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Happy Tuesday friends,
JD is away this week on a long overdue family vacation, so you’re stuck with me today. Please join me in praying for him to have a restful time of it, and for the sanity of Mrs. Flynn, who now has sole custody of JD in addition to the kids. We wish her the best of luck.
For those readers on this side of the Atlantic, I hope you enjoyed a good Labor Day and a fitting end to the summer season.
Mine was largely taken up by the end-of-season softball tournament. We headed into tourney time on the back of our best-ever season record. It may not have, strictly speaking, been a “winning” record, but we won more games than any previous year. And when you factor in strength of schedule — thanks to rain-outs, we played the top two teams in the league twice and three times as many games as we did the bottom two — I call it an easily wild card-worthy season.
We also laid to rest our previously unblemished losing record in the post season, recording our first win in the annual double-elimination, then sending a team home for the first time with our second. This is no small feat since — and I want to phrase this carefully so as not to make any recklessly unfair accusations — most of the other teams suddenly found a depth of younger talented players in their squads which hadn’t been evident during league play, if you know what I mean.
Along the way, prayers were said, sausages were grilled, beer was drunk, and injuries were acquired, as is the way of these things. A good time was had by all, though it wasn’t all smooth sailing.
Though I say it myself, I came into the tournament on an absolute heater. Since coming back from my mid-season neck injury I was hitting like nothing had ever happened and it was, I’m not going to lie, becoming a serious source of private personal pride for me. But, as Yogi Berra observed, 90% of the game is mental, the other half is physical.
I rolled into the tournament way too amped up to play well. I was jittery and over-eager in the box and I was several inches ahead of myself, and the ball, in the field. On the first day I think I stopped more balls with my left ankle than my glove, and I have the bruises to show for it. By Day 2, into elimination play, I had the full blown yips. I think I cost us three runs in the top of the first inning in our first win-or-go-home match up. I was ready to tell the manager to bench me, and he would have been right to do so.
But here’s what didn’t happen: I didn’t get benched. And despite some egregious and expensive errors, not one word of criticism or exasperation got shouted across the infield or muttered in the dugout. Instead, I got a barrage of support, encouragement, and demands that I shake it off and reset. And, entirely because of the encouragement of the guys, I did. By the bottom of the second inning I was back in the groove and we blew the game wide open and ran away with it, before putting in a credible show in our eventual tournament ending loss later in the day.
That’s the thing about being on a team, and why I invest so much in playing an old man’s version of the children’s game: the common endeavor and contest tests and reveals character. In this case, it proved my own fragility and revealed the true fraternity of our little sandlot brotherhood.
Playing the game is fun when you play well. It’s more fun when you win. But being part of a genuine team is the real juice. The name on the front of the jersey matters more than the one on the back ever will. But the number on the back is where the two meet. That number assigns you a context, a belonging, an identity as part of a whole. It puts you within an order, literally and metaphorically.
In the field, at the plate, or on the bench, I get to spend my summers being part of something bigger than myself, oriented towards an authentic kind of Christian masculinity, willing to win while rooted in fraternity, and endeavor in service to the other. The season ended yesterday and I miss it already, because I miss being on the team.
See you next summer, boys. And hey, Holy Redeemer, we’re coming for you.
Here’s the news.
The News
The Catholic Church needs an “independent ecclesiastical commission” to evaluate bishops’ ad limina visits.
That’s the conclusion of a nine-page document released Sept. 8 by the Vatican’s General Secretariat of the Synod on the visits that regional groupings of bishops are required to make roughly every five years to Rome.
But the document also acknowledges that sweeping changes to the ad limina visit process might not be feasible because they would add significantly to the workload of an already stretched Roman curia. So, you know, there’s that.
—
Bishop Heiner Wilmer joined Protestant and ecumenical officials Monday in declaring that “grave fears have become reality” following the Alternative for Germany’s landslide victory in the Saxony-Anhalt state election.
The chairman of the German bishops’ conference issued a joint statement with Bishop Kirsten Fehrs, leader of the Protestant Church in Germany, and the Rev. Christopher Easthill, chairman of the Association of Christian Churches in Germany, noting that the AfD was “by a clear margin the strongest party” in the eastern state following the Sept. 6 vote.
Although the AfD came well ahead of the CDU, which has governed Saxony-Anhalt since 2002, winning 39 of the state parliament’s 83 seats, it fell short of the 42 seats required for a majority.
The German bishops unanimously declared in 2024 that Catholics could not vote for the AfD as it had undergone “several waves of radicalization” and was now “dominated by a racial-nationalist attitude.”
—
The bishops of Florida are embroiled in a heated debate with the state over vaccine policies in the state’s Catholic schools.
The state government is expanding religious exemptions to required childhood vaccines, and the attorney general has demanded that Florida’s Catholic schools comply in order to maintain eligibility for state scholarships and vouchers.
But the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops says the state is violating its freedom of religion by attempting to dictate its application of Catholic teaching.
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An upcoming ruling by the European Union’s top court on whether a Belgian diocese must erase baptismal register data on request could have significant implications for the Church’s autonomy and institutional freedom of religion.
That’s the contention of a position paper issued Sept. 4 by the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union, or COMECE.
The 15-page paper addressed a case currently before the Court of Justice of the European Union, or CJEU, concerning a dispute between the Diocese of Ghent and Belgium’s Data Protection Authority over whether the diocese must comply with an unnamed individual’s request to delete their baptismal register entry.
The paper was published less than a month before the Advocate General, an independent legal adviser to the CJEU, is expected to issue a formal opinion on the case.
Get all the background right here.
—
Just one month ahead of a global meeting of bishops in the Vatican on Amoris laetitia, some episcopal leaders have told The Pillar that they have not received information about what to expect or how to prepare, and are eager to learn the pope’s plans for the scope and approach to the discussion.
The Dicastery for the Laity, Family, and Life published in July the thematic framework for an October meeting on Amoris laetitia, involving the leadership of bishops’ conferences from around the world. But The Pillar has consulted with the leadership of several bishops’ conferences, who said they haven’t received any additional information on the meeting beyond what was made publicly available in July.
And here’s something really worth noting, which our own Edgar Beltran reported in this this story:
“While the Dicastery for the Laity, Family, and Life published the topics for the meeting back in July, sources close to the dicastery told The Pillar that most of the organizational work for the meeting is being taken up by the Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, which is in charge of the discussion’s logistics.”
Mark that well for two reasons.
The first is that it is a fascinating insight into the curial dynamics of this meeting and could have real effects on how the meeting proceeds and what it produces.
The second is that about 24 hours after Edgar broke that story, I saw it being “exclusively” reported elsewhere. It’s not an unusual chain of events around here. And look, it is what it is, I’m not out here to name and shame others. But it is worth noting because it’s easy to lose sight of where real news is coming from in an age of AI scraping and social media grandstanding.
Real news has value.
Anyway, read the whole thing here.
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By longstanding tradition, whenever I go on holiday, JD likes to play a little game to see if I am actually switching off or secretly still at work. Usually what he does is write something about me, noting my… generalized anxiety about The Pillar as a business and mocking my disposition to frugality by announcing a sale or discount or something.
I get it. Every partnership is a little yin and yang. And I accept willingly the mantle of being the office Eeyore, given m’collegue’s Tiggerish tendencies. Somebody has to be the realist with their eye on the bottom line.
So, since he’s away, I am going to play him a bit at his own game.
First of all, let me offer up the traditional Labor Day Sale. I accept, however grudgingly, that there is some deep subliminal and irrational linkage between a bank holiday Monday and people expecting discounts across the commercial board. Fair enough.
So, for all of you readers who have never yet become proper paying members of the team, here — valid through the end of this week — is 25% off your first year as a Pillar subscriber. Please, use it and enjoy it in good health.
But allow me, too, to offer some straight talk about our work here at The Pillar this Labor Day.
Gone are the days when we were casually referred to and dismissed by other outlets as an “upstart blog,” though the website hasn’t changed much in the last five years and, while our headcount has climbed a little, we’re still a smaller team than everyone else on our beat. Nowadays we’re more often afforded the backhand compliment of institutional bête noire, too big to ignore and too well-established to expect to just go away.
That’s fine by us. We aren’t in this to get invited to fancy receptions, and we aren’t here to push agendas or make friends. What we are here to do is break news, and keep on top of the stories that matter. We don’t want to be the most popular kids in class, but we insist on being the smartest whenever we possibly can.
We got this far because we made a bet that there were enough smart, informed Catholics out there who cared enough about the real news of the Church to recognize and pay for serious journalism, not partisan mood music. We won that bet thanks to you guys, and so we’re still here.
But the world, and the Church’s world, doesn’t stand still. The important stories and debates of the Pope Francis era aren’t necessarily those of the new Leonine pontificate. We’ve been hard at it making sure we tack with the changes, and we are shifting our attention and focus as we need to, while keeping after our core mission of institutional transparency and accountability.
It’s harder, though, to make the case for ongoing vigilance rather than rolling crisis response. We have seen renewals tail off this year, and new subscribers slow. It’s not a five-alarm fire, but it’s a trend I have my eye on, because worrying about this stuff is my job.
The savvy economic play is, I am told, to keep manufacturing crises, inflating tempers, and feeding the baser kind of media appetites which we are all prone to. But we aren’t going to do that. That’s not how we roll, and I know you trust what you read here because you know we don’t abuse the trust you place in us.
So I am making another bet this week, with myself and I guess with JD, though he doesn’t know it.
I am betting that if I put this to you squarely — that we see real work that needs doing, and that we’re tracking some serious stories right now that need serious investments of time and manpower -— you know we are serious. I’ll make that bet because we’ve worked damn hard to earn that trust.
And I am betting that if I tell you guys that right now we need those of you who read our news week in and week out to say “yeah, work is value for money,” you will be with us.
Because here’s the bottom line: we aren’t a charity case, literally or metaphorically. We do what we do the way we do it because we are professionals doing a job — and doing it better than anyone else on the beat. And in addition to access to our back catalogue of articles and bonus podcasts, paying subscribers also get the absolutely peerless daily news round up Starting Seven from Luke Coppen. I’ve unlocked today’s and yesterday’s editions so you can see what you’re missing.
And we, all of us, get what we are willing to pay for in the end. We have all seen what the world looks like when there is no serious eye on the institutional life of the Church, or informed voices in the middle of tribal shouting matches. I don’t want to go back to that, and I am literally betting my livelihood you don’t either.
So, summer’s over and it’s back to work here and in Rome. We’ve got a lot to do, and we are going to do it better than anyone else. That’s my promise to you, and we cannot do it without you.
Let’s go.
The boys online
Look, Twitter is stupid and the highest amounts of engagement on it come from, on average, the worst kinds of people venting the worst sorts of opinions. That’s what it is, and because of that I try to treat what I read and see there with the seriousness it deserves. Which as a rule ain’t much.
But there comes a point at which the unseriousness of some people and what they think merits at least some quasi-serious discussion by me. Case in point:
Last week, I know not why, my feed was full of one of those microeruptions of “discourse” which bubble up from time to time. The subject was how apparently impossible it is for young men these days to marry and start families because, and this was the general consensus of those voices being amplified, all young women today are just demented feminists who won’t accept that they need to adopt some suitably modest manners and submit to the headship of a husband.
As I sometimes do, I offered an undirected response to this general conversation, noting that while the boys online seem obsessed with women needing to accept their place and respect male authority, “in my day, courting a lady was like trying to catch a tiger. You had a little respect for the fact that she was wild and beautiful and might turn around and savage you.”
It was a spontaneous formulation. My underlying point was that the drumbeat of chatter I see about it being hard for young Catholic men to date because ladies in the dating pool don’t seem eager to discuss their future domestic subordination seems to suggest a few things.
The most obvious, to me anyway, is that there’s an assumption abroad — maybe it’s generational, maybe it’s a subculture, there’s no real data — that at least some of the youth seem to see women, and expect women to see themselves, as existential loose ends, rather than fully formed and formidable minds and moral agents to be approached with a bit of cautious admiration.
The replies I received, and am still receiving, appear to reinforce this. But they also illustrate something even more unpleasant, something I’d be happy to write off as the inevitable tidal sludge of internet interactions past a certain point of critical mass, except for the presence among them of a few posturing chinstrokers, grifting away for incel clicks under the guise of pseudo-intellectualism. Those I won’t resist the urge to kick back at.
Here’s what I see underpinning all of the profanity and posturing: entitlement. A bunch of braggadocios little boys throwing digital tantrums because women today don’t know their place and aren’t lining up for them as they ought and saying thank you.
To them, I’ve not got a lot to say because when dealing with that sort, it’s important to keep the message simple and to the point.
For those who plead their cause, and again I refer you to the actual replies to my tweet to see whose cause they are pleading, I would offer a few more developed observations.
I hear from those sorts that the problem is that I fail to see “how bad things are” for young men looking to start a family. I must say, and I spend a good deal of my free time working pastorally with people in the young adult bracket, my own experience bears out the reverse. For every decent young Catholic man I know (and I know a fair few) finding it hard to meet and date, I can think of twice the number of frustrated eligible young Catholic ladies.
Now, dating in the digital age is, I accept, different indeed from “my day,” way the hell back in the 2000s. But it never occurred to me, or anyone I knew, to make male headship and female modesty the subject of courting conversation. I think a better place to start is how the Church defines marriage, as a “partnership of the whole of human life.”
There’s a few reasons for this, and none of them is that young women today are somehow all uniquely ideologically poisoned and morally loose compared to those of 20 years ago — as has been suggested to me several hundred times in the last few days.
The first reason is superficial and is, or was, self explanatory. If you have to talk about male leadership to a girl, boys you’re doing it wrong. It’s like telling her how confident and funny you are and making sure she’s ok with it. It’s not a good look, guys.
The second reason is a deeper version of the first. Yes, St. Paul, inter alia, has some words for women about “wives being subject to their husbands as to the Lord” — we had the letter to the Ephesians back in 2006, too. But here’s the thing guys: St. Paul is, literally and grammatically speaking, not talking to you. What he says to men is “husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the Church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her.” That’s the part that seems totally lost in the responses I have heard. In fact, I see the opposite.
The whole of Christian masculinity is patterned on Christ, it is leadership modeled entirely on uncompromising, unstinting self-sacrifice, on giving up one’s life in an act of total love. Christ came among us as one who served, not one who subjugated. That is the example which either inspires and converts hearts to God, or sends Judas off into the night in a wrath of frustrated ambitions.
There is, to be clear, a lot working against young men these days, culturally speaking. But if they have 99 problems, well the ladies ain’t one of them from where I sit. Maybe they’d come in at 100, but I’m a big believer in first things first, and anyway I am not talking to the girls.
Instead, the more pressing issue seems to me to be the obvious and celebratory rejection of the crucified Christ as any kind of witness to authentic manhood. There are people lining up to preach that the cross is for cucks, and cater to the insecurities of a generation already warped — through no fault of their own — by internet pornography and a culture of dehumanized and dehumanizing sexual consumerism. If we want to speak of young men as victims, then those people are prime culprits.
I don’t buy the argument that there are no positive male role models, either. I know plenty.
They are pastors and teachers and fathers and brothers and coaches and coworkers spread across every finger of society. What they don’t lack is toughness or dignity or sense of masculine strength of character. What they don’t have is a side-hustle in online misogyny, so they rarely go viral.
Though some of them do, anyway.
My advice to young men is always pretty straightforward. Look for the man who models dignity, respect for themselves and for others, and obviously loves and is loved — take him as a role model. For yourself, consider that two qualities that radiate from a man are holiness and a desire to serve others. The stronger the man, the more brightly those qualities radiate.
And if you want my real unvarnished practical advice: consider what you consume and where it comes from. If it ain’t good, and it’s all coming through your phone, get rid of it.
Anyway, that’s enough for a Tuesday.
See you Friday,
Ed. Condon
Editor
The Pillar
As someone living it, I think the issues with modern dating have a lot more to do with the death of communities than it does with anything the Twitter commentariat believes about women. It’s really hard to meet people socially, which pushes people towards dating apps, which then enables a small percentage of people to be on their worst behavior and poison everyone’s perception.
There’s also I think a desire to want dating to be easy and immediately gratifying. From a secular angle, it’s really easy to cut someone off and ghost someone if most of the contact is purely digital. Rather than working through a problem, or hearing out a disagreement you can just walk away. From a more Catholic angle, I’ve heard plenty of anecdotes of people treating women in Catholic spaces radically differently depending on if they’re single or not (and not in a ‘I’m going to respect your relationship’ kind of way), which kind of goes to the “you need to respect a woman as a human person before you date her” point that Ed gets at.
In short, it sucks for everyone, Ed is right.
Unfortunately, the "digital tantrums" don't just come across as angry but *whiny* which, speaking as a single woman, has to be the least attractive quality in a man. Of course, we ladies also need a collective talking-to at the moment for many reasons because we can be truly awful. My mother still tells me to "offer it up" when I'm being whiny. I think this helpful little phrase sums up the solution outlined by Ed - we all need to be picking up our Cross a lot more and being chronically online a lot less.