Cardinal Stafford and the Leap-Year Bishop
On February 29, 1976, a 44-year-old James Francis Stafford was consecrated a bishop in Baltimore's primatial cathedral. Fifty years later, as JD Flynn notes in this edition of The Pillar's newsletter, Stafford has technically celebrated only 12 episcopal anniversaries, his consecration date falling on a day that exists just once every four years.
Like Frederick — the slave of duty to the Pirates of Penzance — Cardinal Stafford can count his episcopal "birthdays" only in leap years.
The Gilbert and Sullivan allusion is characteristically Flynn: playful, literate, delivered with a wink. But beneath the whimsy lies a serious portrait of a churchman whose career shadows the arc of American Catholicism itself. Stafford ran Baltimore's Catholic Charities before his consecration, went on to lead the Diocese of Memphis, and in 1986 became Archbishop of Denver. His signature achievement there was bringing World Youth Day to the city.
He is most famous there for bringing World Youth Day to Denver, and with it, the launching of 1,000 apostolic ships — an event which sowed the seeds of vocations and apostolates and religious orders and projects and movements.
Flynn frames Stafford as an architect of the lay-empowerment vision that has defined post-conciliar American Catholicism. The cardinal championed seminary reform, welcomed new ecclesial movements, and pushed a theology of co-responsibility in which families and lay people take up apostolic purpose in their own vocations. Flynn calls him, borrowing from Gilbert and Sullivan once more, "a model for the modern major cardinal."
What gives the portrait its texture, though, is the personal.
People tell me stories about the cardinal sitting in their living rooms — asking them what they think about Scripture, and praying with their children. They tell me about an erudite and well-read man who could talk with anyone, and give them a sense of being important to him.
Flynn discloses that his own children have formed a friendship with the now-elderly cardinal, a detail that reveals both the intimacy of Catholic institutional life in Colorado and the author's willingness to blur the line between journalist and participant. Critics might note that such personal entanglement makes it difficult to assess Stafford's legacy with full critical distance, particularly given the controversies that have attached to various periods of American seminary oversight during Stafford's era.
Colorado's Episcopal Vacuum
A piece of ecclesiastical trivia follows the Stafford tribute. Flynn observes that Colorado, as of the newsletter's publication, is effectively a state without a sitting diocesan bishop. Denver awaits the installation of Bishop James Golka. Colorado Springs is a vacant see after Golka's appointment to Denver. And the Diocese of Pueblo enters a period of transition with Bishop Stephen Berg reaching the mandatory retirement age of 75.
One state, three dioceses, all likely to have new leaders within a year. You don't see that every day.
The observation is characteristically pithy, offered without deeper analysis of what simultaneous vacancies might mean for Colorado's Catholic faithful. It is the kind of insider-baseball detail that rewards The Pillar's core readership while passing over the practical implications of governance gaps.
The News Roundup
The newsletter then pivots to a news digest covering several continents and controversies. At the University of Notre Dame, professor Susan Ostermann withdrew from an appointment as director of the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies after backlash over what Flynn describes as "her pointedly pro-abortion stance." Students who had organized a protest pivoted to a prayer procession at the university's grotto once Ostermann stepped aside.
From Venezuela, Flynn highlights Juan Pablo Guanipa, a figure in the political opposition who spent nine months in prison and credits his Catholic faith with sustaining him. From Germany, Fr. Joshy Pottackal is set to become the country's first non-European Catholic bishop, serving as auxiliary in the Diocese of Mainz. And an interview with Fr. Roberto Regoli, president of the Ratzinger Foundation, explores Pope Benedict XVI's theological legacy, including his expansive understanding of transubstantiation.
In Ratzinger's view, transubstantiation also concerns the lives of all believers and, moreover, of the whole world.
Two stories from the front lines of Catholic governance round out the news. In Brazil, the Archbishop of Maceio declared that any Catholic attending an unauthorized Traditional Latin Mass would incur excommunication for schism, an enforcement of Traditionis custodes (the motu proprio, or papal decree issued on the pope's own initiative, restricting the Extraordinary Form of the Mass) that Flynn calls "previously unseen in contemporary diocesan governance." Meanwhile, Germany's bishops plan to formally request Vatican permission for lay preaching at Mass.
I don't expect the Apostolic See will say yes. On the other hand, at least the Germans are asking permission instead of just doing it. That's gotta count for something, right?
The dry punchline lands, but Flynn then undercuts his own generosity by quoting the synodal resolution's admission that lay preaching is already a "long-standing practice" in German dioceses. The implication is clear: the request for permission is somewhat theatrical when the practice is already entrenched.
Camp Commandments and the Everyman Voice
The newsletter closes with a sharp tonal shift. Flynn pivots from ecclesiastical governance to camping advice, predicting that high gas prices and economic headwinds will make 2026 a good year for National Parks camping rather than exotic vacations. The section opens with light verse and a self-deprecating persona.
I have been a camper for basically all my life — my parents had me sleeping in tents outside of Willie Nelson or James Taylor concerts before the waters of baptism were even dry behind my ears.
Flynn positions himself as a "good enough" camper, the kind whose shortcuts make "lifetime REI-members cringe." He tells a story from his childhood in New Jersey that has achieved local legend status: caught in a downpour during a camping trip on Bulls Island at the Delaware River, young Flynn explained that he had left his raincoat "by a tree."
For some friends and neighbors, this story became an encapsulation of my entire personality. And they weren't completely wrong.
The anecdote is charming and does what Flynn's writing does best: it makes the author human, accessible, the kind of person you might actually meet at the Nisei Lounge dive bar in Chicago where The Pillar is hosting a live show. A counterargument is that these lifestyle digressions, however engaging, can dilute the newsletter's authority on its core beat of Catholic institutional reporting, turning serious ecclesial journalism into a personality-driven brand.
Bottom Line
This newsletter edition showcases both the strengths and the tensions of Flynn's approach at The Pillar. The Stafford portrait is genuinely evocative, drawing a half-century of American Catholic history through the lens of one man's leap-year consecration. The news roundup is efficient and globe-spanning, touching Notre Dame campus politics, Venezuelan political prisoners, German ecclesial firsts, Ratzinger's theological legacy, and two significant canonical controversies in Brazil and Germany. Flynn's editorial voice is distinctive: witty, informed, unafraid to editorialize mid-sentence. The vulnerability lies in the newsletter format itself. Jumping from a cardinal's golden jubilee to excommunication in Brazil to camping tips creates a tonal whiplash that can leave weightier stories under-examined. The personal asides, while endearing, occasionally crowd out the analytical depth that these complex stories deserve. Still, few Catholic media outlets cover this breadth of territory with this level of institutional knowledge, and Flynn's ability to make canon law disputes readable is a genuine editorial achievement.