The Ascension Homily That Ascends Nowhere: A Theological Vacuum in the Conciliar Desert
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.




