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Hey everybody,
Today is the 111th day of 2026, and you’re reading The Tuesday Pillar Post.
One year ago today, Pope Francis died, in the early morning hours in his rooms at the Casa Santa Marta.
He had been in the hospital for much of March with bilateral pneumonia and some other infections. He came home, and the expectations were that he’d have a reduced workload for a few months, as he recuperated.
But he didn’t recover. Instead, he appeared in St. Peter’s for Easter, and the next morning he died.
I think Pope Francis will be remembered as a historically significant pontiff; because of his personal style, because of the ecclesiastical controversies which emerged during his pontificate, and because of the period in which he led the Church — a period he often insisted was not an “era of change, but [instead] a change of era.”
I expect his tenure as the successor of St. Peter will be studied by theologians and historians in the decades to come.
In the meantime, before he died, he promised that “the suffering that has marked the final part of my life, I offer to the Lord, for peace in the world and for fraternity among peoples.”
And he asked that “the Lord grant a fitting reward to all those who have loved me and who continue to pray for me.”
So, let’s pray for him, and pray for the peace in the world to which he dedicated his suffering.
The news
Pope Leo is in Africa, urging nations to peace, and calling to conversion those responsible for corruption, violence, and exploitation in nations of the region.
But for all the ink the pope has been getting in U.S. papers lately, precious little of it has been actual coverage of his actual trip to the actual Catholics of Africa.
So if you want to know what Pope Leo is actually up to, here’s The Pillar’s run down of the trip so far.
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In Ukraine, a Ukrainian Catholic church was reportedly taken over by Russian Orthodox clergy Easter Sunday, with Russian Orthodox clerics offering a liturgy in the Catholic church located in a town occupied by Russian forces.
Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, calls that “blasphemy.”
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The Archdiocese of Dubuque, Iowa, announced this month the clustering of its 160 parishes into 24 “pastorates,” each of which will share a common pastor assisted by one or more assistant priests.
It’s a big and ambitious project — one I think was likely recommended by consultants — but it raises lots of questions about what comes next.
In a canonical analysis of the situation, Ed Condon looks at some interesting questions — including who can make a canonical appeal against the plan, and why they probably won’t.
Some iteration of the Dubuque model is probably the future for a lot of places. So understanding the issues at play is important. Read up.
St. Bernard’s School of Theology and Ministry is a Catholic graduate school that seeks to reunite theology, prayer, and sanctity by providing a true formation of mind and heart, led by a personal encounter with Christ, while studying theology and philosophy in and from the heart of the Church. Through the generosity of the Knights of Columbus, you can audit one summer course for free! Learn more here!
While the pope travels in Africa, Edgar Beltran has had some important conversations about the pontiff’s liturgical plans — and why his view on big liturgical questions, for the moment, might reflect a distinctly Latin American worldview.
Is this a moment of papally encouraged: “Se acata pero no se cumple?”
Edgar thinks that might be the case.
Here’s some very good analysis.
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Finally, youth minister Eddie Cotter might be the most interesting man in the world.
He’s been a rock star on MTV. He developed a very cool formation apostolate. He runs a pub out of his garage. And now, at 64, Eddie Cotter’s living a third “second career” — this time as a New York City Santa Claus.
Along the way, he talks about the problems with “Catholic, Inc,” and Catholic celebrity, and the real opportunities for evangelization.
This might be the best profile The Pillar’s ever published. Certainly, Eddie Cotter’s the most interesting guy you’ve never heard of.
‘A Catholic worldview’
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday accepted a case that will decide whether families can use the state of Colorado’s universal preschool allowance to send their children to religious — and specifically Catholic — preschools.
Here’s the skinny: In 2022, the state of Colorado established a universal preschool program, which allows parents to enroll their children for at least 15 hours a week of tuition-free preschool at the public or private preschool of their choice.
In principle, the program should include Catholic schools. But the Archdiocese of Denver schools office said it wanted to maintain its enrollment policies, which require parents to sign a document which says they will support the teachings of the Church, including on human sexuality, which are central to the schools’ mission, identity, pedagogy, and curriculum.
This does not mean that schools uniformly or by default exclude every potential student whose parents are gay, despite widespread reporting to the contrary.
But it does mean that such parents, like all parents, have to agree to support the curriculum and mission of the school. And, to the Archdiocese of Denver, it means that if parents expect a school to affirm a child’s non-conforming gender identity, enrollment won’t work.
The reason is interesting. The archdiocese argues that it takes seriously the idea that parents are the primary educators of children. It argues that it respects the natural prerogative of parents to educate, and that schools actually should be subservient to that — in other words, that if parents don’t want what Catholics school do, or if they oppose what the Catholic Church believes, it’d be disrespectful to give kids an education discordant with their intentions.
In short, if parents and the school want drastically different things from education, the archdiocese argues, the school can’t meaningfully serve those parents, and their educational vocation.
The state found those enrollment policies discriminatory, which meant Denver Catholic schools couldn’t participate in the universal preschool program. The schools insisted that their policies are central to living their mission: a real collaboration with parents, who are primary educators. The state disagreed.
So in 2023, two schools and a family filed a lawsuit — which has now wound its way to the Supreme Court, where arguments on the case will likely be heard in the fall.
This has been winding through courts for the past couple of years. We haven’t covered it at The Pillar because we don’t generally cover Church-related litigation, focused as we (generally) are on the internal life of the Church.
But there’s another reason that it would have been difficult for me, at least, to cover it: I’ve got about 12 conflicts of interest bubbling around in this thing.
St. Mary’s, the institutional plaintiff, is our parish. Two of my kids go to St. Mary’s School. We’re friendly with the parents who are co-plaintiffs. My mom works as a teacher in the very preschool under question.
And my sister — who was then acting superintendent of archdiocesan schools — is pretty much the case’s star witness.
Here’s testimony from Abriana Chilelli, my kid sister, in the initial 2024 bench trial, when she was asked to “briefly set out the Church’s teachings on human sexuality”:
“The teachings of the Church and the beliefs that we ask our employees to hold are that human beings were created by a loving creator, God, who creates the human person at the time of conception, and in their mother’s womb, and that the human person is endowed, created, not only with a soul, but with a body, and that the body-soul unity is the makeup of the human person.”
“And so we believe and teach in our Catholic schools that in order to find happiness or human flourishing, that means to find a life lived in friendship with Jesus Christ, and so because of our understanding of human flourishing, the truths of the body are taken very seriously. We believe strongly, then, that the body is of utmost good and importance, and that the body communicates not only that purpose, but our identity as well.”
“And so being a biological man or a woman is of great importance and reverence. And so in that way, we take the body as good, and an important contributor to human flourishing. And so because of that, the Church has a particular understanding of marriage as being between a man and a woman, given the biological realities of the body, and the way that the body is ordered towards unity with one another and the procreation of children, who we believe are owed the identity of being beloved sons or daughters created with -- between the love of a man and a woman in a marriage.”
“Okay,” she was asked, “ “And where do these beliefs come from?”
“Jesus Christ. But they come from the Church’s tradition, millennia of Church teaching, tradition, sacred scripture, the Catechism of the Catholic Church. These have been the consistent beliefs of the Church throughout time.”
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“And the mission of the Catholic school as taught through the Church only exists to serve the family, to serve the parents in their duties as primary educators or principal educators of their children. And so in that way our schools only exist to serve parents, and that’s why the relationship with the school and the parents is so critically important.”
“We actually — we can’t fulfill our mission without that partnership or that understanding of parents, understanding the mission of our schools and desiring it. Desiring to teach it within their family, to promote it, to defend it, and have their children formed in what we call a Catholic worldview.”
We’ll find out in a couple of months whether the U.S. Supreme Court agrees with my kid sister, or at least believes parents can choose schools with a Catholic vision and still benefit from state programs.
But for now, I hope it’s clear to you, readers, where the real brilliance in our family lies.
(By the way, “we’ll find out if the Supreme Court agrees with my kid sister” is as surreal a line to write as you imagine it is.)
Lessons learned
I was obliged last week to purchase a new car — not a “new” new car, mind you, but a car new to me.
Given that I don’t expect ever to be the actually first owner of a motor vehicle off the production line, I use the term “new car” broadly enough to include the 7-year-old Subaru Outback now sitting in my driveway.
It was almost the first time I’ve selected a car for myself, and then purchased it.
Careful listeners of The Pillar Podcast know that I attempted to buy myself a car 13 years ago, but ended up embroiled in a scam perpetrated by the Russian mafia, bringing a literal knife to an almost gunfight, and then — in an even weirder turn of events — getting my money back in cash and adopting our daughter, with less than two day’s notice.
In any case, we ended up buying a car for my wife after the Russian mafia debacle, and I got the hand-me-down from her, which was before that a hand-me-down from her mother. It looks like I might this week hand that car down to my nephew, if he wants it, keeping a family tradition alive.
When I was in high school, I owned the greatest car I’ve ever had, a 1979 Cutlass Supreme with a throaty v-8. Back when gasoline could be had for a dollar a gallon, it was a dream vehicle for a young boy, though I could hardly afford to fill the tank today.
It would have been the perfect car back in high school with which to pick up girls and drive them down the shore, had I known any girls who wanted to be picked up by me.
Still, I didn’t actually pick out that car — it was a hand-me-down from a nice old lady with a need for speed — and every vehicle I’ve since owned has come to me by Providence, rather than my actual selection.
But when my 2008 SUV needed a few grand in work this month, we decided it’d be better to buy something slightly newer. And it was the first time I had the chance to pick out something on my own — there were no hand-me-downs in sight, or I’d have jumped at the chance.
So last week, I thought I might buy the car I’ve wanted for a long time — a Jeep Wrangler with a removable hard top and mud splatter on the side.
It’s not a practical family car, but I thought that because we live in Colorado and it snows sometimes, I could possibly justify the purchase to my skeptical wife. Plus, I’m in my mid-40s, which is the first time most men can afford the car that would have suited them well in their mid-20s.
I was living then under the grand delusion that a Jeep Wrangler was the perfect car for me, because it’s cool, and so am I. The Jeep dealer, by the way, keeps his kid at college by selling that delusion.
But I drove a Wrangler, and a short test drive was enough to quell two decades of desire: The handling was clunky, the seats were punishing, and the blasted thing was so damn loud. I realized quickly why the people who buy Jeep Wranglers are young, or trying to appear that way — with the wisdom of age should come sense enough to drive something more comfortable.
When I told her the Wrangler was off the table, Mrs. Flynn tried admirably not to look smug.
The middle-aged version of the Wrangler is the Subaru Outback, a sporty station wagon that seems like it could probably offroad in the mountains, if that was something I wanted to do — while getting good mileage, driving like a well-powered sedan, and offering room in the back for the outrageous amount of youth baseball equipment I haul around.
Since it was my first real car-buying experience (save for the Russian mafia stuff), I learned a few things.
First, I learned not to tell the dealer you’re buying with cash. If you’re like me and you’ve saved your pennies for a few years, counting on the day you’ll have to spend them all, keep that information to yourself.
See, everyone at the dealership makes money when you borrow it from them. If they think you’re a borrower, there’s high motivation to lower the sticker price, make you feel like you’ve driven a hard bargain, and then make up for it on the back end, when you’re too tired to read the paperwork you’re signing. They’ve learned down at the car dealership a few things from Vatican real estate speculation, actually.
If you walk in like a rube, and tell them you’ll pay with a fat stack of Benjamins, there’s far less money to be made. Which means there’s far less motivation to move on the sticker price. Or the dealer fee. Or the reconditioning fee. Or the prep fee. Or the paperwork fee. You get the idea. Pay with cash, and there’s only one chance to get some dough out of you. They’re gonna make sure they do it.
Next, when you’re test driving the car, ask the salesman for the craziest thing that’s ever happened to him on a test drive. I did this about a half dozen times.
I expected these young men salesmen would make up the sorts of braggadocious tales young men concoct. Instead, I heard that test drivers not infrequently pull the car into a parking lot, take their hands off the wheel, and ask to just sit quietly by themselves for a few minutes.
I heard about dads like myself, pulling into highway ditches to “see how she handles off-road.”
I heard about the mom who wanted to see how car line would go, and used the test drive to pick up her kids, and then a grocery order.
And I heard about the test driver who pulled over and insisted on changing a tire, “to see if it’s hard to do.” It would not have been hard to do, the salesman told me, if that particular driver had ever changed a tire before in his life.
But two hours later, I’m told, he bought the car. Financed the whole thing, the dealer said proudly.
I also learned — again — how sentimental kids can be. I came home proud with my Outback, figuring my kids would realize, just like everyone else, how cool their dad is. I mean, driving a Subaru wagon and all — for all they know, I could be a mountainous off-roader in my spare time.
Instead, two of my three children burst into tears, with my young son explaining that “everything has changed,” and that I “never keep anything they care about.”
Kids don’t like change, I remembered.
I took them for a drive, and they warmed up just a bit. Max was mollified that the windows went down, and he could stick his head out the passenger side, as he’s wont to do. Pia was delighted I finally have a car with bluetooth, and she could request Katy Perry pop songs through a speaker bigger than the one on my phone.
But Davey was a lot more hesitant. He told me he has a lot of memories in my old car. He said we’ve had important talks in there — and we have. I tried to be empathetic — we Subaru owners are an empathetic lot of adventurers, you know.
Finally, he lit up. He had an idea. “Dad, I know what could make this more like your old car. It’d be better if it was familiar.”
I was curious about the plan.
“We should just get some garbage,” he said, “some wrappers and soda bottles, and spread them out in the back seat.”
“Then it will feel like yours.”
Thanks, kid. Just for that, I won’t take you off-roading.
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Please be assured of our prayers. And please pray for us, we need it.
Yours in Christ,
JD Flynn
editor-in-chief
The Pillar
St. Bernard’s School of Theology and Ministry is a Catholic graduate school that seeks to reunite theology, prayer, and sanctity by providing a true formation of mind and heart, led by a personal encounter with Christ, while studying theology and philosophy in and from the heart of the Church. Through the generosity of the Knights of Columbus, you can audit one summer course for free! Learn more here!
Given religious freedom's track record at the court in recent years, my money's on your kid sister.
JD: we have family in the Denver area, and I guess rock chips are a big deal on Wrangler windshields, since they're more vertical or something. You dodged a bullet (or, at least, a rock) there.
Welcome to the club,
a fellow Outback Dad