Writing about the Gospel for this past Sunday, Fr. Paul Scalia pointed out something we might be prone to overlook: Jesus describes Himself not as the “Good Shepherd” but as the “sheep gate.”  “I am the gate for the sheep…  Whoever enters through me will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture” (Jn 10: 7, 9). Jesus does also call Himself “the Good Shepherd” (v. 11), but not in the passage the Church proposed for the Fourth Sunday of Easter this year. Sunday’s lection stopped at verse 10.

We should stop and reflect on Sunday’s Gospel because it challenges some modern pieties, like the Church as an unrestricted open-door community. Jesus speaks of His sheepfold as being enclosed, walled in with a gate: Himself. Fr. Scalia captured that idea in the title of his essay, “A Gated Community” (see here).

A sheepfold is marked off, delineated. There is an inside and an outside. It has a border. There is an established entrance, and Jesus is quite clear that He is the Way (see also Jn 14:6).

Jesus doesn’t seem to be endorsing open borders policies. Those who don’t use the established entrance, who instead try to scale the walls, are “thieves and robbers.”

The sheepfold, like the Church which it symbolizes, is protective. It is not a “sheep ghetto” that cuts the sheep off from all the great things they could learn free-range in the world.

A good deal of contemporary controversies in the Church stem from ecclesiology, i.e., that branch of theology that deals with the Church. Generations of priests and homilists understood last Sunday’s Gospel to be about the Church, the true sheepfold of Christ, entry to which is through Christ.

During the Francis pontificate, an ecclesiology of “accompaniment” was in vogue. It was the Catholic counterpart to signs in front of many a Protestant church in the United States: “All are welcome!” Francis’s slogan was “tutti, tutti, tutti!” (everybody, everybody, everybody!”). In theory, one might not argue with that, although the interpretation of its practical application is another question.

On his return from his recent pilgrimage to Africa, Pope Leo XIV seemed to have clarified Francis’s tutti! The Church, of course, welcomes everybody. But it welcomes them on Christ’s terms, i.e., on the basis of the call to conversion. The Church does not just “accept everybody as he is” because all — Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Mary excepted — are sinners, and the Church’s mission is to convert people from sin. It is her mission because it is Christ’s: “for us men and for our salvation, He came down from heaven.” You’re not saved unless there’s something you need to be saved from.

The Church Militant is a pilgrim church, which means it receives persons as they are, i.e., as sinners. But there is no possibility of conversion — the sine qua non of Christ’s call — unless one changes. Unless one recognizes that one’s former way of life has to be given up and a “new man” put on. That’s why it’s important, especially for today’s generation, to stress that the Greek word for conversion used in the Gospels is metanoia, which literally means “to change one’s mind” or “one’s way of thinking.” Conversion means changing how one thinks about life, especially one’s own life.

Modern times have been characterized by notions of ecclesiology and interreligious dialogue that, frankly, are often flabby — longer on irenicism than on truth.

Yes, we need to find what unites us. But the “supernatural existentials” of transcendental Thomism and especially Karl Rahner seem to collapse the distinction between church and world, so much so that the sheepfold suddenly vanishes and one is left wondering why Jesus is a “gate” that marks an inside and an outside. With the “ubiquity” of grace and “anonymous Christians” under every rock, why exactly do we need that sheepfold? Grace suddenly seems everywhere except the Church, which instead must “learn” from the world.

But this vison fails to reckon with another ubiquity: sin.

The universality of sinfulness afflicts humanity and makes all creation groan (Rm 8:22), yearning for conversion and redemption. Sin does not have the last word in human history, but it does continue — as in the beginning — to have a voice because of human free will, which can refuse the call to conversion. That is why I insist that the contemporary dynamic of understanding the “Church-world” relationship is distorted. It’s not so much that the Church needs to discover truth in the world as the world needs the Church’s truth. The world does not need to expand to encompass the Church; the Church needs to expand to sanctify the world because, in the end, the “autonomy of earthly things,” while real, is limited. All creation, including the world, belongs to first and remains God’s. There is no zone of human or worldly affairs where the Lord trespasses.

Yes, Jesus later speaks of Himself as “the Good Shepherd.” But He also provides a model of shepherding we should not ignore. He goes out and “leads” the sheep. He goes before them. Jesus does not model “leading from behind.” He does not expect His sheep to “figure it out” and “discern” their paths on their own. That, too, is relevant, for how we understand the ministry of the ordained, especially when some would call sacerdotal leadership “clericalism.” Remember that this Sunday is also associated with vocations.

Francis was right in emphasizing that the Church must “welcome” all, in the sense that her door is always open. One of the devil’s favorite ruses is magnifying one’s sense of one’s sinfulness and unacceptability when one seeks to change (in contrast to its minimalization when one sins). The solution is not to pretend that change is unnecessary but rather recognizing that this is what the Church is for. This is what entry through the sheepgate that is Christ is for. This is the real sensus fidelium the Church should be hearing from the Spirit who led record numbers into the sheepfold this past Easter.