Three big things

A Friday Pillar note

Hey everybody,

It’s Thanksgiving, and our U.S. staff is mostly taking off for family time, so there’s not exactly a Friday Pillar Post today.

But I have an announcement, a thought about ecumenism, and then three things.

Announcement: Ed and I are headed to Rome this weekend for the inaugural Pillar Pilgrimage. I’m most looking forward to the Jubilee Doors. But after that, I’m most looking forward to our Rome Live Show Jubilee Year Extravaganza.

If you live in Rome, or close to it, we’ll be doing a live episode of The Pillar Podcast on Thursday, Dec. 4, at 8pm, at The Drunken Ship Pub in Campo de Fiori.

It promises to be a great time. Especially because this is an Off-the-Record episode of The Pillar Podcast. That means we won’t be recording it — it will be just a night of real-time Great Catholic Conversation™, shenanigans, and hanging out. We’ll have the whole bar, and you won’t want to miss it.

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Pope in Nicea

Pope Leo is in Nicea right now, praying with Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew for Christian unity. It’s awesome.

I have written before that there is a long road between ecumenical gestures like this and the full hierarchical and sacramental communion the Church would like to have with the Orthodox.

I think it would take a miracle to move past the theological issues that divide us, especially on the matter of papal primacy, supremacy, and universal jurisdiction. I also think that since we worship a God of miracles, the prospect should not be dismissed as possible.

But before that happens, moments like the pope and the patriarch commemorating the Council of Nicea are important because affective communion — the unity of friendship — has an actual impact on the way believers can engage with the world. Further, that affective friendship can help the Church to better live her mission, and this is especially true in engagement with the Orthodox.

When you’re praying with people deeply immersed in their own traditions and cultures, you take up your own more concretely. And when you’re speaking with people with whom you disagree in the details, you tend to say the essential stuff more directly. And the essential stuff — that God was made incarnate, that Christ died and then conquered death, that we can transformed in holiness to live God’s own life — needs new and clear and urgent communication.

The fruits of this moment could be more than symbol and gesture. Let’s keep watching.

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In gratitude

Meanwhile, here’s three things I’m thankful for:

You.

When we started The Pillar five years ago, we knew we wanted to do smart, faithful, serious Catholic journalism, and to create a mechanism of faithful public accountability in the Church. We’re doing that. But we didn’t know that God would build around that a community we’ve gotten to know personally, and have genuine friendship with.

Because of you — in our comments section, in our inboxes, in our texts, or phone calls, or at our live shows, or when we meet elsewhere — relationships that might have been parasocial have become actually social friendships.

When our family talked yesterday about what we’re thankful for, I thought about readers who have told us The Pillar gives them hope that truth can be told, and bishops who have urged us to keep turning over rocks, and priests who tell us that The Pillar Podcast or Sunday School have become critical parts of their week.

I thought about couples who have come to our live shows, dating, and then told us about their upcoming wedding dates. I thought of men we knew as seminarians, who now as priests offer Mass for you. I thought of women religious who read Starting Seven in the refectory.

I thought of victim-survivors, who have trusted us to tell their stories.

And I thought of the friends who have told us that listening to our podcast, or reading our news coverage, or enjoying our newsletters, helped them decide to become Catholic. That is deeply humbling. And I’m thankful for it.

The Church, our mother.

The Church is the sacrament of salvation. She is the barque of Peter, navigating incredibly rough seas so that we can spend eternity in the company of the Trinity, in the eternal beatitude Christ opened for us.

We would be lost in despair, and darkness, and the slavery of our sin without Christ, and the sacramental freedom he gives us in his body, the Church.

Full stop.

The Pillar.

I love The Pillar because I love the Church. And for the Church to live her sacred mission, she needs people willing to investigate, discover, and report truth, as a service to the Church’s reform and renewal.

As a Catholic, I’m glad The Pillar exists. I think it matters. And that’s especially true right now, as the Church in the U.S. and around the world face real challenges — and while voices of self-protection or institutional preservation would prefer to avoid the hard realities of the moment.

Because we report those hard realities, some people would prefer The Pillar not exist at all.

But we do exist, and we make a difference. We’ve broken a lot of serious stories this year, and they’ve impacted policy and decision-making across the Church.

Now it’s the time of year when we face some hard truths. With the new election of a new pope, our readership grew immensely this year. Our paying subscribers grew too, but not nearly at the same pace.

It remains the case that a relatively small portion of Pillar readers keep our operation in business — allowing us to report the news, to give free subscriptions to priests, seminarians, and religious who can’t afford them, and to keep turning over rocks, because we love Christ, his Church, and the truth.

Sometimes I wonder if we break so many significant stories that it’s starting to seem normal. And in starting to seem normal, it’s started to seem — even to people who know The Pillar matters — that we’ll always be there, no matter what, and no matter who subscribers.

That’s not just true. The truth is that we have to keep ahead of the ordinary churn for publication subscriptions, and the rising costs of everything, and the basic economics of running a business, or we won’t just be there.

So I ask you to imagine a Church without The Pillar. I don’t like imagining that, and I bet you don’t either.

But we depend on you. We’re built around the idea that you will become a paying subscriber. And today, we’re offering a 20% first-year subscription discount to help you decide.

20% off. Of course, we only charge 8 bucks a month, but 20% isn’t nothing.

For a paying subscription, you get full access to our archives, our complete newsletters, our bonus podcasts, and the invaluable Starting Seven daily news roundup. It’s more than worth it.

But more than that, for a paying subscription, you keep us at work, serving the Church by finding and reporting the truth.

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We are almost five years into The Pillar now, and we’re proud to do the things we set out to: To be a mechanism of public accountability in the Church, to be an informed and unbiased source of smart and faithful news, to contribute (every so often) to actual reform and actual renewal in the life of the Church.

For the next five years, we’re envisioning a bolder five year plan — What does the Church need most, and how can The Pillar help? How can we do more for accountability, reform, and flourishing Christian life? Where is God calling us — and what do you want from The Pillar?

We’re consulting with a lot of you as we build that plan, and we’ll keep doing that.

So I am thankful because you — our readers — have brought us where we are, and you’ll help us forge a path to where we’re going.

We’ve depended on you thus far. And the future for The Pillar? That depends on you, too.

Yours in Christ,

JD Flynn
editor-in-chief
The Pillar