The Pillar Catholic portal presents an episode of its “Sunday School” podcast, featuring Dr. Scott Powell and Kate Olivera discussing the readings for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year A — the so-called “Good Shepherd Sunday.” The episode, titled “Jesus is the Good Shepherd,” offers a preview of the liturgical readings (Acts 2:14a, 36-41; Psalm 23; 1 Peter 2:20b-25; John 10:1-10) and is sponsored by a children’s book from Our Sunday Visitor. What is presented as Catholic catechesis is, upon examination, a textbook example of the doctrinal anemia that characterizes the conciliar sect’s approach to Sacred Scripture — a reading of the Gospel stripped of its ecclesiological, sacramental, and polemical content, reduced to a warm devotional reflection suitable for a religion of sentiment rather than truth.
The Gospel of the Good Shepherd Gutted of Its Catholic Meaning
The Gospel reading for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year A, is John 10:1-10 — Our Lord’s solemn declaration: “Amen, amen, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber.” These are among the most severe words Christ ever uttered. He does not speak in vague, feel-good metaphors. He identifies thieves and robbers — those who claim authority over His sheep without receiving it from God. The Church has always understood this passage as a direct condemnation of all false teachers, all usurpers of spiritual authority, and all who lead souls to perdition under the guise of pastoral care.
St. Augustine, commenting on this very passage, writes with unmistakable clarity: “The sheepfold is the Church; the door is Christ; the shepherd enters by the door who enters by Christ… He who enters not by the door is a thief and a robber” (Tractates on John, 45). The Fathers and Doctors of the Church understood John 10 as a Christological and ecclesiological text of the highest order — it defines the nature of true and false authority in the Church, the exclusivity of the Catholic Church as the one true sheepfold, and the absolute necessity of entering through Christ as He established to be entered: through the visible, hierarchical, sacramental Church He founded upon Peter.
What does the Pillar podcast offer in place of this? A warm discussion between two lay figures of the post-conciliar establishment about the “Good Shepherd” — with no mention of the thieves and robbers, no identification of the sheepfold with the Catholic Church alone, no reference to the Papal primacy, no warning about false pastors. The Gospel is reduced to a devotional meditation suitable for any Protestant Bible study group. This is not Catholic exegesis. It is the evangelische Auslegung — Protestant interpretation — of Catholic Scripture, which is precisely what the conciliar revolution has produced.
The Omission That Condemns: No Mention of the Papal Office
The Fourth Sunday of Easter was, in the traditional Roman Rite, the Dominica III post Pascha, and its readings were always understood in light of the Church’s teaching on the pastoral office — the authority of the Roman Pontiff as the Vicar of Christ, the successor of Peter, the shepherd appointed by Christ Himself to feed His sheep. When Our Lord says “I am the good shepherd” (John 10:11), the Catholic understanding is that Christ exercises this shepherding through His visible representative on earth.
Pope Leo XIII, in Satis Cognitum (1896), taught with the full weight of the Magisterium: “The Church of Christ, therefore, is one and the same forever… If a man refuse to enter the Church or if he leave her, he is separated from the life of Christ and from the salvation which is in Him.” Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas (1925), declared that Christ’s kingship demands visible, public, social recognition — not merely private devotion. The reign of Christ the King, which we have in the provided encyclical, extends over all men, all families, all states, and the Church demands “full freedom and independence from secular authority.”
Yet the Pillar podcast, discussing “Jesus is the Good Shepherd,” makes no reference whatsoever to the Papal office, to the crisis of authority in the Church, to the fact that the occupant of the Vatican — the antipope Leo XIV (Robert Prevost) — is a manifest heretic and apostate who, by the teaching of St. Robert Bellarmine, ceased to be Pope and head by the very fact of manifest heresy, just as he ceased to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church. Bellarmine’s teaching, confirmed by Wernz and Vidal in Ius Canonicum, is unambiguous: “By notorious and publicly manifested heresy, the Roman Pontiff, should he fall into it, is deprived ipso facto of his personal jurisdiction even before any declaratory sentence by the Church.”
The podcast is silent about all of this. It discusses the Good Shepherd while the sheepfold is occupied by thieves and robbers who have dismantled the Mass, denied the dogmas, embraced religious liberty, and promulgated the worship of man. This silence is not accidental — it is the defining characteristic of the conciliar sect’s approach to Scripture: every text that could challenge the legitimacy of the post-conciliar usurpers is either ignored or reinterpreted into harmlessness.
The Book of Acts and the Birth of the Church: What the Podcast Dares Not Say
The first reading, Acts 2:14a, 36-41, recounts Peter’s sermon at Pentecost — the first public proclamation of the Gospel by the Prince of the Apostles. Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, stands before the multitudes and declares with apostolic authority: “Let all the house of Israel know most assuredly that God hath made both Lord and Christ, this same Jesus whom you have crucified” (Acts 2:36). The result is immediate and dramatic: three thousand souls are converted, baptized, and incorporated into the Church.
This passage establishes the pattern for all authentic Catholic preaching: it is dogmatic, it is authoritative, it names sin, it demands conversion, and it offers the sacraments as the means of salvation. Peter does not invite dialogue. He does not seek consensus. He proclaims truth, and the Holy Ghost confirms it with miracles.
What does the post-conciliar establishment offer in place of this? A podcast hosted by a laywoman and a lay doctor, discussing the readings in a casual, conversational tone — the antithesis of apostolic preaching. The conciliar sect has systematically replaced the authoritative proclamation of doctrine with “discussions,” “conversations,” and “shared reflections” — all hallmarks of the democratization of the Church that Pope Pius IX condemned in the Syllabus of Errors when he rejected the proposition that “the Church listening cooperates in such a way with the Church teaching in defining truths of faith, that the Church teaching should only approve the common opinions of the Church listening” (Proposition 6, Lamentabili sane exitu, condemned by St. Pius X).
St. Pius X, in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, identified this democratization as a core tenet of Modernism — the heresy he called “the synthesis of all heresies.” The Pillar podcast, with its lay-led, conversational, non-authoritative format, is a perfect instantiation of the modernist error: the faithful are not taught by the Magisterium; they “explore” readings together, as if doctrine were a matter of opinion rather than divine revelation.
Psalm 23 and the Sacramental Life the Conciliar Sect Has Destroyed
Psalm 23 — “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want” — is one of the most beloved texts in all of Sacred Scripture. In the Catholic tradition, it has always been read in a deeply sacramental context: the “green pastures” and “still waters” from which the Good Shepherd leads His flock are the sacraments — Holy Mass, Penance, the Eucharist. The “table prepared in the presence of my enemies” is the Altar of the Lord, where the faithful receive the Bread of Angels. The “rod and staff” are the instruments of pastoral authority by which the shepherd guides, corrects, and protects his sheep.
St. Thomas Aquinas, in his commentary on Psalm 23, interprets the entire psalm in light of the Church’s sacramental economy. The “oil” that anoints the head is Confirmation and Holy Orders. The “goodness and mercy” that follow the soul are the graces that flow from the sacramental life. The “house of the Lord” in which the faithful dwell forever is the Church — the Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation.
But the conciliar sect has destroyed this sacramental economy. The “Mass” promulgated after the consiliar revolution — the so-called “Mass of Paul VI” — is, as the Ottaviani Intervention and countless theologians have demonstrated, theologically ambiguous in its expression of the propitiatory sacrifice and practically oriented toward the Protestant understanding of a mere memorial meal. The sacrament of Penance has been replaced by communal “reconciliation services” and the generalized absolution that the Church has always condemned. The Eucharist has been reduced to bread distributed at a table of assembly — and distributed, moreover, to public sinners, to non-Catholics, to those in manifest states of mortal sin.
When the Pillar podcast discusses Psalm 23, does it mention any of this? Does it warn its listeners that receiving “Communion” in the post-conciliar structures — where the Mass has been reduced to a Protestant table of assembly and the rubrics violate the theology of the propitiatory sacrifice — is not merely sacrilege but idolatry? Does it remind the faithful that the “shepherd” who leads them to these desecrated altars is not entering by the door of Christ but climbing in over the wall like a thief?
Of course not. The podcast is content to offer a warm, devotional reading of the psalm — “a warm, faith-filled” approach, as the promotional material for their sponsor’s children’s book describes it. This is the religion of sentiment that the modernists have substituted for the religion of truth. It is the “dogmaless Christianity” that St. Pius X condemned as the logical endpoint of Modernism — “contemporary Catholicism cannot be reconciled with true knowledge without transforming it into a certain dogmaless Christianity, that is, into a broad and liberal Protestantism” (Proposition 65, Lamentabili).
The Second Reading: Suffering for the Faith in an Age of Apostasy
The second reading, 1 Peter 2:20b-25, presents the doctrine of redemptive suffering: “Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an example, that you should follow his steps.” St. Peter teaches that the Christian is called to endure unjust suffering with patience, following the example of the Innocent Lamb who did not retaliate but entrusted Himself to the just Judge.
In the traditional Catholic understanding, this passage has always been read in the context of persecution — and the Church has always taught that the greatest persecution comes not from external enemies but from false brethren. Pope Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors, warned that the most dangerous enemies of the Church are those who work from within — the secret societies, the modernists, the liberal Catholics who undermine the faith under the guise of progress. He wrote with extraordinary foresight: “Anyone who knows the nature, desires and intentions of the sects, whether they be called masonic or bear another name… cannot doubt that the present misfortune must mainly be imputed to the frauds and machinations of these sects.”
The provided document on the False Fatima Apparitions makes this point with devastating clarity: the greatest danger to the Church in the twentieth century was not communism or external persecution but modernist apostasy within the Church itself. St. Pius X warned against “enemies within” in Pascendi, and the conciliar revolution proved him right. The “thieves and robbers” of John 10 are not the atheists or the communists — they are the men who occupied the Vatican beginning with John XXIII and who, through the Council and its aftermath, dismantled the Church from within.
Does the Pillar podcast make this connection? Does it warn the faithful that the suffering endured by Catholics since 1958 — the loss of the Mass, the destruction of the sacraments, the silencing of dogma, the persecution of those who remain faithful to Tradition — is the suffering spoken of by St. Peter? Does it identify the persecutors as the conciliar usurpers and their modernist accomplices?
Again, silence. The podcast discusses suffering in the abstract, as a general spiritual theme, without any reference to the concrete, historical persecution of faithful Catholics by the conciar sect. This is the spiritual bankruptcy of post-conciliar catechesis: it can speak of suffering in general but cannot identify the actual suffering inflicted on the faithful by the very structures that claim to be the Church.
The Pillar: A Post-Conciliar Portal Serving the Conciliar Sect
The Pillar is described as “a Catholic podcast about the weekly Mass readings” — but which Mass? The Ordo of the conciliar sect, with its three-year lectionary designed to minimize the confrontation with difficult doctrines and maximize ecumenical compatibility? The readings are selected not for their dogmatic content but for their pastoral palatability — and the podcast’s discussion follows the same pattern.
The very format of the podcast — two laypeople discussing Scripture conversationally, without the guidance of a validly ordained priest teaching with authority — embodies the modernist error condemned by St. Pius X: “The Magisterium of the Church cannot, even by dogmatic definitions, determine the proper sense of Holy Scripture” (Proposition 4, Lamentabili). By treating Scripture as a text to be “explored” rather than a deposit of divine truth to be taught by the authoritative Magisterium, the Pillar podcast implicitly denies the Church’s teaching office.
Moreover, the podcast’s sponsor — Our Sunday Visitor, publisher of a children’s book — reveals the commercial, entertainment-oriented nature of this “catechesis.” The Gospel is not proclaimed; it is marketed. The faith is not taught; it is packaged for consumption by the conciar laity, who are treated not as souls to be saved through truth and the sacraments but as consumers to be engaged with warm, faith-filled content.
The Good Shepherd Demands the True Church
Our Lord Jesus Christ declared: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd giveth his life for his sheep. But the hireling, and he that is not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and flieth: and the wolf catcheth, and scattereth the sheep” (John 10:11-13).
The conciliar sect is the hireling. It saw the wolf of modernism coming — and instead of fighting, it opened the gates. It saw the errors of religious liberty, false ecumenism, the evolution of dogmas, the democratization of the Church — and it embraced them. The result is the scattering of the sheep on a scale unprecedented in the history of the Church.
The faithful who wish to follow the Good Shepherd must enter the sheepfold by the door — and the door is the Catholic Church as Christ founded it, not as the conciliar revolution remade it. They must seek the true Mass, the true sacraments, the true doctrine — all of which endure in the integral Catholic faith, preserved by those who have not bowed the knee to the modernist Baal.
Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas, taught that the feast of Christ the King was instituted precisely to combat the secularism and laicism that were destroying society. He wrote: “If men were ever to recognize Christ’s royal authority over themselves, both privately and publicly, then unheard-of blessings would flow upon the whole society.” The Pillar podcast, by reducing the Good Shepherd to a devotional theme and ignoring the kingship of Christ over the Church and over society, participates in the very secularism that Pius XI condemned.
The faithful must reject this hollow catechesis and return to the unchanging Tradition of the Church — the Tradition that teaches, with St. Robert Bellarmine, that a manifest heretic cannot be Pope; with St. Pius X, that Modernism is the synthesis of all heresies; with Pope Pius IX, that the Church is a perfect society endowed with all the rights necessary to fulfill her divine mission; and with Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, that “thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18).
The gates of hell have not prevailed — but the hirelings have fled, and the sheep are scattered. It is time to find the true shepherd — not in the structures occupying the Vatican, but in the integral Catholic faith that endures wherever the true Mass is offered and the true sacraments are administered, in communion with the immutable Tradition of the Roman Church.
Source:
Jesus is the Good Shepherd (pillarcatholic.com)
Date: 22.04.2026