Sunday Morning Scene: ‘Common Good’ Conservatism’s Catholic Roots

 

‘Common Good’ Conservatism’s Catholic Roots

Sunday Morning Scene. Religion in the military.

The Department of Defense scaled back its list of recognized religions.   There were 211, now there are 31.  Here is the full list:

Agnostic (AN)

Baha'i faith (BH)

Buddhism (BU)

Christian - Assemblies of God (AG)

Christian - Baptist (BA)

Christian - Brethren (BR)

Christian - Catholic (CA)

Christian - Church of Christ (CC)

Christian - Church of God (CG)

Christian - Church of the Nazarene (CN)

Christian - Episcopal/Anglican (EA)

Christian - Evangelical (EV)

Christian - Jehovah's Witnesses (JW)

Christian - Lutheran (LU)

Christian - Methodist (ME)

Christian - Non Denominational (ND)

Christian - Orthodox (OX)

Christian - Other (CO)

Christian - Pentecostal (PE)

Christian - Presbyterian (PR)

Christian - Quaker (QU)

Christian - Reformed (RE)

Christian - Scientist (SC)

Christian - Seventh Day Adventist (SA)

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (CJ)

Hindu (HI)

Islam (Muslim) (IS)

Judaism (Jewish) (JU)

No Religion (NR)

Other Religions (OR)

Sikh (SI)

One of the things that I find discouraging to do is to give any credit to Hegseth's Department of Defense, but every now and then he's right.  Frankly, his view that too much social experimentation, or "woke" policies as the far right would have it, had been going on inside the military was correct.  Transgenderism and the the like had no place in the military.

Acting Chief Army Chaplain Maj. Gen. William Green Jr., who is serving until his successor is appointed.  He's a Baptist minister.  When I was a National Guardsmen, the 115th FA Bde., the Chaplain was a Baptist minister from Utah.  He was a nice guy, but the troops had little interaction with him.

And frankly the huge number of religions that the DoD recognized was a problem.

The Air Force's Chaplain Corps also serves the Space Force.

One thing I'd thought that Hegseth would do, and which I wish he would do, is to remove women from combat roles.  To some degree it looks like he's creeping up on that, but if that's the case, he ought to realize that after January 2027 he's going to be much less capable of doing anything.

The problem Hegseth interjects, however, is that like the Trumpian far right in general is that he combines some concerns over legitimate problems, including legitimate social problems, with wackiness, which makes it really hard to give him credit on anything.  In terms of religions, Hegseth is festooned with Crusader related tattoos which would be an insult to Crusaders, given his own beliefs, and fits into the theologically unsupportable hardcore millenialist Calvinist camp.

Maj. Gen. Trent C. Davis, Chief Chaplain of the U.S. Air Force.  He is also a Baptist.

Anyhow, this probably made sense, in the abstract.

And this is a far more complicated story than people might imagine.

The U.S. Army has had chaplains since July 29, 1775, sort of, as there were religious that served on a regimental level at that time.  Religious diversity existed in the colonies that early, but nowhere near to the extent it does not.  An official Army chaplain did not exist until  Reverend John Hurt of Virginia (who had served as Chaplain of the 6th Virginia Regiment during the American Revolution) was appointed to the position of Chaplain of the Continental Army on 4 March 1791, which even for the Revolution is sort of late in the day.

It wasn't until the Mexican War that there were Catholic Chaplains in the Army, the influx of German and Irish immigrants, and the bigoted attitudes of the Southern officer class making it a necessity.  The Mexican War remains the most unpopular war that Americans ever fought, something even some professional soldiers acknowledged, and the desertion rate in general was huge.  The desertion rate of Catholic Irish and German troops was particularly problematic.  So, during that war, Catholic Chaplains came into the service in response to the government recognizing the problem.  It's sometimes noted that the Mexican War served as a training ground for the Civil War, and in that context it certainly did, as  huge numbers of Catholic troops served in the Civil War, with most of them serving the Union.  Some senior officers by that time, such as Sheridan and McClellan, were Catholic.

The service did not start issuing "dog tags" until 1906, and that was due to the concern of Army Chaplain Charles C. Pierce, who who was in charge of the Army Morgue and Office of Identification in the Philippines.  To put this in context 40% of the Union dead from the Civil War remained unidentified after the war.  Their bodies were never identified.   The early dog tags did not identify religion, but late Great War ones did, with that being indicated by a single initial, P, C, or H, for Protestant, Catholic, and Hebrew, the latter being the term used to identify Jewish soldiers.  After the war, with a return to a small military, the practice was discontinued, but it was revived in 1941.

By the Vietnam War the practice had changed to allow troops to choose what would be stamped on their dog tags.  This is the type we had in the 1980s, and in my case it was stamped "Catholic".  Apparently this is the system that's still used.  

Of course dog tags are one thing and ministering to troops another.  I honestly have no idea how the protestant chaplains minister to protestant troops  There are so many varieties of Protestantism it must be difficult.  The task faced by Catholic, Jewish and Muslim must accordingly be easier in that regard.

Anyhow, with the current diversity of the US, this must be a huge task.  Cutting the categories down to sizes makes sense, but its also guaranteed to upset people.

The Navy's Chaplain Corps also served the Marine Corps and the Coast Guard.

One group it's upset is the Latter Day Saints, as they aren't listed as Christians, which they aren't.  Jehovah's Witnesses, however, are listed as Christians on this list, and they are not either.  Both religions recognize that Christ existed, but their theologies are radically different from Christians.  Mormon theology is really had to nail down, and it moves, but generally the LDS do not believe Jesus is the co-eternal God of the Holy Trinity, but rather view Him as an exalted, separate being who is the literal spirit brother of all humanity and Satan.  Jehovah Witnesses believe that Jesus is the most exalted of God's created beings.  Neither religion, therefore, hold what Christians do, as defined by the Nicene Creed:

I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,

the Only Begotten Son of God,

born of the Father before all ages.

God from God, Light from Light,

true God from true God,

begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;

through him all things were made.

For us men and for our salvation

he came down from heaven,

and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,

and became man.

In other words, they don't believe in one eternal God with three personalities, which have always existed.

At least traditionally they haven't believed that.  As noted, Mormon theology moves and frankly isn't well defined.

Nonetheless, this has upset the LDS, which regards itself as Christian.  It may regard itself as such, and surely does given its name, but it isn't.

That it upsets them and is a big deal to them makes sense, however, as its a direct rejection of their religious claims.  So in essence the Pentagon has made a statement rejecting their theology, and it pretty much had to, which shows the danger of recognizing even 31 faiths.  But you also have to recognize some distinctions as well.  Protestants and Catholics are different.  The LDS is extremely different.  

Rear Adm. Gregory N. Todd, Chief Navy Chaplain.  He is a Missouri Synod Lutheran.

A peculiarity of this we'd note is that this would only matter in practical terms if you have troops fitting these categories.  Jehovah's Witnesses are precluded from serving under their religion, so not only is the identification of them as Christians incorrect, but even having that category for the service may be fairly pointless.  

There are about 36,000 Mormons in the military, which is surprisingly slightly lower than the number of Orthodox, which is about 39,000.  There are only 15,000 active duty members of the service who are Jewish.

Cpt. Jennifer Bowden, USN, Chief Chaplain for the Coast Guard.  She's an Elder in the United Methodist Church.

So, I guess, is there a point to this discussion?

I suppose, with part of it just being to note what the overall story is.  The US is very diverse and that reflects in the military, but not to the extent that a person might think.  20% of servicemembers are Catholic which mirrors our percentage of the American population.  In Korea, to attend Easter Mass, a colleague of mine and I went to an on base chapel, but the Priest was Australian and not in the Army.  Probably a fairly typical scenario.  In contrast, my father was pretty good friends with a Catholic Chaplain in the Air Force when he was stationed overseas.  

70% of servicemembers overall are Protestant, but of course, as noted Protestantism is very diverse.  That makes the 20% of the service that's Catholic a pretty big block.

The other part of this story is, I guess, that you are going to upset people with a list like this.  The service can't possibly list every single Protestant faith and Protestants themselves notoriously disregard their own denominations.  Catholics, Orthodox, Jews, and Muslims, don't.  That's a real reason some discretion is needed.  A Catholic needing last rights needs it from a Catholic or Orthodox Priest, who are the only ones who can deliver that.  The LDS are their own thing as well, and frankly, except they obviously feel uncomfortable that, they ought to accept it.

But is there more to this?

(To Be Continued).

Pope Leo and the Just War Theory.

To all of this, the media and digital dimensions are adding new and decisive elements. Communication networks, fragmented information environments and algorithms that reward conflict can magnify polarization and resentment, increase propaganda and make shared discernment more difficult. Thus, war is not only fought, but also culturally conditioned through simplistic narratives, a friend-or-foe mentality, disinformation and fear. When historical memory fades and the ethical principles that protect civilians and the most vulnerable are weakened, it becomes easier to justify violence as necessary, inevitable or even “sanitized.” It is in this context that humanity is slipping into a violent culture of power, where peace no longer appears as a responsibility to be taken on, but as a fragile interval between conflicts. Today, more than ever, without prejudice to the right to self-defense in the strictest sense, it is important to reaffirm that the “just war” theory, which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated. [182] Humanity possesses far more effective and capable tools for promoting human life and resolving conflicts, such as dialogue, diplomacy and forgiveness. The use of force, violence and weapons reflects a relational poverty that always has disastrous consequences for civilian populations.

Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas.

When first released, almost all of the attention given to Magnifica Humanitas was on his discussion of Artificial Intelligence, but then somebody noticed is comments on the Just War Theory, and now people are freaking out.  Conservative Catholic pundits have already come out with the "Pope is wrong" commentary, and even an Anglican journal came out with an article to the same effect.

He isn't wrong.

And this isn't really new.

First of all, the Just War Theory was always that, a theory.  It's not doctrine, and in some quarters its never been accepted.  Moreover, since World War Two the Church has really made significant modifications to what can be considered a "just war".  

So, what did Pope Leo really say here.

First, what's the Just War Theory hold?

Well, let's look at the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It states:

According to CCC 2309, the following conditions must be met in order for war to be just:

(1) The damage inflicted by the aggressor must be lasting, grave, and certain.

(2) All other means of putting an end to it must have shown to be impractical or ineffective.

(3) There must be serious prospects of success.

(4) The use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated (the principle of proportionality).

So, presently, those are the criteria set out in the Catechism.  Will this be changed?  I suspect it will be modified.  And frankly, based on prior statements by the last three Popes, the Catechism does not support the view that the Pontiffs have  been stating.  The thing that they've repeatedly stated is that war is only justifiable for defensive purposes.  Hence the comment; "Today, more than ever, without prejudice to the right to self-defense in the strictest sense, it is important to reaffirm that the “just war” theory, which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated."

So, with this in mind, what we might suppose (although I'm treading on dangerous grounds here as I'm not a theologian) is that the Church would modify the material set out above to read:

A country may legitimately act in self defense when:

(1) The damage inflicted by an attacking aggressor must be lasting, grave, and certain.

(2) All other means of putting an end to it must have shown to be impractical or ineffective.

(3) There must be serious prospects of success.

(4) The use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated (the principle of proportionality).

Is that a big change in what the Popes have been saying?  Not really.

But does it effect some sort of a change?  Well, yes.  A clarifying one, in my view.

What I think the Pope's statement makes clear that the moral laxity in interpreting the Just War theory is not justified.  It never has been, but all too often those citing it go on to hold that whatever war they're speaking of is kind of sort of justified by the theory.  That should not have been the case, and it needs to come to an end.  

It's needed to come to an end for a long time.

There's no way that, for example, the US and Israeli war upon Iran is a just war.  No way.  At least from the U.S. prospective, it's an illegal war as it defies the requirements of the U.S. Constitution for Congress to declare war, making it immoral to a certain extent from the onset.  But the criteria required for a just war even as the CCC states it cannot be met.  The first criteria alone, that Iran was inflicting damage upon the United States in a way that is lasting, grave, and certain, was never met.  The repeated baloney that "they've been attacking us for 47 years" didn't come close to meeting this criteria.  Yes, Iran is a sponsor of terrorism.  Terrorism, however, is an act of the weak and is largely ineffectual.  Launching a massive offensive against Iran was not justified by the fact that Iran acts immorally. 

Indeed, on that score, the war does not meet, in my view, the requirements of the forth criteria.  And it never met the requirements of the second criteria either.

A war launched to change the regime, which was an earlier excuse for the war, was certainly not justified.

And it turns out that the third criteria cannot be met either.  The war has actually made the regime more hard line. The only chance for success would require a massive ground invasion of the country, which is certainly not proportional to the hoped for outcome.

What Pope Leo has clarified is something that other Popes have said, to some degree, and which follows the history of the discussion on the death penalty. Pope St. John Paul the Great made statements to the effect that the death penalty could not be justified in the modern world. The following two Popes amplified that.  Catholic conservatives have still refused to accept that, but that's completely correct.  In the modern world, the criteria which would allow for the imposition of the death penalty simply to not exist.

And with Pope Leo's statements, it seems fairly clear that the criteria for launching an offensive war never exist either.  That's been somewhat presumed all the way back to the 1940s, but now its clear.

And, it should also be clear, this is not a mere academic discussion.

War is killing people and breaking things. There's no two ways about it.  Killing people intentionally is gravely evil, except in self defense.  Supporting killing people except in self defense is likewise gravely illegal.  The same Catholic beliefs that hold that murder is immoral, that abortion is immoral, lead directly to war and the death penalty being immoral.  You cannot, no matter how much you might want to stretch it, supporting abortion if you are a Catholic, and frankly at this point, you cannot support immoral wars.

It was Pope St. John Paul, I think, who instructed that Catholic lawyers should not represent people in divorces.  Judges can still preside over them however.  Which brings us to this next point.

Catholic politicians can clearly not support immoral wars.  When people like Chuck Gray and Megan Degenfelder come around seeking votes, as they are Catholic, their position on this war should be asked of.  If they support it, as Trump supports it, they're willing to condemn their souls to Hell for their ambitions, or at least risk that.  Those Catholics in the Trump administration supporting the war, and we don't really know who they are (we know that Vance wasn't in support of it) are doing the same, to a larger degree.  The military raid on Venezuela that occurred earlier likewise presents the same problem.  Any invasion of Cuba, which it seems likely we will do, poses the same situation.

But beyond that, can Catholic servicemen morally serve in these wars?

I'm sure opinions will vary, but I don't think they can.

And that is a real change.  And given that war involves death, that's a change for the good.

Related threads:

Just War 101: Catholic Teaching for a Dangerous Moment

Supporting Immorality in War is Immoral.

Archdiocese for the Military Services. Not a Just War.

Churches of the West: Wyoming’s Mountain Monks: Simple Men Of Faith Go High-Tech To Build A Gothic Monastery

Churches of the West: Wyoming’s Mountain Monks: Simple Men Of Faith Go H...:   Wyoming’s Mountain Monks: Simple Men Of Faith Go High-Tech To Build A Gothic Monastery

Sunday, May 24, 2026

Wyoming’s Mountain Monks: Simple Men Of Faith Go High-Tech To Build A Gothic Monastery

 

Wyoming’s Mountain Monks: Simple Men Of Faith Go High-Tech To Build A Gothic Monastery

Ouled Nail woman, Algeria, c. 1905. What's the significance of the cross tattoos?

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 135th Edition. Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus

I've been saying for awhile, and statements like this really demonstrate it:

It looks like President Trump has a better understanding of what the Bible teaches than the Pope.

Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of the 14,000-member First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas on Fox News.

That comment was stupid.  But then, he's called Catholicism a cult.

The Catholic Church is an Apostolic Church.  It was founded by Christ.  John Smyth, an Englishman, founded the Baptists in 1609.  

Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus is a Catholic doctrine. There is no salvation outside the Church.  None the less, the Church holds that those who did not come to Christ innocently, or those who did not come to the Church innocently, can be saved, which operates again through the Church.  You can't be held responsible for what you innocently didn't know.

But what about here?

We're in the death throws of the reformation.  Things Smyth could get away with believing in 1609 there's no excuse to believe now, other than invincible ignorance.

Being a pastor of a 14,000 member church puts a pretty heavy burden on you and your soul for remaining ignorant.

Smyth is also a Fox News contributor, which really figures.  

As an irony here, although one he will not be capable, right now, of appreciating, Smyth has gone after Mormons, Jews, and Muslims as well.  In normal times, he would not have a national television audience.  He would have a local Dallas one as Texas is part of the former Confederacy and the Baptist rose in the wake of the Southern defeat in 1865, replacing the Episcopal Church in the South as the dominant religion culturally.  Nationally, however, picking on Jews, Muslims, Catholics and Mormons would get you booted off of television.

Religious aspects of this aside, this brings up a political one I've warned about here repeatedly.

Catholics voting for MAGA candidates are voting for a group that not only doesn't regard the Church highly, they don't believe it's a Christian religion at all.  People like Lyin' Chuck Gray, Reid Rasner and Megan Degenfelder, who are Catholics who run as MAGA are making a political bargain that will cause them, as it seems to have already for Lyin' Chuck to decide between their faiths, and their political fortunes.  Degenfelder has signs up all over which say "Endorsed by President Trump".

They should say "Endorsed by Blasphemous Donald Trump".

And this isn't merely esoteric.  We're in the same position now that Catholic Germans were in the 1932 German election (and the Catholics in fact went for Hitler much less than German protestants did).  There's really going to be no good "um, well, the other guy . . . " excuse here.  The far right Evangelical edge of the Trump coalition isn't even pretending not to hate Catholics much anymore.

And what about Mormons?  

Mormons include a heavy MAGA contingent, although the only really devout Mormons I know here locally right now are heavy duty Never Trumpers, and openly so.  But then you have guys like Deseret Mike Lee who come pretty close to viewing Trump positively in some sort of creepy religious terms.  Deep in the Jello Belt it's always been the case that there was a sort of ignorant conservatism in some quarters, and in the last 16 years, in spite of guys like Mitt Romney, it's really come out.

Trump and Islam is simply laughable as a joke.  In the last election Trump drew a fair amount of Islamic support because Muslims were so mad about Joe Biden's support of Israel.  Well, they got what the should have expected. The only person Trump loves more than Putin (and of course Trump) is Benjamin  Netanyahu and as a result we've supported genocide in Gaza, a war in Lebanon and we helped Israel attack Iran and we can't get out of it.  I suspect that most Muslims are voting for the Democrats next go around, just like most Hispanics will be (and in both instances, this really gives the Democrats a chance to evolve away from their sea of blood positions).

And this sort of thing should even be a revelation for Jews of all stripes, although I think they're more awake to what MAGA is than most.  The strong Trump support for Netanyahu comes in part because Netanyahu is good at playing Trump, much like Putin is.  But it also comes from people like Hegseth or Huckabee, who have a radical Protestant view of Israel and want to bring about the Second Coming of Christ basically by force, which they see current events as an opportunity in which to do so.  Put another way, do you really want to get in the car with somebody who wants to drive you to a giant gun fight?

Donald Trump, of course, is sort of beyond all of this.  Trump isn't any sort of serious Christian and we don't really know if he has any religious beliefs at all.  Most of his life has been spent chasing cash through real estate development and his hobbies have been golf and chasing tail.  Christians are just a convenient vehicle for him.  If the Sultan of Oman offered him a bigger better airplane tomorrow if he'd convert to Islam, and remind him that Muslims can have more than one wife, it wouldn't surprise me a bit if he signed on.  His personal conduct actually squares better with Islam than Christianity, which is after all a religion focused on the poor and duty.

In the end, all of this is going to fall apart.

Christians who aligned with Trump, just like Muslims and Mormons who did, are going to have to pay the cost.  It'll be different for each.  For Muslims, well their fellows are playing through blood right now.  Jews will pay by the backlash that's already started.  

For Christians, it'll be different, depending upon where their allegiance lay.  For the ignorant members of the American Civil Religion, and for the hardcore Evangelical right, this will be the beginning of an end of an era that started in April 1865, when the South fell and the Evangelical far right stepped into its own.  For the Protestant world in general, this will accelerate the death of the Reformation.

For the Catholic and Orthodox Christians who supported Trump, how could you be so blind?

Nonetheless, this will be a good thing for the Catholic and Orthodox.  A delusion that started in 1960 that you could be fully American and fully Catholic, or Orthodox, has ended.  National Conservatism will end with it.  

And that will be a good thing.

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 134th Edition. Paying the cost of failed Reconstruction.

Labels: 1860s, 1960s, 2020s, It was because of the Civil War, Politics, Racism, Reconstruction, Slavery, The Lost Cause, The Second Trump Administration, You heard it here first, Zeitgeist

Churches of the West: What happened to St. Anthony's Alter Rail (and others) and where is it (and they) today?

Churches of the West: What happened to St. Anthony's Alter Rail (and oth...: I want the alter rail from St. Anthony's Church in Casper Wyoming put back in. I'm not part of any movement, or organization, or any...

What happened to St. Anthony's Alter Rail (and others) and where is it (and they) today?

I want the alter rail from St. Anthony's Church in Casper Wyoming put back in.

I'm not part of any movement, or organization, or anything.  I'm just a parishioner, albeit one who normally goes to Our Lady of Fatima, who remembers it.

And, frankly, the fact that the beautiful marble alter rail came out for no real reason angers me.

I have an older post on this topic here:

Churches of the West: Stop! Don't change that Church!: A theme, if not always an obvious one, of this blog is architecture. And  nothing does more violence to traditional, serviceable, and b...

Here's part of it:

Stop! Don't change that Church!

A theme, if not always an obvious one, of this blog is architecture.

And  nothing does more violence to traditional, serviceable, and beautiful architecture, than "updating" it for any reason.

Just don't.

A case in point.

The photograph above, unfortunately not entirely in focus and in black and white, dates from November 1958.  It depicts St. Anthony's of Padua Church in Casper Wyoming on the occasion of my parents wedding.

Now, St. Anthony's remains a beautiful church today, but if we had a picture of the interior (which I don't from this angle) and if we had this picture in sharper focus (which it isn't) and in color (which it is not), we'd notice some changes right away.

And they aren't good ones.

The altarpiece and the altar are all still there.  The cross painted on the wall behind the altarpiece is also still there.  But many other things have changed.

Most obvious, the beautiful marble altar rail in this photograph, a gift of the Schulte family when the church was built, is gone.  I was told that a part of it can be found now in a local restaurant, which I hope is not true.  If it is true, I've never seen it, so it must be some place I don't go to.  It's not clear here, but the gate for the altar rail was marble with heavy brass hinges.  A true work of art in every sense.

The heavy brass lanterns hanging from the ceiling are also gone.

What appears to be a marble ambo is gone as well, replaced by a very nice wooden (walnut?) one.

The statute of St. Patrick moved across town to St. Patrick's, which sort of makes sense. The funds to build St. Patrick's came from St. Anthony's donors, many of whom were Irish, to that we'd ultimately send the statute of the Patron Saint of Ireland over there, which we did only fairly recently, does square with the general them there.. The statute of St. Anthony has been moved to a different spot, but it looks good where it is.

I'm not certain what sort of floor covering we're looking at here, probably carpet, and of course we have new carpet.  But what would strike anyone looking at this photo about what is next to the carpet, the pews, is that the pews are now cantered to face towards the center of the alter.

Okay, what's up with all of that, and was it an improvement?

Well, I suppose that's in the eye of the beholder, as all such things are, but in my view, the answer is a very distinct "no".

It's funny how these things work.  I can remember all of the features depicted here, including the altar rail, even though I was very young when at least that feature came out.  But, at the time, I don't think I thought much about it, if I thought about it all.  I don't remember the Mass being in Latin at all, although when I was very, very young, it must have been.  Anyhow, while these things didn't bother me at the time, or the one change that I recall from when I was a bit older, the cantering of the pews, didn't bother me much, now they do.

That may be because I now have a greater appreciation for history and tradition than I did when I was just a boy, although I had a sense of that at the time.

The cocked angle of the pews, remnants of a decision made by a Priest in the 1970s or perhaps early 80s,  has been something I've never liked, even if I understand the intent behind it.  Not visible in this photograph, a row of pews that were in the middle of the church were taken out to facilitate twice as many Communion servers.  It's awkward and always has been and should not have been done.  Indeed, as this was the only Catholic Church in town with it was built, it was probably jam packed nearly every Mass and they seemed to manage to get by just fine. For that matter, I've been in plenty of packed Catholic churches where everyone came up to the front of the church and it always worked just fine as well.  Having said that, changing the angle of the pews didn't do a great disservice to the church even if it didn't really help it any.

Another matter, however, is the altar rail.

Now altar rails turn out to be a surprisingly hot button item to people not familiar with them.

All Latin Rite Catholic Churches and Anglican Churches had altar rails. Chances are very high that other churches close in form to the Catholic Church also had them, I just don't know. Their purposes was to provide a place for communicants to kneel when receiving communion.  Prior to Vatican II (1962 to 1965) all Latin Catholic in modern times received communion on the tongue.  Communicants would kneel at the altar rail and receive communion.

You'd think that finding a public domain photograph of communicants receiving communion at an altar rail would b easy, but it isn't.  This almost illustrates it in a better fashion, however.  British solders lined up, as if there is an altar rail, and receiving communion in teh field in North Africa.  Off hand, I suspect that this is an Anglican service.

Now, before we get too far down this road it should be noted that people can get really up in arms about this in all sorts of ways and some traditionalist will insist that communion can only properly be received kneeling and on the tongue.  This doesn't seem to be true and certainly wasn't universally the case.  Indeed, originally, the very first Christians, received communion in the hand and you can find very early writings that effect.  However, traditionalist will hotly dispute what those writings and the other evidence actually means. Given as I'm not getting into that debate, I'm not going there and that isn't the point of this entry.

What is the point is that altar rails were an integral part of the design of churches for an extremely long time. Take anything out of a well designed building and you risk subtracting from its design. That's exactly what I think occurred here.

Which isn't to say that I feel that St. Anthony's is a bad looking Church now, far from it. It's still a beautiful church. But it was more beautiful before the marble altar rail was taken out.

Indeed, the problem with making alterations to these well designed structures is that any time that this is done it risks giving into a temporary view in favor of a more traditional element that was integral in the design of the structure while doing damage to its appearance.  All Catholic churches up until the id 1960s were designed to have altar rails.  Taking them out may have served what was, and perhaps is, the view of the day in regards to worship, but it also means that a major feature of the interior of the building, to which careful consideration had been given, was now missing.

And it turns out that, contrary to widely held belief, they did not have to be removed.

Most people believe that the altar rails were taken out as it was somehow required post Vatican II.  It wasn't.  Rather, for whatever reason changes in the Mass now allowed them to be.  They didn't have to be.  Theoretically it was apparently up to individual Pastors on whether they thought an altar rail should be removed, but given as in Wyoming they are nearly all missing, it might have been the case that the decision to remove them was made at the Diocesan level.  The motivating thought here was that the altar rail served to act as a sort of barrier to connection between the people and the Offering of the Mass, and those who supported altar rail removal often felt fairly strongly about that (as we'll see below).  This was, I think, part of an overall change in the Mass at that time, when it went from Latin to the local vernacular, as the Celebrant had faced Ad Oreintum while offering the Mass.  That is, the Priest faced his altar, as a rule, with his back to the Congregation.  

Now all of this gets into some fairly complicated symbolic matters.  There's some truth to the view held by those who argued for the new position and removing the altar rails, in at he "we're all one together sense". There a counter point, however, that maybe the Ad Oreintum orientation actually served that better, as the Priest was facing the same direction for significant portions of the Mass that the parishioners were.   That is, by way of a poor example, if somebody faced you in a large group they're more likely to have some elevated authority over you than if somebody has their back to you, in which case they can be argued to be working with you.  Interestingly in recent years there's been a slow return in some areas to the Ad Oreintum orientation, particularly following Cardinal Sarah's suggestion that this was a better form. The Cardinal occupies a high position at the Vatican and therefore his views cannot be easily discounted.  As has been noted in regards to this there's actually never been an official position on which orientation is better, and in some ancient and modern churches the Ad Orientum position is actually impossible.

In any event, what that did was in part to remove an item that was closely connected to the church and hence the parish and the parishioners.  In this case, the altar rail itself had been a gift from a family early in the parish's history.  In Catholic parishes the pastor is usually there for about seven years and bishops can be in office for long or short periods. However, as the parishioners are often there for decades, that means the traditional in which they participated was removed by individuals who were there on a more temporary basis.  It was certainly "legal", if you will, but it might not have been well advised.

The same is true of most, but not all, of the interior changes to the church. A person can debate the aesthetics of the heavy brass lighting, but the church was built with it in mind and the features that once decorated where it attached to the building remain there to this day.  The removal of one confessional, the relocation, in an awkward fashion, of a place for "music ministers" to stand that resulted, and all of that, were done in a heartfelt fashion, but often to the ascetic detriment of the church which was not built with remodels in mind.

This touches, moreover, on the larger topic of church architecture itself, which as been addressed in another one of our rare commentary threads here.  These older churches are better looking as the architecture and design that came in during the 1970s was not as good as earlier architecture, and according to some focused more on the congregation than on the Divine.  This blog was at one time going to avoid all such churches in general, but as time has gone on its put up posts of quite a few.  Many of these churches are just not good looking. By the same token, many alterations to older churches are not good looking either.

As I noted when I started off, a lot of this stuff did not bother me when I was a child and experiencing it, but it does now.  Indeed, the removal of the altar rail in this church frankly makes me mad when I think of it.  I wish it could go back in.  It won't, of course, but the whole thing upsets me.  I'm not alone, I think, on this sort of thinking and I think it reflects a generational befuddlement with the generations immediately preceding us which seems to have had, in many instances, low respect for tradition in general.  In civil society, in terms of structures, this is probably why we now see all sorts of effort to restore the appearance of old buildings whose owners in the 50s, 60s, and 70s didn't give a second thought about making them ugly through renovation. A prime example of that is the Wyoming National Bank building in Casper Wyoming which was made to look hideous by the additional of a weird steel grating in the 1950s to its exterior which was supposed to make it look modern.  It mostly served to house pigeons and was removed in the 2000s when the building was redone and converted to apartments.

Now, not every one feels this way, I should note.  Particularly in regards to churches.  When I posted this same photograph on Facebook, a friend of mine with a few years on me posted this reply (I hadn't commented on the altar rails in my original post):

So happy that the railings have come down and the hats came off! The church is still so beautiful.

I agree that the church remains beautiful, and I agree that the women wearing head coverings is a tradition that I don't miss, but I don't feel that way about the altar rail at all.

I suspect my friends comment goes to a "spirit of Vatican II" feeling that she's old enough to have experienced and which I not only am not, but which I don't really share enthusiasm for.  It's important to note that Vatican II and "the spirit of Vatican II" are not the same thing.  "The spirit" thing was a zeitgeist of the times which took a decidedly more liberal and less traditional view of things, no doubt an "open the windows and doors and let some fresh air in". Some of that was likely needed but as is often the case with people who are in a "let in the fresh air" movement the realization that cold winds high winds can come in through the same windows and doors and do damage is rarely appreciated. 

And its all too easy when traditions which are simply traditions are tossed to begin to toss out with them things that are more than tradition.  I'm not saying that occurred here with altar rails but I will be frankly that the 1970s saw a lot of innovations, some of them very local poorly thought out that were, in some cases, quite problematic. The generation that thought removing the altar rails was a good idea proved willing to entertain a lot of things in this area that turned out to be big problems for everyone else.

Part of that is because traditions are anchors in a way; moorings to the the past.  People of a "fresh air" bent will claim that a person shouldn't be bound by the past. That's true, but tradition is also in some cases the vote, or the expression of experience, of the dead and should not be lightly discounted.  Not only does casting out traditions tend to sever anchors, but all too often the severing simply puts people adrift in seas that they're not well prepared to handle. At its worst, the severing of traditions is a rejection of the long and carefully thought out in favor of the temporarily current and the poorly thought out.

Which is why, for many people of the post Vatican II generation the "Spirit of Vatican II" generation, when moored in their own changes, can seem now old fashioned.  Ironically younger generations have been busy for some time "reforming the reform", which means in the mainstream keeping the reforms that proved worthwhile and reversing those that did not.  Tradition has, in some instances, come back in the opened door after having been swept out it, but with a younger generation.

All of which is well off point on what this thread started out being about.  And I'm not going to start a "restore the altar rail" movement, locally or on the internet.  But I feel it was a shame that it was taken out, and to the extent that alterations that should not have taken place for ascetic reasons in regards to older structures can be repaired, they ought to be.

Okay, why am I reviving that post?

It's because I want the alter rail back.

Contrary to widespread popular belief, there were never any Vatican II directive that alter rails be removed.  It was a "spirit of Vatican II" type of thing.

Alter rails weren't in the very first churches, as they were houses.  They evolved over a period of time.  They came to demarcate three distinct worship spaces, the nave, the sanctuary and the altar.  Vatican II emphasized the laity coming into the celebration of the Mass and from there Church officials determined that the rails separated the Priest from the people, as did the ad orientum worship of the Mass.

I'll try to be gentle in my criticism here, but I'd suggest that the directive of laity participation wsa somewhat misunderstood in the US in general.  Indeed, Fr. Joseph Krupp maintains that much of Vatican II was as translation of the official documents was not a priority for the Church, as most Catholics do not use English as their primary language.

Be that as it may, the Church of the 1970s in the US really went to town with such changes.  Parishioners, who had grown up in an era when they largely did not question their Priests, simply endured it.  The clergy thought it was doing something that would really make everyone come closer together, but for the most part, their parishioners simply silently endured it, and the flood of other changes that came in at the same time.

Many of the changes were good one, most particularly the new form of the Mass in the vernacular.  But changes simply went to far.  Architectural changes were really a bad thing in structures that were built before Vatican II.  And frankly, the Baby Boom generation aside, most people actually like some formal distinctions in society, something pretty clear when you see the post Baby Boom generations at Mass.

The alter rail at St. Anthony's was made of marble, with brass hinges, and beautiful.  Even now, the church looks like it is missing something.  

This is less the case with the other two Catholic churches in Casper, Our Lady of Fatima and St. Patrick's.  St. Patrick's is the newest of the three, having been built in the 1960s.  It's an expansive church and the absence of an alter rail does not seem to hinder its appearance.  Our Lady of Fatima was  built as an Air Base chapel during World War Two and no doubt was built without an alter rail originally.  Having said that, perhaps because of reconstruction, which has happened more than once, it looks like it should have one.

St. Anthony's has been substantially restored in recent years.  Not 100%, but substantially.  Restoring the alter rail would go a long ways towards restoring the full original beauty of the church.

When it was taken out, something happened to it. But what?  Is it stored somewhere on the grounds?  If it was, I've never seen it.  I've heard rumors that part of it is in a Casper restaurant.

And what about the alter rails from the other churches?

Much of what was in St. Anthony's before the post Vatican II changes was provided for by way of donations from parishioners.  I've thought that the alter rail was, but I don't really know that.  Donations are a funny thing in that sometimes they bind the recipient, and other times they do not.  This probably did not.

Well, at any rate, taking the alter rail(s) out was a mistake.  The alter rail, indeed the alter rails, should be put back in.  Somebody has the St. Anthony's one, perhaps more than one somebody. They should give it back.

Put the alter rail back in.

Fr Joe homily: War on Lust, War on Gluttony | March 15, 2026

 

Fr Joe homily: The war on wrath, the war on sloth | March 8, 2026

 

It's Hell all the way to Hell.

 

Supporting Immorality in War is Immoral.

Gun camera footage from a P-51 strafing Japanese civilian fishermen during World War Two, a gravely immoral act.  We've conveniently forgotten how much of this sort of thing happened during World War Two, but a lot did.  Allied fighters routinely strafed German farmers during  the war, and I have heard of one account of an Italian farmer being killed by being strafed.  This isn't warfare, it's flat out murder.*

 

III. SAFEGUARDING PEACE

Avoiding war

2309 The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:

• the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
• all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
• there must be serious prospects of success;
• the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modem means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the "just war" doctrine.

The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.

Section 2309, Catechism of the Catholic Church. 

Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the United States Constitution:

[The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water; . . . 

The American war against Iran is not a just war.  It's not a legal one, either.

Iran is a world sponsor of terrorism that has sponsored terroristic acts for decades.  Most of those acts of terror were against other sovereign states, not the US, but some can logically be argued to be directed at the us.  That's almost certainly not what the war is about.

Much more likely, Trump is a pathetic doddering senile fool who has spent a life of utter pointlessness.  His wealth is inherited and founded originally on a grandfather who engaged in providing prostitutes to Alaska miners, a gravely evil act.  His father did nothing like that, but the family wealth was used to build more wealth, and Trump in his adult years, after not serving his country (a family tradition to some extent) went on to make and lose fortunes doing that.

Real estate development is, from an agrarian and distributism prospective like that I maintain, a fairly dubious occupation in and of itself.  Not clearly immoral, but frankly I have real trouble with some of it.  Be that as it may, I particularly have trouble with the sort of behavior that Trump exhibited in that questionable occupation.  I wouldn't admire the Wharton graduate for that reason alone.  But the way he has spent his wealth is abominable.  He's a serial polygamist and its getting very difficult to say "there's no evidence" that he didn't sexually fish in the shallow end of the pond.

There's more credible evidence that he's a kiddy diddler, which I'm not affirmatively saying there is, than that he's a Christian.  There's not one single outwardly Christian act that I can think of that he's committed.  What he is, is a shallow opportunist, and he's used desperate Christians to advance his career.  

Knowing that the grave is looming up on him, and with his mind slipping away from him at a rapid rate, Trump has spent much of his second, illegitimate, occupation of the White House trying to build monuments to himself.  He wants a ball room as he's a rich product of the 60s and 70s when things like that mattered to somebody.  They don't anymore, and it'll either never be built, or ripped down.  He wants a triumphal arch, which is simply absurd.

And he wants to be remembered as a great hero, adding to the US landmass, or at least defeating a supposed major enemy.

Benjamin Netanyahu, who is a scary man in his own right, but not a demented fool, saw that he could play the demented fool in the White House.  Netanyahu, like Michael Corleone in The Godfather, sees the Trump dotage as a time to "address all family business".  Seeing a dolt he could play, like Putin has, he's coaxed Trump into a war for Israel's own purposes.  This is, the way Netanyahu sees it, Israel's last best hope to destroy the radical Islamist regime in Tehran.  Israel can't do it on its own, and no future US administration will support doing it.  Israel is not held in that high of regard in much of the world for a variety of reasons, and never has been.  Nobody else is going to play the willing muscled fool for Netanyahu.  If Netanyahu is Corleone, Trump is Luca Brasi, a brutish dolt who is willing to act as an enforcer.

Trump entered this war thinking it would be a two or three day exercise.  He'd bomb Iran and the Iranian people would give up.  Or, maybe, Iranians theocrats would act like American property owners and cut him a deal.  Well, say what you like about Shiite theocrats, but they're a lot less shallow than American businessmen.  They hold to an existential, and unlike Trump it's not all about money and women.  

Oh oh.

So they didn't give up and they aren't going to give up.  They've fought back by striking economic targets and U.S. military installations around the Middle East (and now as far away as Diego Garcia).  And they've closed the Straits of Hormuz.

By closing the Straits, they've also demonstrated that the US is, in fact, not as powerful as it pretends it is.  We can't open them and we've been begging for help.  Nobody else is willing to get into an endless war for Israel, and therefore that help isn't coming.  In order to open them we will have to engage in a ground invasion.

Trump is trying desperately to avoid that, for a variety of reasons.  One thing is that he's probably been told it will be a bloody mess.  Body bags will be coming home to "Red" cities all around the country.  People already don't support the war and they definitely will not when Johnny or Mary come home to be buried in Riverton Wyoming, or Billings Montana, having died for Bibi Netanyahu.  

And then there's this:

There's not going to be a draft, but the satiric suggestions that he serve are not wholly ingenuine.  Right now, the US is getting into one war after another.  Franklin Roosevelt's children served, so did TR's. Why not Trump's?

Because Trumps don't serve the country, they take from it. That's why.

In his desperation to end the war, Trump is now threatening to bomb Iranian power facilities if they do not open the Straits of Hormuz.  He broadcast this on social media, which is idiotic  It also won't work.  The Allied bombing campaigns against Germany did not work in World War Two.  They didn't work, save for the Atomic bomb, against Japan, either.  Nor did they work against North Vietnam.  They won't work here.  Instead, civilians will be killed and whatever support for a new regime replacing this one in Iran exists, will evaporate.

What Trump is doing is criminal. The US is killing people for. . . what?

The whole war is criminal from the first place, from a US prospective.  We're using military force to kill people with no declaration of war.  And now we propose to engage in a tit for tat campaign of economic retribution against them as we can't beat them.  We haven't been able to articulate a single reason for the war, other than Iran cannot be allowed to have the same thing that Israel, the United States, France, Russia, North Korea, the United Kingdom, Indian, Pakistan, and South Africa have. . . an atomic bomb.

There is some logic to that, of course.  An Iran with an atomic bomb would be scary, just like North Korea with an atomic bomb is scary.  But given our ill thought out military adventure here, we are actually making this situation worse.  North Korea, it might be noted, is improving missile capabilities, and why wouldn't they.  If North Korea has not determined an absolute need to be able to hit the continental United States due to Donald Trump, it'd be amazing.  And if Iran, which has its nuclear material yet, has not concluded that it has an absolute need to complete a nuclear project, that would be amazing.

But it's clear that Trump never thought this out.  He went, we're told, with his gut, which is nearly always wrong.

So, here we are in this long winded thread.

And here's to the point.  Supporting immorality, is immoral.  Everyone engages in "remote cooperation with evil", which you can not do much about.  Using illegal drugs is illegal, but paying the pizza guy when you know he's going to use some of that cash for illegal drugs isn't.

Here, we now have an interesting situation.

We are in an illegal war and doing immoral acts.  The Republicans in Washington are mostly sitting around on their ass doing nothing about it. They're afraid.  They're not paid nor elected to be afriad.

And all over the country the MAGA element of the GOP just lies down like the 13 year old girls at Epstein Island and gives into whatever Trump wants.

It's immoral.

For years and years Christians, particularly those of my faith, voted for Republicans in spite of reluctance because we opposed abortion and the Democratic Party supported it.  Even as late as the last election I heard Catholics with severe doubts about Trump say they were voting for him for that reason.

Abortion is a grave moral evil.  Engaging in an illegal war and targeting civilian targets is a grave moral evil.

I'm not saying vote for the Democrats without thinking, but I am saying that supporting this Administration and the Republican Party at this point is supporting moral evil.  When John Barrasso and Harriet Hageman come around backing the war, they're backing a moral evil.  When Chuck Gray declares his undying love for Trump and promises to be the most loyal of his political concubines, he's expressing a love of a moral evil.

Most Germans during the Nazi era did nothing.  Most Republicans aren't going to either.  In future years, they'll be looked at with utter disgust.

Christians believe that they'll have to account for their sins in the next world.  I very much doubt that bothers Donald  Trump as he's stupid and ignorant, which is sort of a defense, and I very much question if he has any belief in God at all.  For that matter, while I have only the incidents to raise the question, I doubt the beliefs of many in Congress who claim they have one.  For those of us who do believe, and frankly a person who doesn't has simply blinded themselves to reality, it's all too easy to believe that our self interest must be moral.  Protestant churches have, for instance, by and large completely given up on being concerned about sexual morality for the most part.

God will not be mocked.  Christians who declare Trump to be a "Godly Man" are willfully blinding themselves or outright lying.  None of us are around here all that long.  The "why did you support the murder of my children" question is coming up, and the "well, I supported Trump", or "well, the Iranians were baddies", or "well, the Iranians were Muslims" line is not likely to be a sufficient excuse for being complicit in murder.

Footnotes

*This may seem like a strange point to start in this thread, but wars routinely devolve, even when they fit the just war criteria, into flat out murder and the US has not been exempt from this.  Arguably the cleanest war the US ever fought was World War One, with the Korean War being relatively clean.  World War Two may be recalled as a uniformly just war, but the bombing campaigns against urban Japan and the use of nuclear weapons was outright not.  And the tolerance of what is depicted above, which was very widespread, was not.

An Evening Meditation on St. Joseph's Day a reminder of the significance we fathers have in shaping those around us

 

An Evening Meditation on St. Joseph's Day

a reminder of the significance we fathers have in shaping those around us