‘He loved us, and we knew it’
The Tuesday Pillar Post
Pillar subscribers can listen to this Pillar Post here: The Pillar TL;DR
Hey everybody,
Today’s the feast of St. John the Baptist’s nativity and you’re reading The Tuesday Pillar Post.
In just a moment, I’ll talk about Vos estis lux mundi, the Order of Malta, and a great man well-loved, but first let’s talk about St. John’s Eve.
Across much of Europe, John the Baptist’s birth was celebrated customarily on St. John’s Eve — last night — the vigil ahead of the feast, on which bonfires were customarily lit on hilltops or in village squares, ostensibly to convey the brilliant light of the prophet, who proclaimed the illuminating Christ himself.
Some countries had customs in which men competed to jump across the bonfires and women danced, others had blessings of herbs, and many customs included countryside picnics, meant to evoke that John himself lived (and ate) outside, in the desert.
I don’t think the picnics featured locusts prominently, but honey was probably a factor, and special brewed honeyed beer shows up in the St. John’s customs of some countries.
Much of this is long past in secularized Europe — and again, it was customarily celebrated yesterday — but St. John’s birthday seems like a good enough time for a liturgically-motivated family or rectory trip to the backyard firepit, especially with a six pack of Honey Brown.
Before the news, do the world a favor and make a moment’s prayer for lasting peace.
When he emerged on the loggia after his election, Pope Leo described a distinctly Christian kind of peace — the kind of worth praying for:
It was “the peace of the risen Christ. A peace that is unarmed and disarming, humble and persevering. A peace that comes from God, the God who loves us all, unconditionally.”
I don’t suggest praying for this as a pious platitude. Instead, I actually mean it, and it only takes a second before you read the news.
So pray already.
The news
The Pillar’s Edgar Beltran went last week to take part in the feast.
This is fantastic reporting — here’s what he saw.
Tired of partisan media cheerleading for one team? Jonah Goldberg and Steve Hayes launched The Dispatch in 2019 to build an enduring presence for original reporting and thoughtful analysis that cuts through the partisan spin to deliver the facts. No insulting clickbait, no false outrage, no annoying auto-play videos—just reliable journalism that prioritizes context, depth, and understanding. Claim your exclusive 30-day, all-access FREE trial today.
Iran and Israel have reached a tenuous cease-fire, which may well have ended even before I send you this newsletter. In the meantime, Christians in Israel told The Pillar on Monday about the experience of living under air raid signals and Iranian missile attacks over the past week.
Whatever your politics on Israel and the Middle East — and I expect there’s broad divergence among Pillar readers on that topic — here’s the experience of some of the people on the ground, living a wartime reality.
Milone’s case stalled earlier this year, when Vatican judges ruled that it could not move forward unless his lawyers excluded from their case evidence of “immoral and indecent” behavior by senior Vatican officials, finding that it would harm their right to a “good name” if it was presented in open court.
But that was then, and this is now, and the crucial difference between then and now is that we have a new pontiff. That could mean something significant in the Milone case. How?
Why? Well, as always, you’ve got to read Luke Coppen’s excellent Syro-Malabar reporting to find out.
—
Among the signature reforms of the Francis pontificate was the promulgation — and later revision — of Vos estis lux mundi, the pontiff’s procedural text for investigating allegations of abuse, misconduct, or certain kinds of official negligence on the part of bishops.
The text is generally regarded as an expression of Francis’ own view of ecclesiastical governance. But in an analysis last week, Sr. Carino Hodder argued that might not be the right way to look at things — suggesting that some version of Vos estis might have been the inevitable response to the credibility crisis of 2018, regardless of who occupied the Petrine office.
It’s an interesting point.
As to the particulars, though, I think the form Vos estis took is pretty clearly the result of a Cardinal Blase Cupich intervention at a 2018 meeting of U.S. bishops, which set the ball rolling on the “metropolitan model” of investigating allegations against bishops.
That model, like any other, has both strengths and deficiencies, as many of each as the “lay investigative model” floated for ecclesial reform ahead of Cupich’s intervention.
But for my money, the real deficiency of Vos estis is not that it relies on a particular model of inquisition.
Instead, the biggest problem has been the way Vos estis is actually carried out.