The Pillar portal reports on yet another installment of its podcast series, “Bonus: Sports Chat,” featuring JD Flynn and Ed. Condon discussing a New Jersey basketball story, dated April 19, 2026. The piece is emblematic of the broader degradation of what passes for “Catholic” media in the post-conciliar wasteland — a milieu where the supernatural life of the Church, the salvation of souls, the reign of Christ the King, and the unchanging deposit of faith are supplanted by the banal, the trivial, and the worldly. That such content is published behind a paywall, marketed as “Great Catholic Conversation,” constitutes not merely a failure of editorial judgment but a symptom of the profound spiritual bankruptcy that has consumed the neo-church since the death of Pope Pius XII.
The Abomination of Desolation in Catholic Media
Let us be precise about what is occurring here. The Pillar, a self-styled Catholic news outlet, devotes its resources — and its subscribers’ money — to a podcast in which two men discuss a basketball story from New Jersey. This is not an isolated lapse. It is the logical terminus of a conciliar revolution that systematically dismantled the supernatural orientation of the Church and replaced it with horizontal, secular, anthropocentric concerns. When the abomination of desolation sits in the holy place (Matt. 24:15), one should not be surprised when “Catholic” media fills its airwaves with sports chatter.
The post-conciliar structures have, over decades, methodically stripped Catholic institutions of their sacred character. The Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was reduced to a communal meal. The sacraments were reimagined as celebrations of human togetherness. The hierarchy was democratized into a bureaucracy of facilitators. And now, the media organs that serve this edifice — organs that claim the name “Catholic” — produce content indistinguishable from what one might find on ESPN or Barstool Sports, save for the occasional veneer of religious branding.
Pius XI, in the encyclical Quas Primas (1925), established the Feast of Christ the King precisely to combat the “secularism of our times, so-called laicism, its errors and wicked endeavors.” He warned that this plague “began with the denial of Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations” and that “the Christian religion began to be equated with other false religions and shamelessly placed in the same category.” What would Pius XI make of a “Catholic” podcast dedicated to basketball? The question answers itself. The reign of Christ the King extends over every aspect of human life, including media, communication, and culture. To produce “Catholic” content that is entirely devoid of Catholic substance is not merely foolish — it is a form of practical apostasy, a lived denial of the very kingship these people nominally profess.
The Hermeneutic of Continuity as Camouflage
The Pillar and similar outlets operate under the pretense of being serious Catholic journalistic enterprises. They cover Vatican news, interview “bishops” and “cardinals,” and present themselves as faithful chroniclers of the Church’s life. This is the hermeneutic of continuity applied to media: the outward forms of Catholic journalism maintained while the substance is evacuated and replaced with the values of the secular world.
St. Pius X, in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907), condemned the modernist proposition that “the Church is an enemy of the progress of natural and theological sciences” (prop. 57) and that “truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him” (prop. 58). The conciliar media complex has internalized these condemned propositions wholesale. Truth does not change, but the mission of “Catholic” media has been entirely reinvented — from the proclamation of unchanging divine truth to the provision of entertainment, lifestyle content, and worldly chatter packaged in Catholic branding.
The modernist enterprise, as St. Pius X described it in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, is the “synthesis of all errors.” Its essential characteristic is the subordination of the supernatural to the natural, the divine to the human, the eternal to the temporal. A sports podcast on a “Catholic” platform is not a betrayal of this program — it is its fulfillment. When the supernatural is systematically excluded from every aspect of an institution’s output, what remains is not Catholicism but a hollow shell, a caput mortuum (dead residue) animated only by worldly concerns.
The Silence About What Matters
The most damning indictment of this podcast and the media ecosystem it represents is not what it contains but what it omits. There is no mention of the state of souls in the post-conciliar structures. No warning about the sacrilegious nature of the Novus Ordo Missae, where the rubrics violate the theology of the propitiatory sacrifice. No discussion of the duty of Catholic rulers and nations to publicly confess Christ the King, as Pius XI demanded. No reference to the Syllabus of Errors, in which Pius IX condemned the proposition that “in the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship” (prop. 77). No acknowledgment that the structures occupying the Vatican are led by usurpers — beginning with John XXIII and continuing through the current antipope, Leo XIV (Robert Prevost) — who have imposed upon the faithful a revolution in doctrine, worship, and governance that is incompatible with the Catholic faith.
The silence is total. And this silence is not accidental. It is the silence of apostasy, the silence of men who have exchanged the truth of God for a lie (Rom. 1:25). The Fathers of the Second Council of Orange (529 AD) taught that grace is not merely helpful but absolutely necessary for salvation, and that without it, man is incapable of meritorious action. The Council of Trent, in its Sixth Session, declared anathema anyone who says that man can be justified before God by his own works without divine grace through Jesus Christ. These are the truths that should animate every syllable of “Catholic” media. Instead, we get basketball.
The Paywall of Apostasy
It deserves particular note that this content is behind a paywall. Subscribers to The Pillar are paying — with real money — for access to a podcast about a New Jersey basketball story, marketed under the banner of “Great Catholic Conversation.” This is not merely absurd; it is a form of simony, the buying and selling of spiritual goods. While the medieval simoniac sold ecclesiastical offices, the modern simoniac sells Catholic-branded entertainment to a faithful laity starving for authentic spiritual nourishment.
The faithful who subscribe to such outlets are being exploited. They seek genuine Catholic content — content that will help them save their souls, understand the faith, and navigate the crisis of the Church — and they are given sports banter. The money extracted from these subscriptions funds an enterprise that, at best, distracts the faithful from the urgent spiritual crisis of our times and, at worst, actively normalizes the conciliar revolution by treating its structures and personalities as legitimate.
The Duty of the Faithful
The faithful are not powerless in the face of this degradation. They have the duty — a duty imposed by their baptismal vows — to reject media that fails to serve the supernatural end of the Church. As Pius IX declared in the Syllabus of Errors, “the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” is a condemned proposition (prop. 80). The faithful must not reconcile themselves with a “Catholic” media that has reconciled itself entirely with the world.
The remedy is not to demand better content from these outlets. The remedy is to abandon them entirely and to seek out — or to create — media that serves the true Church, the Church of all ages, the Church that has endured in the faithful who profess the integral Catholic faith and are led by bishops with valid sacraments and validly ordained priests. The Church does not need sports podcasts. The Church needs the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the preaching of unchanging truth, the administration of the sacraments, and the courageous proclamation that Jesus Christ is Lord and King — not only over the Church but over every nation, every institution, and every aspect of human life.
Non possumus — we cannot go any other way. The way of the conciliar sect leads to spiritual ruin. The way of Catholic Tradition leads to eternal life. Let the faithful choose life.
Source:
Bonus: Sports Chat (pillarcatholic.com)
Date: 19.04.2026