The *Pillar Catholic* portal publishes a column by former Congressman Daniel Lipinski, a self-described “Pope Leo XIII Fellow” at the modernist University of Dallas, lamenting the loss of contemplative silence at a Major League Baseball game. The author mistakes the naturalistic “lessons” of a sport—patience, hope, community—for the supernatural virtues required for salvation, exposing the conciliar sect’s reduction of the Faith to mere cultural therapy.
The Profanation of the Analogy: Baseball is Not “Like Church”
The article opens with a quote attributed to Leo Durocher: “Baseball is like church; many attend, few understand.” This blasphemous comparison sets the tone for the entire piece. From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the unbloody renewal of the Sacrifice of Calvary, the center of the universe, before which the angels tremble. To liken the Holy of Holies to a commercial sporting event is the hallmark of the laicism condemned by Pope 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 author, a creature of the secular political order, reveals his true theology: the “Church” is a vague community gathering, and the “liturgy” is whatever provides communal comfort.
The “Pope Leo XIII Fellow” at the Service of the Neo-Church
Lipinski’s byline boasts the title “Pope Leo XIII Fellow on Social Thought, University of Dallas.” This is a grotesque irony. The true Leo XIII, in Annum Sacrum and Tametsi Futura, taught that “the empire of Christ over all nations” is the only remedy for the world’s ills. The University of Dallas, a product of the conciliar revolution, uses the name of a pre-conciliar Pope to legitimize a naturalistic social doctrine that separates the temporal order from the Kingship of Christ. The Syllabus of Pius IX condemns the error that “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church” (Error 55) and that “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State” (Error 77). Lipinski’s fellowship is a badge of the clerico-liberal synthesis condemned by the Holy Office: a Catholicism stripped of jurisdiction, dogma, and the Social Kingship of Christ, reduced to “values” shared at a ballpark.
Naturalistic “Peace” vs. The Peace of Christ the King
The article’s central thesis is that modern stadium entertainment relieves fans of the “burden of peace.” Lipinski writes: “These are the lessons baseball used to teach us, before we were relieved of the ‘burden’ of peace.” This is a diabolical inversion. True peace—pax Christi in regno Christi—is not the absence of noise or the psychological comfort of “contemplation” on a grassy field. Pope Pius XI defines it dogmatically in Quas Primas: “The hope of lasting peace will not yet shine upon nations as long as individuals and states renounce and do not wish to recognize the reign of our Savior.” The “peace” Lipinski mourns is the peace of the world, the pax Romana of bread and circuses, the tranquility of order without the Orderer. It is the peace of the City of Man, which St. Augustine teaches is founded on cupiditas, not caritas. By seeking “lessons” in baseball rather than grace in the Unbloody Sacrifice, the author confirms the Modernist condemnation in Lamentabili Sane Exitu: “Christian doctrine was initially Jewish, but through gradual development, it became first Pauline, then Johannine, and finally Greek and universal” (Prop. 60)—here, it becomes American and sporting.
The Apostasy of the “Catholic” Layman in the Public Square
Lipinski served sixteen years in the U.S. Congress, swearing allegiance to a Constitution that enshrines religious indifferentism (First Amendment) and the separation of Church and State—errors explicitly anathematized by Pius IX (Syllabus, Errors 55, 77, 78). As a “Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution,” he operates at the heart of the Masonic-liberal establishment. His column contains zero reference to the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, the Redemption, the Sacraments, the True Mass, the Virgin Mary, the Four Last Things, or the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation. This silence is the gravest accusation. The Syllabus condemns the proposition: “The teaching of the Catholic Church is hostile to the well-being and interests of society” (Error 40). Lipinski’s life refutes this by proving the conciliar “Catholic” is perfectly compatible with the Masonic State: he renders to Caesar the things that are God’s (the public profession of the Faith, the Kingship of Christ over legislation) and to God the things that are Caesar’s (a vague “social thought” harmless to the regime).
Baseball as the Liturgical Substitute of the Abomination of Desolation
The author describes Wrigley Field as “the most revered cathedral of the ‘Church of Baseball.'” This is not metaphor; it is idolatry. The conciliar sect, having abandoned the True Mass for the Novus Ordo “table of assembly,” creates a spiritual vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum; the faithful, deprived of the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary and the Divine Office in Latin, seek the mysterium tremendum in profane rituals. The “raucous stimulation,” the “Wendella boat race cartoon,” the “music blasting loudly”—these are the ersatz liturgy of the neo-church. Lipinski complains about the volume and the distraction, not the idolatry. He wants a more reverent idolatry, a “pastoral game” that mimics the silent canon of the True Mass. This is the hermeneutic of continuity applied to the devil’s playground: keep the form (silence, rhythm, community) but discard the Substance (Christ the King).
The “Lessons” of Baseball: A Pelagian Gospel of Self-Help
Lipinski enumerates the “lessons”: “appreciating the beauty of the action, the environment, the time for contemplation, and the opportunity to connect with others. And by coming to understand that we should never give up hope.” This is Pelagianism dressed in flannel. “We should never give up hope”—hope in what? In the Cubs winning the World Series? In human resilience? The theological virtue of Hope has God as its object: “Hope is the confident expectation of eternal life and the graces to attain it” (Council of Trent, Sess. VI, Can. 21, cited in Quas Primas, n. 24). Lipinski’s “hope” is immanent, worldly, and vain. The Syllabus condemns: “No other forces are to be recognized except those which reside in matter, and all the rectitude and excellence of morality ought to be placed in the accumulation and increase of riches by every possible means, and the gratification of pleasure” (Error 58). Baseball is the gratification of pleasure; Lipinski’s “contemplation” is the aestheticization of the worldly.
The Conciliar Sect’s “Social Thought”: A Tool of the Antichrist
The article is a perfect specimen of the “Church of the New Advent”‘s apostolate: dialogue with the world, inculturation into the world, sanctification of the world—without converting the world to Christ. Pius XI warned in Quas Primas: “The state must leave the same freedom to the members of Orders and Congregations… who are indeed the most valiant helpers of the Pastors of the Church and contribute most to the expansion and establishment of Christ’s Kingdom, either by combating the triple concupiscence of the world through religious vows, or by striving for perfection.” Lipinski, a married layman in the world, does not combat the triple concupiscence; he baptizes it. He does not strive for perfection; he strives for a better fan experience. This is the democratization of the Church condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili: “The Church listening cooperates in such a way with the Church teaching in defining truths of faith, that the Church teaching should only approve the common opinions of the Church listening” (Prop. 6). The “common opinion” of the Wrigley Field crowd becomes the magisterium.
Conclusion: The Only Field is the Field of the Lord
The article is a symptom of the Great Apostasy. A “Catholic” portal publishes a politician’s nostalgia for a quieter baseball game, calling it theology. The true Cathedral is not Wrigley Field; it is the Throne of the Lamb in the True Mass offered by valid priests in union with the Sede Vacante hierarchy preserving the Depositum Fidei. The “burden of peace” is not the silence between innings; it is the Cross of Christ: “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:30), cited by Pius XI in Quas Primas. Lipinski rejects this yoke for the yoke of the Cubs. “You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men” (1 Cor. 7:23), the same encyclical thunders. The slaves of the conciliar sect, the slaves of the Masonic State, the slaves of the “Church of Baseball”—they have their reward. Non est pax, dicit Dominus, impiis (Isa. 48:22).
Source:
Baseball and the ‘burden of peace’ (pillarcatholic.com)
Date: 20.08.2026