The DRC, the point of dysfunction, and the freedom of bullshit
The Friday Pillar Post
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Happy Friday friends,
I want to open by asking you to please join me in prayers for the people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
In a story that has been given a bafflingly low profile in the global press, a full-blown conflict is breaking out in the city of Goma, which sits on the border with Rwanda.
Militants of the M23 group, which is backed by the Rwandan government, have moved in, seizing a city that is home to some 2 million people, and which already had hundreds of thousands of refugees clustered around it in makeshift camps and shantytowns.
Hundreds of people have been shot, including international peacekeepers. Bodies, including those of women and children, are littering the street. The DRC government has called the incursion a declaration of war by the Rwandan government, which in turn has denied involvement.
All this is happening, I would add, in the immediate vicinity of a major medical facility studying the Ebola virus, so imagine if, you can, the apocalyptic potential of that.
We’ve been trying to get in touch with the local Church, including Goma’s Bishop Willy Ngumbi Ngengele, and we will keep trying, to bring you on-the-ground coverage when we can — as well as how to help, if we can.
It is hard to overstate how truly catastrophic this situation could become. This corner of the DRC has long been a smoldering conflict zone, in great part fueled by its vast mineral wealth. But it is also the site of generational tribal conflict of the most genocidal kind.
M23 is a Rwandan government-supported and tribally Tutsi group that has been engaged in more-or-less open incursions in the region since the end of the Rwandan genocide — which was perpetrated by that country’s then-dominant Hutu tribe, many of whose leaders and people fled over the border into the DRC and around Goma.
Following the genocide — and I saw this firsthand, spending some time in Rwanda for work back in my bachelor days — the country appeared to work something of a miracle on itself.
People lived side-by-side with those who had, literally, butchered members of their family. It was the result of a kind of collective act of the will to forgive and to live. Seeing it first hand marked me deeply. But it was also obvious that the national reconciliation, incredible as it was, sat atop simmering tensions and barely buried trauma.
It could — and this was an opinion shared by everyone I knew and worked with over there — all too easily happen again. Thinking of the people I met and knew there, I am sincerely terrified of what could happen just over the border now, in Goma.
Pray for them. Please.
Here’s the other news.
The News
The case of Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne took a new turn on Wednesday, with the cardinal issuing a new statement confirming he had in fact received and signed written restrictions on his ministry in 2019.
Cipriani served as the Archbishop of Lima from 1999 until 2019, after which he moved to Spain and continued to exercise, in his words, “extensive pastoral activity,” the Vatican restrictions notwithstanding.
Cipriani maintains, and the Vatican disputes, that Pope Francis privately and informally lifted the secret restrictions in 2020.
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A push to tighten Germany’s immigration laws has exposed divisions among the country’s Catholics — including within the episcopal conference itself — ahead of a snap federal election.
The Jan. 28 statement from a conference-sponsored office criticized the Influx Limitation Act, proposed by Germany’s conservative Union parties ahead of a debate on a five-point plan for restricting migration which had the support of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which is widely described as far-right but rejects the term.
Several bishops then individually went on record to support or renounce the original statement, with Regensburg’s Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer saying: “Unfortunately, the German bishops’ conference can no longer speak with one voice.”
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Of nearly 150 U.S. Latin Catholic dioceses, only 16 of them have ordained enough priests in recent years to maintain their current levels of clergy, according to a new study.
A 2025 report on “The State of Priestly Vocations in the United States,” published by the Vocation Ministry organization, listed 16 small and medium-sized dioceses which defied a downward vocation trend in the U.S. over the past decade — in one case more than doubling the needed “replacement rate” for diocesan priests.
But the report also found that in the years between 2013 and 2023, not a single diocese serving more than 750,000 Catholics had enough ordinations to maintain its current level of priests, suggesting that when it comes to diocesan vocations to the priesthood, small is beautiful — and often fruitful.
Read all about the report here.
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Two more religious orders have left Nicaragua in recent days, amid widespread persecution of Catholics in the country.
Around 30 Poor Clare nuns were forced to abandon their contemplative convents in the cities of Managua and Chinandega on Monday.
Less than a week before the nuns were forced into exile, the Central American province of the male branch of the Discalced Carmelites announced Jan. 23 that all friars would be leaving the country after 50 years in Nicaragua.
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The prefect of the Vatican’s worship office said this week that when holy days of obligation are transferred because of conflict with another feast day, the ensuing obligation to go to Mass does not transfer to the new date.
The announcement would seem to override a 2024 Vatican letter that created a fracas over an obligation to attend Mass when the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception was moved to a Monday because of its conflict with an Advent Sunday.
So what’s going on?
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The Vatican published on Tuesday Antiqua et nova, a “note on the relationship between artificial intelligence and human intelligence.”
The document, a “mutual reflection” between the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Dicastery for Culture and Education, aims to address the “anthropological and ethical challenges raised by AI.”
In case you don’t have time for a thorough read, The Pillar breaks down the document for you.
But as a bonus, we asked a few different AI systems to do a little self-reflection, and give us their “thoughts” on Antiqua et nova — and rate it out of five stars.
Here’s what the robots thought about the Vatican’s document.
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An Italian priest was declared excommunicated this month, after a December video in which he referred to Pope Francis as an “antipope.”
Fr. Natale Santonocito was declared excommunicated over a video he posted last month in which he claimed “we’ve had an antipope for the past 11 years. The so-called Francis is not the pope and has never been, because Benedict XVI did not resign the papacy on February 11, 2013.”
Santonocito’s excommunication is the latest in a trend of priests and religious being declared excommunicated or suspended after rejecting Pope Francis as the legitimate pope. In Italy alone, at least five priests have been excommunicated or suspended for similar reasons since 2024.
Read about the new fashion for schism among Italian clerics here.
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The College of Cardinals needs to elect a new dean. You’d think that would be straightforward, right? Apparently not so much.
Current dean Cardinal Battista Re’s five-year term lapsed more than a week ago now and at 91 he’s unlikely to be seeking another turn. All the expectation was that the 12 members of the college with the rank of cardinal bishop would quickly get together and elect the 81-year-old subdean, Cardinal Sandri, to succeed him.
Since neither Re nor Sandri can participate in a conclave, both being over 80, neither would be doing most of the most important roles reserved to the dean anyway, so the election was expected to be something of a non-event.
Well, at least according to some, he doesn’t like Sandri, and doesn’t want him as dean. Instead, the pope seems to be (allegedly) favoring Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the most senior man among the four cardinal bishops young enough to actually do the whole job of dean.
The whole thing seems to have turned into something of an awkward deadlock — with Francis (allegedly) not triggering the election until he can be sure of the result, and the cardinal bishops, most of whom are well over 80 and not much open to being pressured on their last remaining official duty, not looking to take orders on who to make their own dean.
As one sharp-eyed reader pointed out to me, the pope could, of course, just refuse to ratify the election of any candidate he didn’t like — the law does give him the power to approve the new dean.
Though, of course, that would blow a relatively private stalemate into an open conflict between Francis and the most senior cardinals in the Church, most of whom have no jobs to be fired from and are too old to be offered rewards. That’s probably not a headache the pope wants.
But even more fascinatingly, assuming Francis does get his (alleged) wish and Parolin is elected dean, what would that do for the Secretary of State’s chances in a future conclave?
Read my whole analysis of the situation here.
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The dysfunction is the point
The Rumsfeldian “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns” are many, of course. We have, legally speaking, few of the details of the allegations against the cardinal. And we still have no clarity on what, exactly, the restrictions placed on his ministry were or when and by whom, and to what extent they were lifted — formally or informally.
What we do know is that they existed, and that they made absolutely no discernible difference to his, as the cardinal put it himself, “extensive pastoral ministry” over the last few years.
What, then, is the point of putting secret restrictions on a cardinal for undisclosed accusations which do not appear to be being addressed? What indeed.
Looking at a long series of cases which have built up since 2018 — McCarrick, Zanchetta, Richard, Rupnik, Principi, Cipriani, and more — there is a clear pattern of secret, selective, and partial justice for clerics of a certain rank or influence.
And this has largely played out parallel to the most sweeping reforms by the pope to canonical penal law and procedure since the promulgation of the 1983 Code.
Given the continued examples of dysfunction in how the biggest cases are treated at the highest levels in the Church, despite reams of legislation and public statements about proper process and accountability, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that these instances are not hard lessons being learned, but the system working as designed — or at least as intended.
I increasingly suspect, and friends in the Roman curia have told me as much, that when it comes to serious crimes and major churchmen, the Vatican’s leadership is much more motivated by negative coverage in the New York Times than by the interests of justice.
That is a shocking place to have come to.
This is not, to be clear, to pass judgment on Cardinal Cipriani. I know nothing of the substance and circumstances of the allegations he faces, beyond what has made it into the papers — and it is very worth pointing out that neither does he, according to him.
But that only serves to show how his treatment is as much a disservice to him as it is to his accuser(s), and to the entire society of the Church.
That his case no longer can be said to be an outlier, but could even be said to be the new normal, is one of the most damning legacies I could imagine for a pontificate which has made so much out of its reforming credentials.
The freedom of bullshit
I have been thinking a bit about the rumbling clash between the Trump-Vance administration and the USCCB, following the Veep’s comments last week, alleging that the conference was using federal grant money to pad its “bottom line” and resettle “illegal immigrants.”
As our own Brendan Hodge has previously noted in some forensic detail, the “bottom line” is that, actually, this is a loss-making charitable endeavor for the USCCB.
And since the resettlement work is for people already cleared by the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, the “illegal immigrants” remark seems to be, at best, unsupported by any data I can find.
It naturally gets my hackles up to hear the country’s highest-ranking Catholic in public office make allegations against the bishops which are — again I’m using the most charitable phrasing here — not supported by the available facts.
But I cannot say I am shocked by it.
It was VP Vance, after all, who said “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” in response to similarly unsupported stories about refugees eating cats in suburban Ohio.
Memeing viral untruths into general acceptance to advance an underlying priority is pretty much a standard play these days.
People say things, to camera and into microphones, which they know they can’t prove, though maybe they aren’t 100% sure they can’t be proven, because they know you’ll both be happier if you just decide to believe it anyway. It is very liberating I am sure, but we do have a word for it.
It is a calculus that seems to add up, and it's a small wonder if many of our leaders are discovering the great freedom which comes from not bothering to fact-check themselves, or care when someone else does.
Indeed, an episcopal friend and Pillar reader (in a good way) remarked to me some months ago about the Trump campaign that much of it was, as Elwood Blues would put it, “not lies, just bullshit,” and that it was possible to deal with bullshitters in a way one cannot with outright liars.
While I certainly recognize his distinction, I am not sure I’m as sanguine about it, though.
The Church, I would add at this point, is hardly immune to this same trend. And I agree with JD’s observation, which he made on Tuesday, that for the U.S. bishops, narrative is now a more valuable currency than coin.
Consider comments attributed to outgoing Washington archbishop Cardinal Wilton Gregory last week at a private event for “members of the LGBTQ community” at Holy Trinity Catholic Church, during which he deplored Catholics’ “increasingly harsh treatment of one another—rejecting people because of race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnic origins, or any other distinctions.”
Now, I am first in line to lament that such things do exist in the Church and we should combat them ceaselessly. But, I am not myself aware of any hard data, or even substantial anecdotal evidence showing an upward trend in racism, misogyny, or homophobia in the Church in the United States. Nor have I been able to find any — though I am open to having it pointed out to me.
Gregory went on to cite recent research from CARA and Pew on Catholics who have abandoned their practice of the faith, highlighting the Church’s “callous attention to the spiritual needs and aspirations of people because of their gender identity” as a key reason.
The problem with his citation is that I went back and checked the most recent studies from both CARA and Pew and — again I’m open to correction here — I cannot find any data or survey results showing transgender issues as the reason for any measurable defections from the faith.
Of course, Gregory was speaking to a particular crowd for whom the inherent truthiness of his assertions would be immediately apparent, and warmly welcomed, so I wouldn’t blame him or whoever fed him his lines for expecting to escape scrutiny in service to a broader point.
It is the case these days that, in the Church as much as out of it, our leaders seem comfortable with strident and often unsupportable talking points to express their often legitimate concerns about important and sensitive topics.
Indeed, it seems to me we have a perfusion of bullshit right now, the purpose of which is not to change minds or sway outcomes but merely to turn up the volume on any particular point to 11 for committed supporters.
It’s a grotesquely cynical economy of speech, and especially noxious because it feeds a general assumption among us that anything anyone says that you disagree with is probably made up, at least in part.
The platitudinous thing here is to say we all bear responsibility for this, in some measure, and we owe it ourselves to “do the work” and be our own fact-checkers.
But the reality is, with everyone from presidents and vice presidents to cardinals relying on bullshit to make a point, that represents a daunting, nearly full-time task for any conscientious reader.
Media has its role to play in all this for sure. And Lord knows we take it as a core mission of The Pillar to debunk nonsense when we see it and show our work when we make a claim. But that isn’t rewarding work, from a business perspective. On the contrary, from what I can tell, it loses us subscribers nearly every time we do it.
But I fear this is really one of those occasions where the fish rots from the head. If we see our leaders happily repeat viral nonsense as fact, what real chance and what real choice do we have?
As a natural contrarian, I pull back from being lumped into any party, camp, or tribe, political or ecclesiastical.
But the reality is we’re social creatures, and we are going to self-sort into groups, one way or another. And when we reach a saturation point of nonsense talking points it is only natural that we default, eventually, to choosing “our man’s” crap over the other guy’s, because what other choice is there?
The alternative is hardly more palatable: hardening into a general cynicism about everything and everyone, a disposition to which I am already too prone.
What I long for are leaders — in politics and in the Church — who make it their cheerful mission to simply call bullshit on their own colleagues, whenever it is needed. They’re hard to find, though, because most don’t like to use rude words.
See you next week,
Ed. Condon
Editor
The Pillar
I'm a bit shocked by some of the comments above that seem to be rationalizing the deliberate manipulation of facts for the sake of political power. In other contexts, that's called lying. Color me old-fashioned.
Now I suppose one could justify the Trump-Vance behavior as a type of performance art, but is that where we really want to be as a country? And if we are there, then should Catholics be participating in it?
There IS such a thing as rhetoric, but there are limits to what counts as GOOD rhetoric. The ancient Greek tradition, as I understand it, considered people SOPHISTS who used words instrumentally without believing what they argue. They were derided because they cared nothing for the truth, only for producing a particular reaction in the hearers.
I think we as Catholics have to stand for something better. And I think it's shameful that Vance is picking a fight with the bishops over the immigration issue rather than reaching out to them to work with them. Vance is the one with the upper hand, so he's the one more responsible for seeking peace and a constructive way forward.
Ed or JD: my friend is from this region in DRC and is getting updates from her family. She and her family is part of the Neocatechumenal Way. I don’t know if she could be a source, but she has certainly requested an outpouring of prayers. Thank you so much for highlighting what is happening there.
Christ have mercy! Pray for us, Mary!