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Happy Friday friends,
Here I am, back.
Let me begin by saying thank you, sincerely, and profoundly, for the countless messages of concern, prayers — even Mass intentions — you all sent me following last week’s newsletter.
I have been, as JD mentioned, dealing with an injury. In a perfect world I would still be “off games” this week and staying away from my desk.
But in no small part due to your prayers on my behalf, things have moved faster in the right direction than anticipated. And there was some big news this week, for which we needed all hands to the pumps. More on that in a moment.
Regards my absence and return, given the generosity of your response I most certainly owe everyone an explanation.
The short version of it is this: I badly, but badly, injured myself during a softball game by whipping around at very literally breakneck speed to dive for a line drive over second base.
I felt something snap in my neck as I did it, though it was more a “weird” feeling than out-and-out pain at the time, so I followed standard first aid protocols and held a cold beer to it in between every inning, and drank the beers before returning to the field.
I made it through the rest of the game fine-ish, but I woke up that night baying like a stricken hound, my neck having completely swollen to immobility and pure fire snaking down one side of it.
There followed several days of the most acute pain I have ever felt, pain which no number of visits to doctors, no anti-inflammatory medication and no painkilling injection they gave me could touch.
After a round of x-rays, the doctors were deadlocked in a three-way diagnosis of my neck having “degenerative disc disease,” “multiple avulsion fractures,” or both. There was a strong expectation of a little light spinal surgery and weeks, if not months, of recovery. Along the way, I became a bit incoherent in my speech, I am told, and was more than a little “out of it.”
This was the status quo when JD emailed last week, and I don’t blame him for painting a bleak picture. His notice of my demise was, it proved, premature but not exaggerated — given the state of things.
Mercifully, my apocalyptic diagnosis unlocked access to a very good orthopedic surgeon who took a sunnier view of the state of my neck, who uses words like “ruptured” and “torn” rather than “broken,” and who has loaded me up with more pain meds and muscle relaxers than Johnny Cash’s tour bus, and ordered me into rehab — for the neck, not the pills.
So, here I am and glad to be here.
It was not an experience I would like to repeat, though I am sure that was my first, not last, brush with real pain. I don’t claim to have dealt with it perfectly, but I did my best to turn it to prayer in solidarity with the many people I know who are facing greater pain — physical and spiritual — than I was.
And this, really, is a lesson I needed to learn practically, not just intellectually: that there is no such thing as “pointless pain” or “meaningless suffering.” Every aspect of our human existence and experience is loaded with the same worth and fundamental dignity as defines us as persons. The question is: can I, do I choose to turn it towards God and love of my neighbor?
For that, I should really be grateful for this experience. Even if I am now on a sufficiently high dosage of steroids to see me permanently barred from the baseball Hall of Fame.
It’s a useful lesson to bear in mind when reporting the news, too.
The News
Our top story this week is obviously the events around the illicit consecration of four bishops by the Society of St. Pius X.
The consecrations went ahead as planned on Wednesday, with the society acting in final defiance of the pope’s final plea for them to avoid schism.
As we reported, during the place in the liturgy where the candidates are asked to affirm they have the papal mandate to proceed to consecration, the response was instead given that “From Vatican Council II up to the present day, the authorities in the Church have been animated by a spirit that is contrary to that of the faith and have been acting against holy tradition. They will no longer endure sound doctrine.”
Basically, they denounced the Church. And you can read our report of the day here.
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Yesterday, the Vatican moved to declare the inevitable and unavoidable penalty of excommunication against the six bishops directly involved in the consecrations.
Along with the decree declaring the penalty, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith also issued an explanatory note which laid out again the criteria for assessing the extent to which priests and lay faithful could be judged to have formally adhered to the schism of the SSPX leadership and to the society itself, which was declared schismatic.
You can read all about those two texts right here.
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Just as everyone was getting to grips with those texts, the DDF then dropped a third document yesterday, this one a protocol for how to receive priests and lay people leaving the SSPX and wishing to resume communion with the Church.
Crucially, the document draws some very clear and important distinctions between clergy and laity, and between different sections of the faithful who may have found themselves involved with the SSPX for very different reasons and with very different motivations.
We’ve said right along that in the event the SSPX renewed their schism, the ability of the Vatican to respond comprehensively and clearly, and with nuance to the whole reality of the SSPX would be key to what happens next.
This text looks a lot like the DDF did their homework ahead of time. Read all about it here.
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Obviously, all these documents and statements from the Vatican have caused a lot of commentary and raised a lot of questions.
Some of these questions have been obviously sincere and reasonable, some it seems to me have been made in less than good faith, but all concerning who exactly is affected and how by all the canonical provisions and consequences of the DDF’s texts.
If The Pillar has a job, it is bringing clarity on what the law of the Church actually says, what it means, and how it all works.
And there’s a lot to explain in this story, and some stuff we can’t exactly explain, yet, most notably the exact legal basis for the DDF’s statement that, with the schism now declared, SSPX priests no longer have the faculty to validly hear confessions or receive the consent for Catholic marriages.
So, you can read our explainer of all the Vatican texts and canonical issues right here.
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As the initial dust settles over the weekend, though, there will be a lot more questions bubbling up in dioceses across the Church.
The challenge facing the hierarchy now, both in Rome and at the local level, will be explaining the Church’s position — and acting in accordance with it — in a way which coherently addresses inevitable SSPX arguments that they exist above and beyond the discipline of the Church.
In my opinion, the DDF has given local bishops a lot to work with here and they should be off to a flying start, if they appreciate the need to act.
I took a look at those issues in an analysis yesterday, which you can read here.
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Away from the SSPX, other things have still been happening in the life of the Church, obviously.
The Nicaraguan dictatorship detained and released a retired bishop Jun. 29 after a hospital visit.
Eighty-year-old Bishop Abelardo Mata, SDB, emeritus Bishop of Estelí, was held in police custody for several hours on Monday after celebrating Mass in his former diocese, during which he asked the faithful to pray for the persecuted Church.
Mata was taken from a hospital, where he was undergoing a checkup related to his pacemaker, and brought to a regime prison, where he was held for several hours.
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Pope Leo this week announced a series of major Vatican appointments, one of the largest curial shakeups of his pontificate to date.
Changes at the top of four dicasteries, include the appointment of Sister Alessandra Smerilli, FMA, as prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development and Cardinal Fabio Baggio, CS as pro-prefect, along with new changes to the Dicastery of Communications.
For a full rundown of who is in, who is out, and what it all means, read our summary right here.
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Also in Vatican news this week, Pope Leo rolled back key parts of Pope Francis’ 2023 reform of the Diocese of Rome on Jun. 30, issuing a new motu proprio that re-centers diocesan governance around the Cardinal Vicar.
Three years after Francis promulgated the apostolic constitution In Ecclesiarum Communione, Leo published motu proprio Confirma Fratres Tuos, making major changes to the Vicariate’s governing structure and restoring the Cardinal Vicar as the principal authority in the day-to-day government of the pope’s diocese.
Local observers have interpreted the move as an implicit rebuke of Bishop Renato Tarantelli Baccari, the vicegerent of the Diocese of Rome, whose rapid rise under Francis culminated in his appointment as auxiliary bishop and vicegerent in 2024.
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Vatican finances are also back in the news this week, as Peter’s Pence, the annual global collection to support the ministry of the Holy Father, reported a drop in both revenue and expenses for the 2025 financial year in its annual disclosure.
A lot of people were predicting a “new pope bounce” for Vatican fundraising last year, though on the evidence of these results that simply has not materialized — in fact things seem to be moving backwards and that is a real cause for concern.
A headline drop — a much bigger drop — in “expenses” for the fund is something to perhaps be happy about in the narrow sense that it means Peter’s Pence is closer to not making a loss on paper. But let’s be clear, that drop in expenses came from slashing the contribution to the curial operating budget by 20 million euros.
That is going to show up in the next Vatican financial statement, due out later this year. The last one, I warned at the time, touted a lot of supposedly good news which looked more like a fiscal mirage than miracle. I think we are watching that mirage disappear in real time.
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And finally, the U.S. government’s attempt to build a section of border wall on a popular New Mexico pilgrimage site is being contested by the local diocese.
A diocesan official told The Pillar the wall would be a political monument to a policy he said is opposed to Catholic teaching, while a federal agent told The Pillar the area under discussion is a corridor for human trafficking and smuggling.
Read the whole story right here.
Just a reminder of two things this holiday weekend:
First of all, it’s the Fourth of July, and while we may be Catholics first, JD and I are still Americans, and The Pillar is an American business. As such, we are required by immemorial custom to offer a holiday sale.
So, as firm supporters of tradition, we’re offering 25% off paid subscriptions to The Pillar this weekend.
You’ll get access to our daily news roundup Starting Seven, to bonus podcasts episodes and newsletters, and to our complete archives.
More than all of that though, you’ll help keep The Pillar free to read and independent to do our job — being the Church’s most effective public accountability project.
Second, this September, JD and I will be turning work into spiritual edification by making our trip to the beatification of Ven. Fulton Sheen in St. Louis a pilgrimage — it is going to be great.
Obviously we want as many people as possible to be able to come, so we did everything we could to keep the price down, but I know the thing still costs real money. The good news is, an anonymous friend of ours got in touch and said he wanted to help make it easier for people to be there. Thanks to him, the next 10 registrants get $500 off the trip cost. Which is actually a really great expression of caritas.
So, when you register here, all you have to do is enter the code Sheen500 to take that $500 off.
That’s it.
A schism, if you believe it
We’ve covered the SSPX consecrations, schism, and Vatican response as thoroughly as I think they can be this week, and I don’t want to overlabour the subject, even if it is the big story in the life of the Church this week, and probably this summer.
That having been said, I do want to make an observation about the immediate response to everything that has gone on.
A lot of the questions I got almost immediately as the news broke yesterday were variations on the theme of “but what about this person I know/this hypothetical individual in this highly detailed set of circumstances who goes to an SSPX Mass, you can’t excommunicate them, right?”
First of all, let me clarify: I don’t have the authority to excommunicate anyone. If I did, believe me, you all would know about it.
Second, the Vatican has gone out of its way to, if not separate the sheep from the schismatic goats, at least to allow the SSPX flock to self-sort, and allow for the genuine multiplicity of reasons (some innocent, some not) which could have brought a Catholic into the society’s orbit.
Third, while a lot of these questions I received come from sincere places of good faith and concern for people, a lot of similar ones do not.
In fact, I would say there is a real spate of amateur canon lawyering going on right now and frankly, I think it’s bad faith, and should be called out for what it is.