The Pillar, a digital mouthpiece of the conciliar sect masquerading as independent journalism, publishes its “Friday Pillar Post” for August 7, 2026, authored by its editor Ed Condon. The piece opens with a banal, therapeutic meditation on Psalm 128 and the author’s personal anxiety during a two-week vacation, before pivoting to a curated digest of scandals and betrayals that define the Bergoglian antipapacy: a “cardinal” credibly accused of sexual predation in the confessional, an Australian “bishop” testifying against his brother “bishop” in a criminal court, the opaque finances of the Vatican’s asset management arm, a public spat among Spanish “bishops” over migration rhetoric, and—the true lede buried at the end—the latest installation of state-approved “bishops” in Communist China under the secretive, treasonous “Vatican-China deal.” The article’s thesis, unwittingly confessed in its final paragraph, is that the conciliar sect’s leadership is so consumed by institutional survival and geopolitical maneuvering that it has abandoned the salus animarum entirely.
The Therapeutic Gospel: Replacing the Fear of the Lord with Self-Help
Condon begins not with the Deus providebit of Divine Providence, but with the narcissistic navel-gazing of the modern “lay apostle.” He admits a “longstanding personal prejudice against the verb [meditating] for its New Age woo-woo connotations,” yet proceeds to offer a textbook example of Modernist subjectivism: reducing the timor Domini—the beginning of wisdom (Ps 110:10)—to a psychological technique for “emotional unclenching” and “true rest.” He contrasts a “pagan deity who watches, waiting to punish” with a “father, fear of whom is properly rooted only in a loss of communion.” This is a false dichotomy straight from the heretical playbook of Gaudium et Spes and the Catechism of the “Catholic Church” (1992), which empties the fear of the Lord of its servile dimension—the dread of offending Infinite Justice—and reduces it to mere filial sentimentality.
St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that timor servilis (servile fear) is a gift of the Holy Ghost (Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 19, a. 2), distinct from the worldly fear Condon describes. By dismissing the punitive justice of God as “pagan,” Condon echoes the Albigensian error that the God of the Old Testament is a tyrant, effectively denying the unity of the Divine Nature. There is no mention of sin, judgment, hell, or the necessity of the Sacraments for salvation. The “freedom” he discovers is the autonomy of the Modernist conscience, unmoored from the regula fidei. As Pius X condemned in Pascendi Dominici Gregis: “The Modernist… makes the religious sense the foundation of faith… and thus faith becomes immanent.” Condon’s “existential underpinning” is precisely this immanentist substitute for the virtus infusa of Faith.
The “Cardinal” of Rabat: Sacrilege in the Tribunal of Penance
The report on “Cardinal” Cristóbal López Romero, SDB, appointed by Bergoglio in 2019, is a damning indictment of the conciliar sect’s “episcopate.” Five women allege “inappropriate behavior… during the sacrament of penance.” If true, this is not merely “sexual misconduct”; it is the crimen sollicitationis in its most diabolical form—the use of the Seal of Confession as a hunting ground for predators. The 1917 Code (Canon 2368 §1) mandated excommunication latae sententiae reserved to the Holy See for a confessor who solicits a penitent to sin against the sixth commandment. The conciliar sect’s 1983 “Code” (Canon 1387) retains the penalty but the “Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith” under Bergoglio has systematically dismantled enforcement, replacing justice with “accompaniment.”
López Romero’s denial—”any acts of sexual aggression, violence or harassment”—parses words with Clintonian precision. “Inappropriate behavior” in the confessional is aggression against the soul. The appointment of Msgr. Mario León Dorado, OMI, as “apostolic administrator” is the standard damage-control maneuver: isolate the scandal, protect the institution. Where is the canonical process? Where is the public penance? Where is the notification of the faithful that their “sacraments” may be invalid due to the minister’s state of soul? The silence is the answer. As St. Pius X warned in Pascendi: “They [Modernists] lay the axe not to the branches and shoots, but to the very root, that is, to the faith and its deepest fibers.”
Australian “Bishops” in the Dock: The Collapse of Hierarchical Authority
Bishop Michael Morrissey of Geraldton testifying for the prosecution against Bishop Christopher Saunders of Broome is presented as a novelty—”the first time a bishop has appeared in court on behalf of the prosecution in a sexual abuse trial of another bishop.” It is a spectacle of the blind leading the blind into the ditch (Mt 15:14). Both men are products of the post-conciliar “formation” that replaced Thomistic seminary training with psychologized “human development.” The very concept of a “bishop” testifying in a secular court against a brother “bishop” signifies the total erosion of potestas iurisdictionis and the subjection of the “Church” to the State—a direct fulfillment of the Syllabus of Errors (Pius IX, 1864), Proposition 39: “The State… is endowed with a certain right not circumscribed by any limits.”
The conciliar sect’s “bishops” possess no valid orders (the 1968 Pauline Rite of Episcopal Consecration is doubtful at best, invalid at worst) and no jurisdiction (having been “appointed” by antipopes). Their appearance in civil courts is not justice; it is the theatrum mundi of a counterfeit hierarchy answering to Caesar because it has long since ceased to answer to Christ. As Leo XIII taught in Immortale Dei (1885): “The Church… is a perfect society… endowed with all the means necessary for its own action… subject to no civil power.” That Church exists only in the remnant faithful to Tradition.
APSA: The Money Changers in the Temple, Rebranded
The “Administration for the Patrimony of the Apostolic See” (APSA) boasts of “strong and stabilizing results for 2025,” growing assets by 89 million euros and sending 20 million to the “Vatican operating budget.” Condon’s “guarded assessment” barely scratches the surface of the simonia and financial opacity that define the Bergoglian Curia. The “investment strategy” and “rebalancing of portfolio priorities” are euphemisms for high-finance speculation with the patrimony of the faithful—often in funds contrary to Catholic morals (contraception, abortion, arms manufacturing).
Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno (1931) condemned the “dictatorship of finance” and the concentration of economic power. The conciliar sect’s “APSA” is the embodiment of that dictatorship. The 20 million euro transfer to the “operating budget” funds the very apparatus of the “Synod on Synodality,” the “Fiducia Supplicans” blasphemy, and the global persecution of Tradition. This is not stewardship; it is the fuel for the auto-demolition of the Faith. As Our Lord drove the money changers from the Temple (Jn 2:15), so must the true Church reject the financialization of the sacred.
Spanish “Bishops”: Nationalism vs. Humanitarianism—Two Wings of the Same Modernist Bird
Archbishop Luis Argüello of Valladolid calls the migrant surge in Ceuta “an invasion” and a “demographic weapon,” while the local “diocese” emphasizes “humanitarian response.” Condon presents this as a “sharp division.” It is a false dialectic. Both positions operate within the naturalistic framework of Gaudium et Spes and Fratelli Tutti—the “common good” severed from the Summum Bonum, which is God. Argüello’s “demographics are a weapon” rhetoric borrows from secular identitarian politics, not the Social Kingship of Christ. The “humanitarian” wing embraces the Masonic universal brotherhood condemned by Pius XI in Mortalium Animos (1928).
Neither “bishop” proposes the only Catholic solution: the conversion of the migrants and the Moroccan state to the una vera religio, the public recognition of Christ the King (Pius XI, Quas Primas, 1925), and the ordering of immigration policy to the salus animarum. As the Syllabus (Prop. 77) condemns: “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State.” Both Spanish “bishops” have capitulated to this error. The “invasion” is not primarily military or demographic; it is the invasion of error into the sanctuary, facilitated by shepherds who no longer know the Voice of the True Shepherd (Jn 10:4).
The Buried Lede: The Vatican-China Deal—Treason Against the Kingship of Christ
In the final section, “The big picture and fools’ gold,” Condon casually drops the bombshell: “In the two weeks I was off, the Vatican announced both the approval and installation of two bishops for the Chinese mainland under the provisions of the Vatican-China deal.” This is the crimen laesae maiestatis against Christ the King. The “Vatican-China deal” (first signed 2018, renewed 2020, 2022, 2024) is a secret concordat with an atheist, Communist regime that persecutes the true Church—arresting loyal “underground” bishops, demolishing churches, forcing “sinicization” of doctrine.
By “approving and installing” state-selected “bishops,” Bergoglio exercises a potestas ordinis and iurisdictionis he does not possess, legitimizing the Ecclesia silens of the “Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association”—a schismatic, state-controlled entity. This is the realization of the Masonic “ecumenism project” denounced in the False Fatima Apparitions document: “The imprecise formulation ‘conversion of Russia’ (without specifying Catholicism) opens the way to religious relativism. It can serve to legitimize dialogue with schismatic Orthodoxy.” Substitute “China” for “Russia” and “Patriotic Association” for “Orthodoxy,” and the pattern is identical.
Pius XI in Divini Redemptoris (1937) declared: “Communism is intrinsically wrong… no one who would save Christian civilization may collaborate with it in any undertaking whatsoever.” Bergoglio’s “deal” is collaboration in its most insidious form: the betrayal of the Chinese martyrs—Bishops Fan Zhongliang, James Su Zhimin, and countless priests and laity rotting in laogai camps—for a seat at the table of the Great Harlot (Apoc 17). Condon’s phrase “fools’ gold” unwittingly describes the “deal” itself: a glittering diplomatic achievement that purchases thirty pieces of silver at the cost of the Faith.
The Systemic Rot: A “Church” That Cannot Be Reformed
The Pillar’s article is a microcosm of the conciliar sect’s bankruptcy. It mixes therapeutic pablum, financial reportage, political commentary, and canonical crime blotter—nowhere does it proclaim the Gospel, defend the Deposit of Faith, or call sinners to repentance. The “news” is managed; the “analysis” is guarded; the “big picture” is missed because the lens is purely immanent.
This is the inevitable fruit of Vatican II’s aggiornamento. The “Church of the New Advent” has no supernatural mission because it has no supernatural Head. The “popes” since John XXIII have been manifest heretics (Modernism, religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality), and by the principle ipso facto (St. Robert Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice; Canon 188.4, 1917 Code; Cum ex Apostolatus Officio, Paul IV), they lost all jurisdiction upon their public defection. The “bishops” they appoint are intruders. The “sacraments” they simulate (Novus Ordo Missae, 1969 Rite of Ordination) are doubtful or invalid. The “canonizations” (John Paul II, John XXIII, Paul VI, etc.) are null.
The Pillar, for all its “independent” posturing, is an organ of the abominatio desolationis. Its subscribers pay for a curated view of the collapse, mistaking the death throes for “synodal vitality.” As St. Paul warns: “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but having itching ears, will heap to themselves teachers according to their own lusts” (2 Tim 4:3). The only “rest” for the faithful is not a vacation from anxiety, but the quies of the Traditional Mass, the unchanging Doctrine, and the valid Sacraments in the catacombs of the remnant. Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. The conciliar sect is not the Church; it is her apocalyptic counterfeit.
Source:
Learning to fly, catching up, and buying books (pillarcatholic.com)
Date: 07.08.2026