemplated; it is a mystery to be lived through the sacraments. It is in the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass that the faithful are mystically united to Christ’s Ascension, for in the Mass the eternal sacrifice of Calvary is made present, and the faithful are lifted up with Christ to the Father. It is in the sacrament of baptism that they are incorporated into Christ’s mystical Body and made partakers of His divine life. It is in confirmation that they are strengthened by the Holy Spirit for the battle of faith. It is in the sacrament of penance that they are restored to grace after sin. It is in the Eucharist that they receive the very Body and Blood of the ascended Christ, “until He comes again” (1 Cor. 11:26).
None of this appears in the article. There is no mention of the Mass, no mention of the sacraments, no mention of the Church as the necessary means of salvation. The “path” that Christ opens is presented as though it were accessible outside the sacramental economy — as though one could ascend to “joys unspeakable and glories untold” without the grace conferred by valid sacraments, without the state of sanctifying grace, without the true faith, without membership in the true Church of Christ. This is the heresy of the “salvation of the catechumens” expanded into a universal principle — a heresy that the Council of Florence condemned in the decree Cantate Domino: “The Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes, and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics, can have a share in life eternal.”
The article’s editor’s note further reveals the conciliar confusion: “Most archdioceses and dioceses within the United States celebrate Ascension Sunday, though the ecclesiastical provinces of Boston, Hartford, New York, Newark, Omaha and Philadelphia celebrate Ascension Thursday.” This casual acknowledgment that the solemnity of the Ascension — one of the great feasts of the liturgical year — has been transferred from its proper day (Thursday, the fortieth day after Easter) to a Sunday in most American “dioceses” is a symptom of the deeper disease. The conciliar sect has systematically dismantled the liturgical calendar, transferring solemnities, suppressing fasts and abstinences, and reducing the sacred to the convenient. The Ascension belongs on Thursday, as the Church has always celebrated it, because the liturgical calendar is not a human convention to be rearranged at will but a sacred rhythm established by the authority of the Church to sanctify time itself. That this transfer is mentioned without comment — as though it were a mere administrative detail — reveals the extent to which the conciliar mentality has desacralized the liturgical life.
The Naturalistic Tone: Ascension as Aesthetic Experience
The linguistic register of the article is revealing. Msgr. Pope writes: “Imagine the glory of this moment,” “Behold the great procession,” “Consider how this once-captive train sings exultantly.” The language is that of literary appreciation, not theological instruction. The reader is invited to imagine, to behold, to consider — but not to believe, not to obey, not to repent, not to receive the sacraments. The Ascension is presented as an aesthetic experience, a scene to be contemplated with admiration rather than a dogma to be believed with the assent of faith and a mystery to be lived through the sacramental life.
This naturalistic tone is characteristic of conciliar homiletics, which has systematically replaced the doctrinal precision and supernatural urgency of pre-conciliar preaching with a warm, inclusive, and theologically empty rhetoric. The faithful are no longer told that they are in a state of mortal sin and must go to confession; they are invited to “imagine the glory.” They are no longer warned that outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation; they are assured that “we too, if we are faithful, will one day ascend.” They are not instructed in the necessity of the true faith, the true sacraments, and the true Church; they are offered spiritual entertainment.
The contrast with the preaching of the saints is stark. St. John Vianney, the Curé of Ars, preached on the Ascension with supernatural urgency: “Our Lord, having finished His work on earth, ascends to heaven to prepare a place for us. Let us follow Him by our good works, our prayers, our mortifications, so that we may one day share in His glory.” St. Alphonsus Liguori, in his Meditations, treated the Ascension as an occasion for examining one’s conscience, detaching one’s heart from earthly things, and renewing one’s commitment to the pursuit of sanctity. The saints understood that the Ascension is not merely a mystery to be admired but a call — a call to conversion, to penance, to the pursuit of holiness, to the renunciation of sin. Msgr. Pope’s article contains none of this. It is an Ascension without urgency, without doctrine, without consequence.
The Ecclesiological Silence: No Church, No Salvation
The most fundamental omission in the article is the complete absence of any reference to the Catholic Church as the necessary means of salvation. The Catholic faith teaches extra Ecclesiam nulla salus — outside the Church there is no salvation. This is not a disciplinary opinion; it is a dogma of faith, defined by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), the Council of Florence (1442), and repeated by numerous popes including Boniface VIII in Unam Sanctam (1302): “We declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.” Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors, condemned the proposition that “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion, in which form it is given to please God equally as in the Catholic Church” (Prop. 18).
Yet Msgr. Pope’s article could be read by a Catholic, a Protestant, a Jew, a Muslim, or an atheist, and none would find anything to object to. The “Jesus” who ascends in this article is a Jesus without a Church — a Jesus who opens a “path” accessible to all who are “faithful,” regardless of what they are faithful to. This is the Jesus of the conciliar sect — the Jesus of Nostra Aetate, the Jesus of Assisi, the Jesus who “reveals” Himself in all religions and who saves all men regardless of their beliefs or their membership in any Church. It is, in short, a Jesus who is not the Jesus of Catholic dogma.
The true Jesus — the Jesus of the Creeds, the Jesus of the Councils, the Jesus of the saints — is the Jesus who said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by Me” (John 14:6). He is the Jesus who established one Church, not many. He is the Jesus who gave the keys of the Kingdom to Peter and his successors, not to a collection of “Christian communities.” He is the Jesus who instituted specific sacraments as the ordinary means of grace, not a vague “path” accessible through sincerity alone. This Jesus is entirely absent from Msgr. Pope’s article, replaced by a generic spiritual figure who ascends to “joys unspeakable” and invites everyone to follow — no questions asked.
Conclusion: The Abomination of the Empty Homily
What Msgr. Pope has produced is not a Catholic homily but a piece of religious journalism — warm, vague, and doctrinally empty. It is the kind of content that fills the pages of the National Catholic Register and the bulletins of conciliar parishes across the United States: content that offends no one, teaches no one, converts no one, and saves no one. It is the homiletic equivalent of the conciliar “Mass” — a ceremony that simulates the sacred while emptying it of its supernatural content.
The true Feast of the Ascension demands more than imagination. It demands faith — the Catholic faith, with all its defined doctrines, its unchangeable moral code, its sacramental economy, its exclusive claim to be the one true Church of Christ. It demands that the faithful understand that the Christ who ascended is the King who demands the obedience of nations, the Judge who will render to every man according to his works, the High Priest who offers Himself eternally in the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. It demands that they understand that the “path” opened by the Ascension is the narrow path of the Catholic faith, the sacramental life, the state of grace, and perseverance unto death. Without these truths, the Ascension is merely a story — beautiful, perhaps, but ultimately as salvific as a poem.
The faithful who seek the true doctrine of the Ascension must turn not to the conciliar sect and its functionaries, but to the unchanging teaching of the Church: to Pius XI’s Quas Primas, to the Council of Trent, to the Catechism of the Council of Trent, to the Fathers and doctors who understood that the Ascension is not an invitation to vague spiritual aspiration but a dogma — a truth revealed by God, defined by the Church, and necessary for salvation. Outside this teaching, there is only the desert of conciliar silence, where homilies ascend to heaven but the faithful remain on earth, uninstructed, unabsolved, and unsaved.
Source:
In the Ascension, Jesus Opens a Path for Us (ncregister.com)
Date: 15.05.2026