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Recruiting for Priesthood and the Military A parish in Montgomery County saluted veterans at its liturgy on Sunday, November 11th. A guest choir sang patriotic hymns: “My Country ’Tis of Thee,” “America the Beautiful,” and “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory.” For me the highlight was a hymn from “Finlandia:”
After the Communion of Mass the veterans from the wars came to the front for an appropriate prayer and blessing. But then the choir sang the five stirring anthems of the various armed services: “Anchors Away,” “From the Halls of Montezuma,” “Let those Caissons go rolling along,” and the others. Not a dry eye, except mine. Not here and now, I thought. The celebrant-homilist was a young diocesan priest and chaplain who arrived from his duty-station on the Jersey shore, not in somber black clericals, but in a Naval officer’s spiffy summer-whites. Tall and slender, attractive, athletic, his presence [and words] presented a symbol of our present church-state symbiosis. The priest mentioned WW1 as the war to end all wars without further comment. He quoted a pope only once in saying that wearing the military uniform of one’s country was honorable, and he quoted Douglas MacArthur: “no one hates war more than the soldier.” He prayed for peace generally but did not get specific about the war in Iraq, let alone Viet Nam. He told us about his career, priestly and military. Recruiters came to the great St. Charles Seminary and aroused his interest in becoming a military chaplain. On summer vacations he went for training at naval bases in San Diego and Florida. After ordination he spent five years in a parish in Northeast Philadelphia, where, among his other duties, he enjoyed playing basketball with the teen-agers. He shipped out on an aircraft carrier and made ports in Hawaii and in the Far East. After his tour of sea duty, he requested his present shore-station by the beach in South Jersey, close to his family’s summer place. Outwardly. the priest-chaplain was weaving words of thanks for the veterans into the pattern of patriotic songs, peace prayers and blessings. I felt that some aspects of the service glorified militarism. When I told Father, my dissent was dismissed. He said we disagreed. I suspect young fellows could easily take this message: “I am a priest and a naval officer. My success story began in seminary, was culminated in ordination to the priesthood, and now as chaplain I travel to exotic destinations on ships that sail the seas; wouldn’t you like to join up?” My concern is that the chaplain and other conservative priests and prelates have blinkers which cause them to try to paper over the bloodbath that is the “Baghdad Battle for Big Oil.” Specifically, when a priest unashamedly wears the uniform of the military during an immoral war; when one’s homilies in an election year narrow the “pro-life” option to a few “nonnegotiable” issues, when in a photo-op one shakes hands with the presidential candidate of the war-party, then one has succumbed to subtle pressures to soft-peddle the prophetic charism. I am wondering whether Blessed Franz Jaggerstatter, who walked on the Nazi swastika as he left for a prison cell, would wince at Sunday’s liturgy? Wondering . . . Frank McGinty |