The Pillar portal reports on the feast of Blessed Peter Gonzalez, the election of the new Chaldean “Patriarch” Paul III (Emil Nona), and — most substantially — President Trump’s public attacks on the antipope Leo XIV, including an AI-generated image depicting Trump in messianic guise. JD Flynn’s commentary treats the conciliar structures as legitimate, the antipope as a genuine pontiff, and frames the entire discussion within the naturalistic categories of politics and media strategy, while entirely omitting any supernatural analysis of the present crisis.
The Antipope as Political Football
The centerpiece of Flynn’s commentary is President Trump’s social media attack on Leo XIV, whom Flynn consistently treats as a legitimate Roman Pontiff. Flynn describes Trump’s AI-generated image — depicting the president as a divine healer in a Christ-like posture — as a “Trumpish bit of blasphemy”, yet his critique remains entirely at the level of political optics and personal eccentricity. He writes: “Trump is gonna Trump.” This phrase, repeated twice, encapsulates the naturalistic reductionism that pervades the entire analysis.
Flynn frames the conflict as merely a disagreement over “the justice of the Iran war” and notes that Trump called Leo XIV “soft on crime” while “taking credit for his papal election.” The notion that a secular head of state would claim credit for the election of a pontiff — even the usurper antipope — should itself raise profound questions about the nature of the conciliar sect’s electoral processes. Yet Flynn passes over this without theological commentary, treating it as merely another data point in American political theater.
The AI-generated image deserves far more serious treatment than Flynn affords it. A sitting president depicting himself as a divine healer, placing hands on the forehead of a suffering man while flanked by a bald eagle, F-35s, and a Statue of Liberty hybrid, is not merely a “bit of blasphemy.” It is a manifestation of the cult of man that Pius XI identified in Quas Primas as the very essence of secularism: “the denial of Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations.” When the civil power not only excludes Christ from public life but actively supplants His divine authority with the messianic pretensions of a political leader, we are no longer dealing with mere political eccentricity but with the spirit of Antichrist. As the Syllabus of Errors condemns in Proposition 39: “The State, as being the origin and source of all rights, is endowed with a certain right not circumscribed by any limits.” Trump’s self-depiction as healer and savior of the nation is precisely the logical terminus of the liberal proposition that the state is the source of all authority — a proposition the Church has consistently condemned.
The Omission of Supernatural Diagnosis
Flynn’s analysis of Trump’s behavior is entirely naturalistic. He speculates about “strategic play,” “political outcome,” and “electoral base.” Nowhere does he consider the supernatural dimension of a world in which the conciliar antipope is attacked by a secular leader while the faithful have no true pope to defend the rights of Christ the King. The entire framework is that of liberal democracy and media commentary — the categories of the world, not of the Church.
Pius XI taught in Quas Primas that “when God and Jesus Christ were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed, because the main reason why some have the right to command and others have the duty to obey was removed.” The spectacle of a president attacking an antipope is not a crisis of diplomacy; it is a consequence of the conciliar sect’s abandonment of the social reign of Christ. By embracing religious liberty, false ecumenism, and the autonomy of temporal affairs from ecclesiastical authority — all condemned in the Syllabus of Errors (Proposition 77: “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State”) — the conciliar structures have rendered themselves incapable of asserting any meaningful spiritual authority over civil powers. The antipope Leo XIV is attacked precisely because he commands no real authority; he is a figurehead of a paramasonic structure that has emptied itself of supernatural content.
The Chaldean “Patriarchal” Election
Flynn reports on the election of Emil Nona as “Patriarch” Paul III of the Chaldean Catholic Church, treating this as a legitimate ecclesiastical event. He notes the tumultuous period under Cardinal Louis Sako, the scandal involving Bishop Emmanuel Shaleta, and Nona’s background as a refugee from ISIS in Mosul. Flynn writes: “It’s like we woke up, and the entire Church had changed.”
The quotation from an unnamed senior cleric is apt — but not in the sense intended. The Chaldean “Church,” like all Eastern rite communities in communion with the conciliar sect, is part of the same neo-church structure. Its patriarchal elections are conducted under the authority of the antipope and according to conciliar norms. The scandals Flynn describes — financial corruption, moral turpitude, cover-ups — are not aberrations but fruits of the conciliar revolution. As St. Pius X warned in Pascendi Dominici gregis, Modernism is “the synthesis of all errors,” and its inevitable consequence is the corruption of every institution it touches. The Chaldean “Church” is no exception. Its new “patriarch” will govern a community that has accepted the conciliar reforms, including the disastrous ecumenism that blurs the distinction between the true Church and schismatic communities.
Blessed Peter Gonzalez and the Grace of Humiliation
The article opens with a hagiographical sketch of Blessed Peter Gonzalez (1190–1246), the Spanish Dominican known as “Elmo.” Flynn recounts Peter’s conversion after falling from his horse into the mud of Palencia, his subsequent entry into the Dominican Order, his service as confessor to King Ferdinand III, and his eventual departure from court to minister to sailors and shepherds.
Flynn’s treatment is sympathetic and even devotional, but it remains at the level of moral edification. He notes that Peter “put a lot aside to follow Jesus Christ” and that he is “interceding now for those of us tempted to pride, to vanity, to taking comfort in office, and power, and the trappings which go with it.”
What Flynn does not draw from this account is its radical implication for the present crisis. Blessed Peter Gonzalez recognized that proximity to worldly power — even the power of a saintly king — was a danger to his soul. He left court precisely because “his old sins — pride and vanity, especially — were creeping in.” How much more dangerous, then, is the position of those who remain entrenched in the structures of the conciliar sect, occupying the palaces and offices of the Vatican, exercising the trappings of ecclesiastical nobility while the faith is being systematically dismantled? The lesson of Blessed Peter Gonzalez is not merely personal humility but a prophetic judgment on the entire system of worldly ecclesiastical power that the conciliar revolution has perfected.
The Chicago Special Education Controversy
Flynn reports on the Archdiocese of Chicago’s dispute with the Chicago public school district over federal special education funds, which have been discontinued for Catholic schools. He frames this as a “mission-critical issue” and asks whether it is “administrative negligence” or “religious discrimination.”
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, this controversy is a direct consequence of the conciliar sect’s acceptance of the subordination of Catholic education to secular authority. The Syllabus of Errors condemns in Proposition 45 the claim that “the entire government of public schools… may and ought to appertain to the civil power,” and in Proposition 47 the demand that all schools be “freed from all ecclesiastical authority, control and interference.” By accepting government funding and government oversight, the Archdiocese of Chicago has placed itself in a position of dependency on the very power that is hostile to Catholic education. The discontinuation of funds is not a surprise; it is the predictable result of the Church’s surrender of her divinely instituted authority over education. As Pius XI declared in Quas Primas, the Church “demands for itself by a right belonging to it, which it cannot renounce, full freedom and independence from secular authority.” That the Archdiocese must now litigate for the basic educational needs of its students is a scandal that flows directly from the conciliar abandonment of this principle.
The “Avignon Papacy” Reference and the Nunciature
Flynn references the media “fracas” over Cardinal Christophe Pierre’s alleged encounter with Pentagon officials who reportedly made reference to the “Avignon papacy.” He notes that The Pillar provided historical context on why popes went to Avignon.
The very fact that such a reference could be made — and taken seriously — reveals the utter collapse of papal authority in the modern world. The Avignon papacy (1309–1377) was a period when the papacy was effectively under the control of the French monarchy. The parallel to the present is not subtle: the conciliar sect, having emptied the papacy of its supernatural content, has rendered it a tool of geopolitical interests. That U.S. military officials would even conceive of such a scenario — coercive action against the Holy See — is a measure of how far the conciliar revolution has degraded the Church’s standing in the world. The antipope Leo XIV commands so little respect that foreign powers openly discuss subjecting him to political pressure. This is the fruit of the conciliar embrace of religious liberty, false ecumenism, and the renunciation of the Church’s temporal sovereignty — all condemned by the Syllabus of Errors and by every pope prior to the conciliar revolution.
Conclusion: The Naturalistic Captivity of Conciliar Commentary
Flynn’s entire analysis operates within the categories of liberal democracy, media strategy, and political prudence. He treats the antipope as pope, the conciliar sect as the Church, and the present crisis as a matter of personalities and policies. Nowhere does he invoke the unchanging magisterium of the pre-conciliar Church as the criterion of judgment. Nowhere does he name Modernism as the root cause of every scandal he describes. Nowhere does he call the faithful to the integral Catholic faith as the only remedy.
This is the captivity of naturalism — the very error Pius IX condemned in Proposition 4 of the Syllabus: “Human reason, without any reference whatsoever to God, is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood, and of good and evil; it is law to itself.” Flynn is a skilled commentator operating within the system, but the system itself is the abomination. Until the faithful recognize that the conciliar sect is not the Church, that its antipopes are not popes, and that the only path to restoration lies in the unchanging Tradition of the pre-conciliar magisterium, they will remain enslaved to the categories of a world that has rejected Christ the King.
May Blessed Peter Gonzalez intercede for all who are tempted to find comfort in the structures of a dying system — and may God grant the grace of conversion to those who, like the young Peter in the mud of Palencia, must first be humbled before they can rise.
Source:
Blessed Peter, Paul III, and … everthing else (pillarcatholic.com)
Date: 14.04.2026