The Pillar portal (September 1, 2026) publishes a newsletter by JD Flynn blending personal anecdotes about a gala fundraiser for a “Catholic special education non-profit” with curated news items from the conciliar sect: the criminal trial of “Bishop” Emmanuel Shaleta of the Chaldean “Eparchy,” the German “bishops'” opposition to the AfD party, a liturgical compromise in the Syro-Malabar “Church,” gang violence in Haiti, the postponement of the German “Synodal Conference,” and “Pope” Leo XIV’s canonical reform allowing Eastern “synods” to depose “patriarchs.” The article epitomizes the naturalistic, institutionalist mindset of the conciliar sect, obsessing over financial scandals and procedural reforms while maintaining a studious silence on the apostasy of the false hierarchy and the extinction of the Holy Sacrifice.
The Americanist Heresy: The Church as a Philanthropic NGO
Flynn’s opening reflection reveals the Americanist error condemned by Leo XIII in *Testem Benevolentiae* (1899). He boasts that “building a culture of life happens by helping communities to include people who are otherwise marginalized,” reducing the Church’s supernatural mission to social inclusion and disability accommodations. He praises the “uniquely generous and entrepreneurial culture of American Catholicism” where immigrants “just built it themselves” without “public support for ecclesiastical institutions.” This is the heresy of Americanism: the Church as a self-funded, volunteer-driven NGO, dependent on the “donor class” rather than on Divina Providentia and the potestas ordinis et iurisdictionis (power of orders and jurisdiction) conferred by Christ.
Flynn admits: “when donors set the agenda in a way that undercuts the authority of the Church’s leadership, that’s a problem. But we shouldn’t forget that more often, donors large and small empower the Church to do good things.” Here the primacy of money over mission is confessed. The Syllabus of Errors (Prop. 55) condemns the proposition: “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.” Flynn’s celebration of a Church beholden to private donors is but the flip side of the same coin: a Church separated from Christ the King, whose social reign (Pius XI, *Quas Primas*) demands that “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.” The true Church does not “empower” herself through galas; she is the perfecta societas (perfect society) founded by Christ, non ex hominibus sed ex Deo (not from men but from God).
Legitimizing the Usurpers: “Bishops,” “Cardinals,” “Pope”
Throughout the piece, Flynn uses the titles “bishop,” “cardinal,” “pope,” “patriarch,” “eparchy,” “diocesan bishop” without quotation marks, thereby recognizing the validity of the conciliar hierarchy. He reports on “Bishop Emmanuel Shaleta” of the “Chaldean Catholic Eparchy of St. Peter,” “Cardinal Louis Sako,” “Pope Leo” (Robert Prevost), the “bishops’ conference of Germany,” the “Apostolic See,” the “Vatican.” This is formal adherence to the great apostasy. Since John XXIII (1958), the See of Peter has been vacant; the men claiming to be popes are manifest heretics who have ipso facto lost all jurisdiction (St. Robert Bellarmine, *De Romano Pontifice*; Wernz-Vidal, *Ius Canonicum*; Canon 188.4, 1917 Code; *Cum ex Apostolatus Officio*, Paul IV). To call them “pope,” “bishop,” “cardinal” is to profess a false faith, to worship the abomination of desolation (Matt. 24:15) standing in the holy place.
The article treats the “German Synodal Conference” and the “Vatican’s” approval of its statutes as a legitimate ecclesiastical process. In reality, synodality is the Masonic destruction of the monarchical constitution of the Church (Pius VI, *Auctorem Fidei*; Pius X, *Pascendi*). The postponement because “the Vatican has yet to approve the statutes” is theater: the “Vatican” (the paramasonic structure occupying Rome) is the author of the synodal revolution. As Pius IX taught in the *Syllabus* (Prop. 37): “National churches, withdrawn from the authority of the Roman pontiff and altogether separated, can be established” — this is the goal of the German “synodal way,” and the “Vatican’s” feigned resistance is dialectical manipulation.
The Shaleta Scandal: Financial Crime as Distraction from Doctrinal Apostasy
Flynn devotes extensive space to the criminal trial of “Bishop” Shaleta: embezzlement, money laundering, $300,000 stolen, arrest at the airport with $9,000 cash, visits to a “brothel and burlesque club linked to human trafficking,” ankle monitor, flight risk. This is the “journalism” of the conciliar sect: exposing the moral rot of its own hirelings while ignoring the theological rot of its false faith. Shaleta is a symptom, not the disease. He is a “bishop” of a “Church” that has no valid orders, no valid jurisdiction, no true sacrifice. The Chaldean “Eparchy” uses a “liturgy” that may retain external forms but is celebrated by men ordained in the invalid Pauline rite (1968) or by “bishops” consecrated by heretics. Ex turpi causa non oritur actio (from a dishonorable cause an action does not arise). The theft of money is trivial compared to the theft of souls by a counterfeit hierarchy leading them to the “table of assembly” instead of the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary.
Flynn boasts: “Our sources have told us that the San Diego Sheriff’s investigation… was more-or-less stalled when The Pillar first reported on it… The Pillar’s reporting… seems to have provided considerably more clarity, and Shaleta was arrested soon after.” Secular law enforcing canonical discipline — the Syllabus (Prop. 31) condemns: “The ecclesiastical forum or tribunal for the temporal causes… ought by all means to be abolished.” Here the conciliar sect invites the secular arm to police its own corrupt clergy, having abandoned the potestas iurisdictionis to judge its own. This is the libertas ecclesiastica of the Modernists: freedom from Christ’s law, subjection to Caesar’s.
Liturgical Indifferentism: “Facing the People” as “Healing”
Flynn reports: “An Indian cathedral at the heart of the Syro-Malabar liturgy dispute celebrated a Holy Qurban liturgy entirely facing the people Sunday, after parishioners agreed to allow it alongside the Eastern Church’s new uniform Eucharistic liturgy. The agreement marks another step in the healing of a decades-long rift.” This is the heresy of liturgical egalitarianism. The Holy Qurbana (the Divine Liturgy of Addai and Mari) is ad orientem by immemorial tradition, the priest and people together facing the liturgical East, symbolizing the expectatio Domini (waiting for the Lord). To celebrate “entirely facing the people” (versus populum) is to turn the sacrifice into a dialogue, the priest into a presider, the altar into a table — the very essence of the Protestantized Novus Ordo. Pius XII in *Mediator Dei* (1947) condemned the “false liturgical archaeology” that would “restore” practices contrary to the Church’s living tradition. The “uniform Eucharistic liturgy” imposed by the “Synod” of the Syro-Malabar “Church” is a Modernist fabrication, a synthesis of Eastern forms and Western errors. “Healing” achieved by compromising the lex orandi is the peace of the world, not the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ (*Quas Primas*).
Haiti: The “Church” as Humanitarian Agency
Flynn quotes “Fr. Yves Carlos Romulus”: “the local Church can do little without support from around the world.” Not a word of the Holy Sacrifice, the sacraments, the conversion of souls, the reign of Christ the King. The “Church” in Haiti is reduced to a relief agency, dependent on foreign aid. This is the social gospel of Modernism, condemned by St. Pius X in *Pascendi*: “The Church is incapable of effectively defending evangelical ethics, because it steadfastly adheres to its views, which cannot be reconciled with modern progress” (Lamentabili, Prop. 63). The true Church in Haiti (if any remains) offers the Unbloody Sacrifice and the sacraments of eternal life; the conciliar sect offers NGO humanitarianism.
“Pope” Leo XIV’s “Reform”: Usurper Legislating for Schismatics
Flynn analyzes “Pope Leo” (Robert Prevost)’s “reform of the Code of Canons for the Eastern Churches, which allows the governing synods of Eastern Catholic Churches to depose from office their patriarchs, if they cause ‘irreparable damage’ to the communion of the Church.” He notes Eastern “clergy and canonists” see it differently: a tool for central control. An antipope legislating for schismatic “Eastern Catholic Churches” (which are in communion with the antipope, not with the true Church) is juridical fiction. Nemo dat quod non habet (no one gives what he does not have). A manifest heretic (Leo XIV, who professes the heresies of Vatican II: religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, new mass) has zero legislative power. *Cum ex Apostolatus Officio*: “his promotion or elevation… shall be null, void, and of no effect.” The “Code of Canons for the Eastern Churches” (1990) is itself a product of the conciliar revolution, not binding on the true Church. This “reform” is merely the paramasonic structure tightening control over its Eastern departments.
The Symptomatic Level: The Pillar as Organ of the Conciliar Sect
The Pillar presents itself as “independent Catholic journalism,” funded by subscribers (“8 bucks a month”). It is controlled opposition. It reports on the crimes and controversies of the conciliar hierarchy to legitimize the hierarchy itself. By treating “Pope Leo,” “Cardinal Sako,” “Bishop Shaleta,” “German bishops” as legitimate authorities, it binds its readers to the false church. It offers critique without rupture, reform without conversion. It never mentions:
– The invalidity of the New Mass and the invalidity of post-1968 ordinations/consecrations.
– The heresy of the “popes” since John XXIII (religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, evolution of dogma).
– The sedevacantist position as the only coherent Catholic response.
– The Social Kingship of Christ (*Quas Primas*) as the remedy for the “secularism of our times, so-called laicism” (Pius XI).
– The condemnation of Freemasonry as the engine of the revolution (Pius IX, *Syllabus*; Leo XIII, *Humanum Genus*; the *False Fatima* file’s exposure of the Masonic “Fatima operation”).
Flynn’s “hat chat” and charity auctioneering persona, his gala fundraiser, his “donor class” analysis — all reinforce the naturalistic, Americanist, bourgeois Catholicism that Pius XI diagnosed: “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” (*Quas Primas*, citing *Ubi Arcano*). The Pillar is a voice of the “Church of the New Advent,” not the vox Ecclesiae.
Conclusio: Non est alia salus
The article is a catalog of the conciliar sect’s self-inflicted wounds: financial corruption, liturgical chaos, synodal tyranny, humanitarian irrelevance. But Flynn and The Pillar refuse the only diagnosis that matters: the See is vacant; the hierarchy is apostate; the sacraments are profaned; the true Church subsists in the remanentes (the remnant) who keep the integral Catholic faith of the Magisterium perpetuum (Trent, Vatican I, Pius XII, the *Syllabus*, *Quas Primas*, *Pascendi*, *Cum ex Apostolatus Officio*). No “reform,” no “trial,” no “synod,” no “gala” can fix a church that has ceased to be the Church. Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. The Pillar’s journalism is part of the delusion, not the cure.
Source:
The news, and the Appalachian Trial (pillarcatholic.com)
Date: 01.09.2026