The Pillar portal (September 11, 2026) publishes a “Friday Pillar Post” by Ed Condon, weaving together a maudlin reflection on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, a digest of conciliar church scandals and administrative maneuvers, and a philosophical meditation on the abolition of leap seconds by the General Conference on Weights and Measures. The piece epitomizes the neo-church’s complete capitulation to the naturalistic worldview: it treats geopolitical trauma as a theological hermeneutic, reduces the episcopal office to a bureaucratic liability, and elevates the metric of atomic time above the liturgical rhythm of the *sanctificatio temporis*. **The article is a confession of spiritual bankruptcy, proving that the conciliar sect has no supernatural vocabulary left, only the secular language of security, management, and technological control.**
The Hermeneutic of Security: Replacing the Cross with the Crash Barrier
Condon opens by declaring 9/11 “the day the world began to self-sort… between those willing to die for what they held dear, and those willing to kill to further their demands.” He invokes the *Didache*’s “two ways” but immediately empties it of soteriological content, converting the *via vitae* and *via mortis* into a sociological taxonomy of “service” and “violence.” There is no mention of the *status gratiae*, the necessity of baptism, or the reality of eternal damnation for those who die outside the Church. The “way of life” is reduced to military enlistment; the “way of death” to terrorism. This is naturalism pure and simple, the very error condemned by Pius IX in the *Syllabus* (Error 3: “Human reason… is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood, and of good and evil”).
The author laments the “ubiquitous security culture”—photo IDs, removed shoes, crash barriers—as the defining decoration of public life. He asks: “What does it do to us as a civilization to have a slow generational turnover which… will mean the whole of society has only ever experienced life in a state of constant vigilance against spontaneous mass attack?” The question is telling. It reveals a mindset entirely confined to the saeculum. The true Catholic knows that the “siege mentality” is not a post-9/11 invention but the permanent condition of the *Ecclesia militans*: “Militia est vita hominis super terram” (Job 7:1). The crash barriers around conciliar cathedrals are not symbols of a lost innocence but of a lost faith; they protect empty tabernacles where the Novus Ordo “table of assembly” has replaced the *Sacrificium incruentum Calvariae*.
The Episcopate as Legal Liability: The Oakley Case
The news digest leads with Bishop David Oakley of Northampton appearing at the Old Bailey charged with “two counts of rape of a minor.” Condon notes the bishop “appeared in lay clothes and is not currently in ministry, although he remains bishop of the diocese.” This sterile, canonical phrasing—”not currently in ministry,” “remains bishop”—exposes the conciliar sect’s functionalist ecclesiology. A successor of the Apostles, charged with the rape of a child, retains his title because the *munus* has been reduced to a juridical status separable from sanctity. St. Pius X taught in *Lamentabili sane exitu* (prop. 52) that the Church’s organic structure is *not* subject to evolution; yet here the episcopate is treated as a corporate directorship suspended pending HR review.
The silence on the *scandalum* given to the faithful is deafening. Where is the call for public penance? Where is the recognition that a bishop who violates the sixth commandment *graviter* destroys his own credibility as a teacher of morals? The *Syllabus* condemns the idea that “the Church has not the power of using force” (Error 24); the conciliar sect has voluntarily surrendered even the moral force of canonical discipline, preferring the “lay clothes” of the secular courtroom.
Andorra: The Co-Principality of Apostasy
The report on Andorra is a masterpiece of understatement. Prime Minister Xavier Espot announces the decriminalization of abortion “whether the Holy See likes it or not,” despite the Bishop of Urgell serving as co-head of state. Condon writes: “The country’s government has been in negotiations with the Holy See for years in an attempt to secure at least tacit approval for decriminalizing abortion.” Tacit approval for the legalization of child murder. This single phrase condemns the entire conciliar diplomacy. Pius XI in *Quas Primas* thundered: “Let rulers of states therefore not refuse public veneration and obedience to the reigning Christ… for the state is nothing else than a harmonious association of men.” The Andorran bishop’s silence—or worse, his participation in “negotiations”—is the *abomination desolationis* in the very seat of episcopal authority. The neo-church’s “dialogue” with the civil power is nothing but the surrender foretold by Pius IX: “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church” (Error 55), a proposition the conciliar sect has made its operating principle.
Eastern “Synodality” as Weapon: Leo XIV’s Canonical Coup
Condon cites Chorbishop John Faris praising Leo XIV’s amendment to the Code of Canons for the Eastern Churches, granting synods the power to “impeach their heads for failing to preserve or severely damaging the Church’s communion.” This is collegialism weaponized against the patriarchal structure, a further step in the demolition of hierarchical authority begun at Vatican II. The “communion” invoked is not the *communio sanctorum* but the conciliar sect’s bureaucratic unity. The power to depose a patriarch for “damaging communion” is a blank check for modernist purges. As Bellarmine teaches (*De Romano Pontifice* 2.30), a manifest heretic loses jurisdiction *ipso facto*; no synod is needed. But the conciliar sect, having no true authority, must manufacture procedural simulacra to discipline its own dissenters—while the true Faith is abandoned entirely.
Spiritual Abuse: The New Heresy Hunt
The letter from “200 victims of spiritual abuse” demanding a canonical definition, independent reporting bodies, and rights training for postulants is hailed by Condon: “I’ve agreed with [Cardinal Fernandez] about the need, for years.” This is the language of the secular NGO, not the Church. “Spiritual abuse” is a neologism designed to pathologize traditional asceticism, obedience, and the *sequela Christi*. The *Index* of Pius X condemned the proposition that “the Church, in condemning errors, has no right to require any internal assent from the faithful” (*Lamentabili*, prop. 7); now the conciliar sect invents a new crime to silence those who demand adherence to the *depositum fidei*. The real spiritual abuse is the daily celebration of the Novus Ordo, the imposition of *Communio in manu*, the denial of the Social Kingship of Christ—all inflicted on souls by the very hierarchy now posturing as protectors.
The Waiting Game: Personnel is Policy in the Kingdom of Man
Condon’s analysis of the curial reshuffle—”personnel is policy”—is a candid admission that the conciliar sect is a human institution governed by factional balance, not divine guidance. He speculates on “slanted (ecclesiologically or geographically) set of cardinal prefects,” “incremental change,” “big clean sweep.” There is not a whisper of the *regnum Christi*, the *libertas Ecclesiae*, or the duty to condemn error. The “unknown quantity” Robert Prevost (Leo XIV) is assessed solely by his CV: “American by birth, Augustinian by priesthood, Latin American by experience.” Ex operibus eorum cognoscetis eos (Matt 7:16). The fruits are the continued occupation of the Vatican by the *abominatio desolationis*.
Atomic Time vs. Liturgical Time: The Tower of Babel in Versailles
The final section on the General Conference on Weights and Measures is the theological climax of the article—unintentionally. Condon describes the shift from “observed solar time” (Greenwich Mean Time) to “Coordinated Universal Time” (UTC) based on atomic decay, and the proposed “leap hours” to replace leap seconds. He writes: “The idea that there is a kind of ‘perfect time’ apart from and above the messy imperfections of the world we live in is a kind of rejection of reality… Attempting to manufacture our own standards of perfection and then sit back and watch our world drift away from them because we can’t actually accommodate their demands seems to me like a towering metaphor for the Babelish era we live in.”
He is closer to the truth than he knows. The abolition of leap seconds is the technocratic counterpart of the liturgical reform: the replacement of the *tempus liturgicum*—the Church’s sanctification of the solar day through the *Divinum Officium*, the rhythm of Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, Compline—with a sterile, abstract, globally synchronized metric. The *Breviarium Romanum* tied the prayer of the Church to the rising and setting of the sun, the *signa temporum* given by the Creator. The Novus Ordo’s “Liturgy of the Hours” and the atomic clock share the same spirit: the Promethean attempt to master time, to sever it from the *ordo creationis* and the *ordo redemptionis*.
Condon’s sentimental defense of imperfection—”Imperfection is the watermark of reality… a call to seek the one who alone is perfect”—is a pale echo of the Catholic doctrine of *creatio ex nihilo* and the *analogia entis*. But he stops at aesthetics. He buys a sextant—a navigational instrument for the *natural* order—while ignoring the *Polestar* of the *Missale Romanum*. The true “sextant” for the soul is the Traditional Latin Mass, the *sacrificium laudis* offered *ad orientem* toward the rising Sun of Justice, *Oriens ex alto* (Luke 1:78). The conciliar sect has replaced the *Kalendarium Romanum* with the spreadsheet of the GCWM.
Symptomatic Diagnosis: The Neo-Church as Secular NGO
Every element of this “Pillar Post” screams the same diagnosis: the conciliar sect has ceased to be the *Ecclesia Catholica* and become a religious NGO managing decline. It processes scandals (Oakley), negotiates away the natural law (Andorra), tinkers with canon law to consolidate power (Eastern Code), adopts therapeutic jargon (spiritual abuse), obsesses over personnel politics (curial reshuffle), and philosophizes about timekeeping while ignoring the *tempus acceptabile* (2 Cor 6:2).
The silence is the loudest accusation. Not a word on the *Missale Romanum* of St. Pius V. Not a word on the *Social Reign of Christ the King* (Pius XI, *Quas Primas*). Not a word on the *Syllabus* condemnation of religious liberty (Error 77). Not a word on the *ipso facto* loss of office for manifest heresy (Bellarmine, *De Romano Pontifice* 2.30; Canon 188.4, 1917 Code). The “Pillar” is a pillar of salt, looking back at the sulfur of the conciliar revolution, frozen in the posture of Lot’s wife.
Tempus est ut iudicium incipiat a domo Dei (1 Pet 4:17). The atomic clocks of Versailles and the crash barriers of the neo-church’s cathedrals will not avail. Only the unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary, offered by valid priests in the true Mass, anchors time to eternity. The Pillar’s “way of life” leads only to the second death.
Source:
The way we were, the waiting game, and out of time (pillarcatholic.com)
Date: 11.09.2026