The Pillar portal reports on a June 20, 2026 podcast episode featuring JD Flynn and Ed. Condon discussing patriotism from a Catholic perspective. The conversation, framed as “the only standing patriot,” presents a vision of civic love that, while superficially appealing, fundamentally fails to anchor patriotism in the unchanging Catholic doctrine of Christ the King’s social reign—revealing the characteristic blindness of post-conciliar Catholic media to the supernatural order.
A Patriotism Rooted in Sand: The Pillar’s Naturalistic Civic Vision
When JD Flynn and Ed. Condon discuss patriotism on The Pillar Podcast, they engage in what appears to be a commendable effort to reconcile love of country with Catholic faith. However, their entire framework operates within the catastrophic vacuum left by the conciliar revolution’s systematic dismantling of the Church’s social teaching. To speak of patriotism without first affirming the absolute, public, and binding reign of Christ the King over all nations—including the United States—is to build a house upon sand that cannot withstand the storms of secularism, liberalism, and the anti-Christian revolution.
The Missing Foundation: Christ the King’s Social Reign
The fundamental defect of The Pillar’s discussion is the complete absence of any reference to the doctrine so magnificently articulated by Pope Pius XI in his 1925 encyclical Quas Primas: “His reign, namely, extends not only to Catholic nations or to those who, by receiving baptism according to law, belong to the Church, even though their erroneous opinions have led them astray or discord has separated them from love, but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.”
This is not merely a pious aspiration or a spiritual metaphor. Pius XI taught with the full weight of the papal magisterium that “men united in societies are no less subject to the authority of Christ than individuals” and that “the state is happy not by one means, and man by another; for the state is nothing else than a harmonious association of men.” The implications are devastating for any discussion of patriotism that fails to acknowledge this foundation: a patriotism that does not recognize Christ’s kingship over the nation is not Catholic patriotism but naturalistic nationalism dressed in religious vestments.
Pius XI explicitly warned: “When God and Jesus Christ—as we lamented—were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed, because the main reason why some have the right to command and others have the duty to obey was removed.” The Pillar’s discussion of patriotism, by failing to address this foundational crisis, implicitly accepts the very laicism that Pius XI identified as “the plague that poisons human society.”
The Syllabus of Errors and the Condemnation of Liberal Patriotism
The Pillar operates within the post-conciliar framework that has effectively repudiated the teaching of Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (1864). Pius IX condemned the proposition that “in the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship” (Proposition 77) and that “the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (Proposition 80).
Any discussion of patriotism in the American context that does not explicitly acknowledge the Church’s traditional teaching on the obligation of Catholic states to recognize the true religion is not merely incomplete—it is heretical. The United States, by its constitutional framework of religious indifferentism, embodies precisely the errors condemned by Pius IX. To be a “patriot” of such a nation without acknowledging this fundamental disorder is to love an abstraction while hating the order that God demands.
Furthermore, Pius IX taught that “the civil liberty of every form of worship, and the full power, given to all, of overtly and publicly manifesting any opinions whatsoever and thoughts, conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people, and to propagate the pest of indifferentism” (Proposition 79, condemned). The Pillar’s entire media enterprise operates within and celebrates this framework of “civil liberty of every form of worship,” making their discussion of patriotism inherently compromised.
The Conciliar Apostasy and the Destruction of Catholic Social Order
The Pillar’s inability to ground patriotism in Catholic doctrine is not accidental but symptomatic of the conciliar revolution’s systematic destruction of the Church’s social teaching. The “Declaration on Religious Freedom” (Dignitatis Humanae, 1965) of the Second Vatican Council—a council whose authority is null and void, being a modernist assembly that produced heretical documents—directly contradicts the teaching of Pius IX, Pius XI, and the entire pre-conciliar magisterium.
By accepting the conciliar framework, The Pillar and its commentators have accepted the very principles that make authentic Catholic patriotism impossible. One cannot simultaneously affirm the “right” of all religions to public expression (the conciliar position) and the obligation of the state to recognize Christ the King (the Catholic position). These are mutually exclusive, and The Pillar has chosen the conciliar error.
As St. Pius X warned in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907), the modernists sought to separate the Church from the state in order to free themselves from the obligation of defending Catholic truth in the public square. The Pillar’s discussion of patriotism, by failing to demand the recognition of Christ the King, serves this modernist agenda even if its authors are unaware of it.
The Duty of Catholic Patriotism: Subjection to Christ the King
True Catholic patriotism, as taught by the pre-conciliar magisterium, consists not in sentimental attachment to one’s country but in working for the ordering of that country according to the laws of Christ the King. Pius XI taught: “Rulers of states therefore not refuse public veneration and obedience to the reigning Christ, but let them fulfill this duty themselves and with their people, if they wish to maintain their authority inviolate and contribute to the increase of their homeland’s happiness.”
This means that authentic Catholic patriotism in the United States would require working for the abolition of the constitutional framework of religious indifferentism and the establishment of the Catholic religion as the religion of the state. It would require the rejection of the “wall of separation” between Church and State as an anti-Catholic innovation. It would require the recognition that the First Amendment, as interpreted to prohibit the establishment of religion, is contrary to the law of Christ the King.
The Pillar’s discussion of patriotism, by failing to articulate these demands, reduces Catholic civic engagement to a harmless sentimentality that poses no threat to the liberal order. This is precisely what the enemies of the Church desire: a Catholicism that is publicly invisible, privately exercised, and socially irrelevant.
The Pillar and the Conciliar Sect’s Captivity to Liberalism
The Pillar operates as a media outlet within the conciliar sect, accepting its framework, its authorities, and its fundamental orientation toward accommodation with the modern world. Its discussion of patriotism reflects this captivity. Rather than challenging the liberal order with the demands of Christ the King, it seeks to find a “Catholic” way to be a good citizen within that order.
This is the essence of the modernist heresy as identified by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907): the attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable, to find a synthesis between the City of God and the City of Man. The Pillar’s patriotism is a patriotism of the City of Man, dressed in Catholic language but devoid of Catholic substance.
As Pius XI warned, “the more the sweetest Name of our Redeemer is omitted with unworthy silence in international gatherings and parliaments, the more loudly it must be confessed and the more urgently the rights of Christ the Lord’s royal dignity and authority must be recognized.” The Pillar’s silence on Christ the King in its discussion of patriotism is precisely the “unworthy silence” that Pius XI condemned.
Conclusion: The Only True Patriotism
The only true patriotism is that which recognizes Christ the King as the sovereign of all nations and works for the ordering of civil society according to His law. Any patriotism that fails to make this demand is not Catholic patriotism but naturalistic nationalism, incompatible with the faith once delivered to the saints.
The Pillar’s discussion of patriotism, however well-intentioned, is fatally compromised by its acceptance of the conciliar framework and its failure to articulate the Church’s traditional social teaching. Until it repudiates the errors of the post-conciliar period and returns to the unchanging doctrine of Quas Primas</i, its voice on matters of civic life will remain that of the conciliar sect: Catholic in name, modernist in substance, and useless for the restoration of the social reign of Christ the King.
As Catholics faithful to the integral tradition, we must reject all forms of patriotism that do not begin and end with the acknowledgment: Tu Rex gloriae, Christe—You are Christ the King of glory. Only in His kingdom can true patriotism exist; outside of it, there is only the chaos of the liberal order and the slow suicide of nations that have forgotten God.
Source:
Bonus: The only standing patriot (pillarcatholic.com)
Date: 20.06.2026