The National Catholic Register portal, in its Sunday Guide for May 10, 2026, presents a commentary by Msgr. Charles Pope on the Sixth Sunday of Easter readings (Acts 8:5-8, 14-17; Psalm 66:1-3, 4-5, 6-7, 16, 20; 1 Peter 3:15-18; John 14:15-21). The article, titled “Jesus Gives Us 3 Lessons on Love,” attempts to unpack Our Lord’s teaching on love and the Holy Spirit. While superficially orthodox in its vocabulary, the commentary is a masterclass in the modernist reduction of supernatural charity to a self-help program, stripping the Christian life of its sacrificial, cross-centered essence and replacing it with a therapeutic, anthropocentric model that would be unrecognizable to the Fathers, Doctors, and Popes of the pre-conciliar Church. The very title, promising “revolutionary life of love and grace,” sets the stage for a presentation that is neither revolutionary nor truly about grace as understood by Catholic theology, but rather a comfortable, worldly accommodation that leaves the “world” Our Lord spoke of perfectly at ease.
The Erasure of the Supernatural Order: Love as a Human Achievement
The foundational error of Msgr. Pope’s exegesis is his treatment of divine charity as a human project, albeit one assisted by grace. He states, “As we grow in love for God, we are excited to please God. We keep his commandments not because we have to, but because we want to.” This is a Pelagian inversion of the Catholic doctrine of grace. It presents the keeping of God’s commandments as the natural, almost inevitable, consequence of an emotional state (“excitement”) rather than the fruit of a hard-won, supernatural struggle against the *triple concupiscence* of the world, the flesh, and the devil. The Council of Trent, in its Sixth Session, Chapter V, anathematizes those who say that the commandments of God are impossible to observe even for a just man. Msgr. Pope’s framing implies they are not only possible but easy, a simple matter of wanting to, thereby denying the necessity of *actual grace* to overcome our fallen nature. The true Catholic understanding is that we keep God’s commandments *because we have to*, out of obedience to the Divine Lawgiver, and that the “wanting to” is itself a gratuitous gift of grace, often granted only after much prayer, fasting, and mortification. His language is that of a motivational speaker, not a shepherd of souls preparing them for the narrow gate.
This naturalism is further exposed in his description of the Holy Spirit’s action. He correctly notes that the Spirit is a “Who,” not a “what,” but then immediately reduces His role to that of a life coach: “The Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, living in us as in a temple, will change us and stir us to love.” The language of “change” and “stir” is vague and psychological. It lacks the theological precision of the pre-conciliar Magisterium. Pope Leo XIII, in his encyclical *Divinum Illud Munus* (1897), teaches that the Holy Spirit inhabits the just soul as the source of *sanctifying grace*, which is a *supernatural participation in the divine nature* (2 Peter 1:4). This is not mere “stirring” but a radical ontological transformation. The Spirit’s primary work is not to make us “excited” but to make us *holy*, to configure us to Christ Crucified. Msgr. Pope’s commentary is silent on the *gifts* of the Holy Spirit (Isaiah 11:2-3) — particularly the gift of *Fortitude*, which is essential for embracing the Cross — and the *fruits* of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23), which include *charity* but also *chastity* and *self-control*, virtues entirely absent from his feel-good presentation.
The Absence of the Cross: A Gospel Without Sacrifice
The most damning omission in this “Sunday Guide” is the complete absence of the Cross. Our Lord’s three lessons on love, as presented by Msgr. Pope, are a gospel of comfort, not of contradiction. He speaks of love, commandments, and the Spirit’s presence, but never once mentions *sacrifice*, *suffering*, *penance*, or *mortification*. This is the quintessential modernist error identified by St. Pius X in *Pascendi Dominici Gregis* (1907): the reduction of the Christian life to a “religious experience” divorced from the hard demands of the Gospel. Our Lord’s own words, which Msgr. Pope claims to expound, are inseparable from the Cross: “If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me” (Matthew 16:24). The “revolutionary life” offered by Christ is not one of emotional excitement but of *self-annihilation*.
The article’s treatment of the Holy Spirit as an “Advocate” who will “change us and stir us to love” is a parody of the Catholic doctrine. The Holy Spirit is the *Spirit of Truth* (John 14:17), and His truth includes the truth of our sinfulness, the necessity of atonement, and the reality of eternal judgment. Msgr. Pope’s Spirit is a spirit of affirmation, not of conviction. He writes, “We love because he first loved us (1 John 4:10),” but fails to contextualize this within the framework of *redemptive sacrifice*. God’s love is manifested *precisely* in the sacrifice of Calvary: “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). To speak of God’s love without speaking of the Blood of Christ is to preach “another gospel” (Galatians 1:6-9). The entire thrust of the article is to make the reader feel good about themselves, not to call them to repentance and the hard work of conversion.
The “Laboratory of My Own Life”: Subjectivism as the New Magisterium
Perhaps the most revealing passage is Msgr. Pope’s conclusion, where he encourages the reader to say: “I am proof of God’s love and its power to transform; my life is proof! In the laboratory of my own life I have tested God’s word and his promises, and I can report to you that they are true.” This is the language of Protestantism and Modernism, not of Catholic Tradition. It places the individual’s subjective experience as the ultimate criterion of truth. The Catholic position is the exact opposite: we do not “test” God’s promises in the “laboratory” of our lives; we *submit* our lives to the objective truth of God’s revelation, as taught by the infallible Magisterium of the Church. Pope Pius IX, in the *Syllabus of Errors* (1864), condemns the proposition that “Human reason, without any reference whatsoever to God, is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood, and of good and evil; it is law to itself” (Proposition 3). Msgr. Pope’s “laboratory” is precisely this: the human mind, experimenting with divine truth to see if it “works” for personal transformation.
This subjectivism is the logical fruit of the post-conciliar revolution, which replaced the objective *deposit of faith* with the subjective “spirit of the Council.” The true Catholic does not say, “My life is proof,” but rather, “The Church teaches, and I believe.” The proof of God’s love is not my personal experience but the *historical fact* of the Incarnation, Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Our Lord, and the *ongoing miracle* of the Most Holy Eucharist. Msgr. Pope’s approach is a form of *indifferentism*, where the individual’s feelings become the measure of divine reality. It is a direct consequence of the democratization of the Church, where every man becomes his own pope, interpreting Scripture and Tradition through the lens of his own experience.
The Silence on the Social Reign of Christ the King
Finally, the article’s complete silence on the *social reign of Christ the King* is symptomatic of the modernist retreat from the public claims of the Faith. Pope Pius XI, in *Quas Primas* (1925), established the Feast of Christ the King precisely to combat the “secularism of our times, so-called laicism, its errors and wicked endeavors.” He taught that “the Kingdom of our Redeemer encompasses all men… and it matters not whether individuals, families, or states, for men united in societies are no less subject to the authority of Christ than individuals.” Msgr. Pope’s “Sunday Guide” is a perfect example of the privatized, internalized religion that Pius XI condemned. It speaks of personal love and transformation but is utterly silent on the duty of nations, governments, and societies to publicly recognize and obey Christ the King. This is not an oversight; it is a theological statement. The post-conciliar Church, having embraced the errors of *religious liberty* (condemned by Pius IX in the *Syllabus*, Proposition 77) and *separation of Church and State* (condemned in Proposition 55), can no longer speak of Christ’s social reign. Msgr. Pope’s commentary is a product of this apostasy, offering a Christ who is a personal therapist but not a King who demands the obedience of nations.
In conclusion, Msgr. Charles Pope’s “Sunday Guide” is a textbook example of modernist catechesis. It takes the sublime words of Our Lord and reduces them to a self-help manual, stripping them of their supernatural, sacrificial, and social dimensions. It replaces the objective truth of the Faith with subjective experience, the hard demands of the Cross with comfortable affirmation, and the public reign of Christ the King with a private, internalized spirituality. It is, in the words of St. Pius X, a manifestation of “the synthesis of all errors” — Modernism — and a betrayal of the integral Catholic faith. The faithful must reject this naturalistic reduction and return to the unchanging teaching of the pre-conciliar Magisterium, which alone can lead them to true holiness and eternal salvation.
Source:
Jesus Gives Us 3 Lessons on Love (ncregister.com)
Date: 09.05.2026