The Pillar Podcast Speculates on Steubenville Diocese While Ignoring the Vacant See
The Pillar Podcast, a media organ of the conciliar sect, published Episode 278 on 18 September 2026, titled “The Steubenville question.” The hosts, JD Flynn and Ed Condon, speculate on the future of the Diocese of Steubenville within the structures of the neo-church, while promoting a “new translation of the Liturgy of the Hours” from Ascension Press. This episode manifests the total absorption of the conciliar establishment in administrative trivia while the See of Peter remains vacant since 1958.
The Conciliar Sect’s Administrative Obsession Masks the Vacancy of the Holy See
The cited article relates a podcast discussion entirely confined to the internal machinery of the paramasonic structure occupying the Vatican. Flynn and Condon “speculate what could be on the horizon for the Diocese of Steubenville” as if the canonical mission of the Church depended on diocesan restructuring rather than the divina constitutio (divine constitution) of the Papacy. This is the quintessential symptom of the laicism condemned by Pius XI in Quas Primas: “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.” The hosts treat the Diocese of Steubenville as a bureaucratic unit of a human institution, ignoring that without a true Roman Pontiff, no diocesan bishop can receive canonical mission (missio canonica), for “no power in the world, however great it may be, can deprive of the pastoral office those whom the Holy Ghost has made Bishops” (Pius IX, Allocution to the Bishops of Prussia) — and conversely, no true bishop can be appointed by an antipope.
Promotion of the Reformed Liturgy of the Hours: Liturgical Archaeology as Idolatry
The podcast is sponsored by Ascension Press, publisher of a “new translation of the Liturgy of the Hours” boasting “exceptional readability and top-of-the-line materials.” This commercial advertisement for a liturgical book issued under the authority of the usurper “Pope” Leo XIV (Robert Prevost) constitutes participation in the liturgical revolution that began with the Novus Ordo and extends to the destruction of the Divine Office. The Breviarium Romanum, sanctified by centuries of use and codified by St. Pius X, has been replaced by a fabricated Liturgia Horarum that excises imprecatory psalms, alters the Psalter distribution, and emasculates the Church’s prayer. To market this as a product that “will faithfully serve the Church’s daily prayer for generations” is blasphemy: lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of praying is the law of believing). The new breviary expresses the faith of the neo-church — a faith that has defected from the Catholic Faith (Cum ex Apostolatus Officio).
The Pillar as an Organ of the Neo-Church: Legitimizing the Usurper
JD Flynn and Ed Condon, as founders of The Pillar, function as propagandists for the conciliar sect. Their podcast discusses “Pope Leo’s picks” (Episode 276), “The German Church and the AfD,” and other matters that presuppose the legitimacy of the claimant to the Holy See. By doing so, they violate the dogmatic truth that a manifest heretic cannot be Pope. St. Robert Bellarmine teaches: “A non-Christian in no way can be Pope… a manifest heretic is not a Christian… therefore, a manifest heretic cannot be Pope” (De Romano Pontifice, 2.30). The line of usurpers beginning with John XXIII has publicly professed the heresies of religious liberty, false ecumenism, collegiality, and the new ecclesiology — all condemned by the Syllabus of Pius IX and Lamentabili sane exitu of St. Pius X. The Pillar’s silence on this apostasy is not neutrality; it is complicity in the great apostasy (apostasia magna).
Canon 188.4 and the Automatic Vacancy of Office
The discussion of diocesan futures ignores the canonical reality that every office becomes vacant by the mere fact and without any declaration if the cleric “publicly defects from the Catholic faith” (Canon 188 §4, 1917 Code). The “bishops” of the conciliar sect, including the ordinary of Steubenville, have publicly defected by adhering to the Second Vatican Council’s heretical documents (Dignitatis Humanae, Unitatis Redintegratio, Nostra Aetate), by celebrating the invalid Novus Ordo Missae, and by recognizing the antipopes. As Fr. McDevitt explains: “Joining, or enrolling in, a non-Catholic sect is not required to establish the publicity which the canon demands.” The conciliar sect is a non-Catholic sect. Therefore, the Diocese of Steubenville, as a juridic entity within that sect, has no canonical existence in the Catholic Church. Speculating on its “horizon” is like discussing the reorganization of a Masonic lodge.
The Silence on the Social Kingship of Christ: The Ultimate Indictment
Nowhere in the podcast description — nor in the entire output of The Pillar — is there any mention of the Social Kingship of Christ the King, the regnum Christi over nations, the duty of states to profess the Catholic faith, or the condemnation of secularism. Pius XI instituted the Feast of Christ the King precisely “to address the needs of the present times and provide a special remedy against the plague that poisons human society. And this plague is the secularism of our times, so-called laicism” (Quas Primas). The Pillar’s preoccupation with diocesan administration, podcast sponsorships, and “Catholic conversation” within the neo-church is the precise laziness and timidity of the good that Pius XI denounced: “many of them do not hold the position in so-called social life, nor do they have the significance that those who carry the torch of truth should have.” Their “Great Catholic Conversation” is a dialogue of the deaf, conducted in the ruins of the vineyard, while the true King is excluded.
Ascension Press and the Commercialization of the Sacred
The sponsorship by Ascension Press reveals the mercantile spirit that infests the conciliar establishment. The Divine Office, the prayer of the Church per ipsum, et cum ipso, et in ipso (through Him, with Him, in Him), is reduced to a consumer product: “pre-order today at AscensionPress.com/ThePillar.” This simony of the spirit — selling the Church’s prayer as a lifestyle accessory — fulfills the prophecy of the Syllabus: “The civil government… has a right to an indirect negative power over religious affairs” (Error 41), now exercised by corporate publishers who dictate liturgical texts approved by the antipope. The “new translation” is not a gift of the Holy Ghost but a product of the Consilium of Bugnini, the architect of the liturgical revolution, whose work was a Masonic operation to Protestantize the Church’s worship.
Conclusion: The Steubenville Question Is a Distraction from the Roman Question
The “Steubenville question” is a fabrication of the conciliar sect to occupy the faithful with ecclesiastical trivia while the Roman Question — the vacancy of the Apostolic See since the death of Pius XII — remains the only question that matters for salvation. As Pope Pius IX taught, “the Church is not a true and perfect society… if it appertains to the civil power to define what are the rights of the Church” (Syllabus, Error 19). Today, the “civil power” is the conciliar bureaucracy, the media apparatus like The Pillar, and the commercial publishers like Ascension Press, which together define a false church in the place of the true. The Diocese of Steubenville, like every diocese in the neo-church, is a fictitious jurisdiction erected by antipopes. The only horizon for the faithful is Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus — outside the true Church, which subsists in those who hold the integral faith, the traditional Mass, and the sedevacantist position, there is no salvation. The Pillar Podcast is the voice of the abomination of desolation speaking in the holy place. Let him who reads understand.
Source:
Ep. 278: The Steubenville question (pillarcatholic.com)
Date: 18.09.2026