Hey everybody,
This is not exactly a Pillar Post.
See, Ed’s on “holiday” this week, and I’m on vacation next week. So what we plan to do is this: I’ll send a Pillar Post tomorrow, on Wednesday, and Ed will send you one next Wednesday.
Then when we’re both back from vacation, we’ll get back to our regularly scheduled programming.
As to a podcast — I’ll podcast this week with a special guest, and I hope that Ed will do the same next week.
We’ll still be breaking news this week, covering things that matter — and I’ll break down some analysis about what happened at the National Eucharistic Congress, and why I think it could have long-term consequences for the Church in the U.S.
Meanwhile, I got home from the National Eucharistic Congress yesterday. The trip home took a little bit longer than it might have, because of the Crowdstrike outage, but my return journey was nothing compared to the thousands of pilgrims who were stranded in airports with canceled flights and no rental cars.
I’ll have a lot more to say about the National Eucharistic Congress, but for now I’ll mention this: One of the most powerful parts of the Congress for me was the opportunity to meet hundreds of you all. At our Pillar Podcast live show, walking the streets, or in the stadium, hundreds of you stopped me to talk, to ask about some piece of news, or to take a picture together.
And I heard some of you say what the reporting of The Pillar, and the community of The Pillar, actually means to you.
I heard a pastor say The Pillar’s reporting was a “lifeline of sanity” for him. I heard a religious superior say that her community reads The Pillar together in the refectory. I heard several bishops tell me: “Keep going. We need you to be doing what you’re doing.”
I heard dozens of you say that you want to know what’s happening in the Church, and you want to see ecclesial reform and renewal, but you want the reporting without bombastic tribalism or lunatic partisanship.
I came away affirmed in the mission of The Pillar, and committed to doubling down on our investigative and reporting efforts, for the sake of the Church’s holiness. This is our apostolate, and all of you, along with the Lord in the Eucharist, encouraged us to do it all the better.
Here’s one thing: Last month, there were 3.5 million visits to pillarcatholic.com, near as we can figure. Hundreds of thousands read our newsletters, and tens of thousands get them in their inbox each week.
But just 14.5% of the people signed up for The Pillar are paying subscribers. That’s ok, of course — we’re really grateful for that 14.5%, and we know that not everyone who wants to pay can do so.
Still, I’d like you to imagine how much we could do for the Church together if that were 16%. Or 18%. Or 20%.
This week, a religious sister told me that she prays in gratitude every day for Pillar subscribers, who keep us going, and she said, keep her community informed. I pray in gratitude for that too. But I know we could do a lot more. So if you’re reading, and you can do it, maybe today’s the day:
Meanwhile, look tomorrow for The Tuesday Pillar Post on Wednesday. Or the Friday Pillar Post on Wednesday. Or both, I suppose.
And meanwhile, at the National Eucharistic Congress, I learned from a friend that there’s something existing in the world called professional pillow fights. So now you can learn that too:
Yours in Christ,
JD Flynn
editor-in-chief
The Pillar
