The Pillar Catholic portal reports on a podcast episode titled “God mounts his throne to shouts of joy!” — a Sunday School Bible study for the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord, featuring JD Flynn, Kate Olivera, and Dr. Scott Powell. What presents itself as a catechetical reflection on the Ascension readings is, upon examination, yet another symptom of the post-conciliar reduction of the supernatural mysteries of faith to a casual, media-friendly format devoid of doctrinal depth, theological precision, and the spirit of adoration that the mystery of Christ’s Ascension demands. The very framing of the episode — as entertainment, as “content,” as something to be consumed alongside advertisements for the “Amazing Parish Leadership Summit” — reveals the abyss between the Catholic understanding of the liturgy and the conciliar sect’s commodification of sacred things.
The Ascension: From Cosmic Triumph to Podcast Banality
The Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord is one of the most theologically dense feasts of the liturgical year. It commemorates the moment when Christ, having completed His redemptive mission, ascended bodily into heaven and “sat at the right hand of the Father” — not merely as God, but as Man, exercising the fullness of His threefold office as Priest, Prophet, and King over all creation. The Church has always understood this mystery as the definitive enthronement of the God-Man, the public and visible inauguration of His universal reign.
Pius XI, in the encyclical Quas Primas (1925), taught with unmistakable clarity: “The kingdom of Christ encompasses all men… His reign 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.” The Ascension is the historical moment when this kingship is publicly manifested and eternally established. It is the coronation of the King of kings.
Yet in the Pillar podcast, this cosmic event is reduced to a conversational Bible study — a format indistinguishable from Protestant Bible fellowships. The very title, “God mounts his throne to shouts of joy!” — rendered in lowercase, as though it were a social media headline rather than a liturgical proclamation — betrays the tone. Where is the adoration? Where is the fear and trembling before the majesty of the ascended Christ? Where is the recognition that He who ascends is the same who will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His kingdom will have no end?
The Liturgical Psalm Reduced to “Jewish Paradigm”
The podcast description promises an examination of “a liturgical psalm that is key to understanding the Ascension, and the Jewish paradigm at play in Jesus’ final words to the Apostles in the Gospel of Matthew.” This language is revealing. The psalm in question — Psalm 47, with its triumphant cry “God ascends with shouts of joy; the Lord ascends with the sound of trumpets” — is not merely a “Jewish paradigm.” It is a prophetic oracle fulfilled in the Ascension of Christ, inspired by the Holy Spirit, and incorporated into the sacred liturgy of the Church as a perpetual proclamation of the Messiah’s kingship.
To speak of “the Jewish paradigm” in this context is to adopt the language of modernist biblical criticism — the very approach condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu (1907), which rejected the proposition that “the natural sense of the Gospel texts cannot be reconciled with the teaching of Catholic theologians about the consciousness and infallible knowledge of Jesus Christ” (proposition 32), and that “the principal articles of the Apostles’ Creed did not have the same meaning for the first Christians as they do for contemporary Christians” (proposition 62). The psalm does not present a “Jewish paradigm” that Jesus merely adopted; it presents a divine revelation that Jesus fulfilled. The distinction is not academic — it is the difference between faith and modernism.
The Gospel of Matthew and the Great Commission: What Is Silenced
The podcast promises to examine Jesus’ final words in Matthew 28:16-20 — the Great Commission: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”
This passage is the charter of the Church’s missionary mandate and, more fundamentally, the public declaration of Christ’s universal kingship. “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” — this is not a suggestion, not a “paradigm,” not a cultural artifact. It is the sovereign decree of the King of the universe. And the command that follows — to make disciples of all nations, not all “religions,” not all “paths,” but all nations — is an explicit claim of absolute, exclusive, and universal authority.
Yet one searches in vain, from the description and framing of this podcast, for any acknowledgment that this mandate has been systematically betrayed by the conciliar sect itself. The post-conciliar “Church” has replaced the missionary mandate with interreligious dialogue, the proclamation of Christ as the only Savior with the affirmation of other religions as “paths to God,” and the baptism of nations with the embrace of indifferentism. The very structures that produce this podcast — Pillar Catholic, the “Amazing Parish” movement, the entire ecosystem of post-conciliar media — are products of the revolution that emptied the Great Commission of its Catholic content.
Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), condemned the proposition that “every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true” (proposition 15), and that “man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation” (proposition 16). The Great Commission stands in direct, irreconcilable opposition to these errors. Yet the concilar sect that produces this podcast has embraced them wholesale.
The Commercialization of the Sacred
Perhaps the most revealing element of this podcast episode is its sponsorship. The episode is “brought to you by the 2026 Amazing Parish Leadership Summit, taking place August 3-5 in Houston, TX” — an event promising to help “leaders from across the Church” experience and lead “renewal.” This is the conciliar model: the mysteries of faith are packaged as content, interrupted by advertisements for management conferences, and consumed by an audience that is never once reminded that the “Church” sponsoring this event has, for over six decades, been engaged in the systematic destruction of the faith it claims to proclaim.
The “Amazing Parish” movement is itself a product of the post-conciliar revolution — a bureaucratic, managerial approach to the life of the Church that substitutes organizational technique for sanctity, “leadership” for holiness, and “renewal” for conversion. It is the ecclesial equivalent of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic — except that the Titanic is the Barque of Peter, and the iceberg is the modernist heresy that has been devouring it since 1958.
The Absence of the Supernatural
What is most striking about this podcast — and about the entire genre of post-conciliar “Bible study” media — is the absence of the supernatural. Nowhere in the description is there any mention of the state of grace, the necessity of the sacraments, the reality of sin, the danger of eternal damnation, or the obligation of every human being to submit to the kingship of Christ. The Ascension is treated as a topic for discussion, not as a reality that demands a response.
The Church has always taught that the Ascension is not merely a historical event to be studied but a present reality to be lived. Christ reigns now. He reigns over every soul, every nation, every institution. And He will return to judge. Pius XI wrote: “The annual celebration of this solemnity will also remind states that not only private individuals, but also rulers and governments have the duty to publicly honor Christ and obey Him: for it will remind them of the final judgment, in which Christ, whom not only was cast out of the state, but was also forgotten and ignored through contempt, will very severely avenge these insults.”
This is the message that should accompany every reflection on the Ascension. It is the message that is conspicuously absent from the Pillar podcast — and from the entire conciliar apparatus that produces it.
Conclusion: The Abomination Continues
The Pillar Catholic podcast on the Ascension is not an isolated incident. It is a symptom of the disease that has consumed the structures occupying the Vatican since the death of Pius XII. The Ascension of Christ — the moment when the God-Man took His throne over all creation — has been reduced to a podcast episode, sponsored by a management conference, hosted by personalities whose theological formation is indistinguishable from that of a Protestant Bible study leader.
This is what the conciliar revolution has wrought: the mysteries of faith are no longer proclaimed, believed, and adored — they are discussed, packaged, and consumed. The King of kings is not given His due. The Great Commission is not obeyed. The liturgy is not celebrated as the Church intends. And the faithful are left with podcasts instead of preaching, “leadership summits” instead of sanctity, and “Bible studies” instead of the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
“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, quoted by Pius XI in Quas Primas</i). Until Christ the King is recognized — in the liturgy, in the public order, in the hearts of men — there will be no peace, no renewal, no salvation. And no podcast, however "amazing," will change that.
Source:
God mounts his throne to shouts of joy! (pillarcatholic.com)
Date: 12.05.2026