A Newsletter That Covers Everything — And Means It
Ed Condon's Friday edition of The Pillar opens not with news but with an invitation: a live podcast show at a dive bar near Wrigley Field on the Feast of St. Joseph. It is a characteristically personal launch into a newsletter that will ricochet from parish fish fries in Nebraska to Vatican power plays in the Ivory Coast and the Netherlands, with a substantial analytical essay on Notre Dame buried beneath the fold.
The warm-up is vintage Condon — self-deprecating, affectionate toward his co-host JD Flynn, and laced with the kind of inside-baseball Catholic humor that defines The Pillar's voice. He describes how he tried to torpedo the live show idea by stacking impossible conditions, only to have Flynn agree to every one of them:
"I started going for broke, demanding that we do it only in the oldest, dive-iest, purest baseball boozehall I could find, and only if it was explicitly a Cubs bar near Wrigley — Pope Leo's White Sox allegiance notwithstanding."
The affection Condon holds for the readership is genuine and unguarded. He calls Pillar subscribers "special" without irony, then pivots to something more interesting — the claim that shared identity does not require shared opinion:
"It's not about what we agree on. If you spend half a minute reading the comments sections under our articles you can see we don't all of us agree on anything in particular."
That is a rare admission from any media figure in 2026. Whether The Pillar's comment sections actually reflect ideological diversity or merely a narrow band of intra-Catholic disagreement is a question Condon does not interrogate here.
The Notre Dame Question
The newsletter's center of gravity is the reversal of Susan Ostermann's appointment to lead the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies within Notre Dame's Keough School of Global Affairs. Ostermann, described by Condon as "an outspoken abortion advocate," stepped back from the role after pushback from students, donors, and bishops.
Condon is transparent about his analytical framework for Notre Dame stories. He applies what he calls an informal test of significance:
"Would I consider this news if it happened at a nationally significant Catholic university that doesn't play Division I football, like Georgetown or CUA? The answer is often 'no.'"
This time, Condon says, the answer is yes — and not merely because a pro-choice academic was blocked from a leadership role at a Catholic institution. He argues the real story lies in how the appointment was made and unmade, suggesting it reveals something about shifting power dynamics in American Catholicism. The details, he writes, matter more than the headline:
"It's not just that Ostermann's promotion has been derailed, it's the details that have emerged about how that appointment came to be and then not be that really make this something important."
Condon goes further, claiming the episode illuminates broader currents:
"I'd go so far as to say this tells us something new and pretty damn significant about the fluid dynamics of the American Catholic landscape."
The newsletter, being a Friday roundup rather than a full analysis, stops short of unpacking that claim in detail, directing readers to a separate article. This is a defensible editorial choice but also a frustrating one — the most provocative thesis in the piece is the one Condon declines to develop here.
Clericalism and Canon Law in the Ivory Coast
The second major analytical thread concerns Bishop Gaspard Beby Gneba of the Diocese of Man in the Ivory Coast, who was effectively demoted after telling his flock to report priests living double lives or stealing from the Church. His clergy revolted, and two years later the Vatican transferred him to an auxiliary position elsewhere — with no public explanation.
Condon frames this as a test case for whether the Church takes its own legal framework seriously:
"Is or isn't the Church a coherent society of laws to which its members, and especially leaders, are accountable? Because if not, we should stop cosplaying like it is and rethink what this means for our entire conception of ecclesiastical authority."
The word "cosplaying" does a lot of work in that sentence. Condon is drawing a sharp line between two positions: either canon law means something and should be enforced, or the Church should stop pretending it has a functioning legal system. There is little room for the messy middle ground that most institutional reform actually occupies.
He also makes an important distinction between personal sin and systematic criminal conduct under canon law:
"Some patterns of behavior — like stably living a double life with a secret family — aren't just sinful, they are criminal, constituted as specific delicts by the Code of Canon Law."
A skeptic might note that the Vatican's silence on Bishop Gneba's transfer is itself a data point. Institutions rarely punish whistleblowers for being wrong — they punish them for being disruptive. Whether Gneba's approach was pastorally wise or merely canonically correct is a distinction Condon elides in favor of the stronger rhetorical frame.
The Lighter Side of Lent
Not everything in the newsletter carries existential weight. Jack Figge's reporting on parish fish fries yields a genuinely delightful statistic: St. John the Baptist Parish in Fort Calhoun, Nebraska, draws 1,200 people per night to its fish fry — in a town of 1,100. Condon's coverage of Pope Leo XIV appointing four new auxiliary bishops for Rome is more measured, noting the new pope's cautious approach to rebuilding trust after Francis dismissed six auxiliaries in just over a year. The profile of Heiner Wilmer, the new chairman of the German bishops' conference, and the curious early resignation of the Netherlands nuncio round out a dense week of Catholic news.
Bottom Line
This Friday newsletter is The Pillar at its most characteristic: a blend of personal warmth, hard-nosed institutional reporting, and analytical ambition that occasionally outruns its own word count. The Notre Dame and Ivory Coast stories both point toward the same underlying question — who actually holds power in Catholic institutions, and what happens when that power is challenged. Condon asks the right questions but, by design, saves the full answers for separate articles behind the link. The newsletter format serves as both a showcase and a sales pitch, and Condon is skilled enough at both to make the pitch feel like a gift.