Catholics & the Military

Incidentally, Robert Harrington once came up with a hymn to the tune of “The Church’s One Foundation”, the first line of which was “The faith of General Franco is that of Dorothy Day…”. Alas, I can’t remember the rest.

Good news — Catholics actually comprise a large amount of the personnel in our nation’s services. To the best of my recollection, thanks to some contacts in the Archdiocese for Military Services, USA, the Navy has the largest amount of catholics, and the officer corps of the Marine Corps is predominantly catholic — the MilArch’s prayer book is incredibly popular with those men and women. So far as I can tell, our safety and preservation of our way of life is are in good hands. I just hope that good men and women will continue to be generous in giving time and energy to the national welfare.

Just as many Army officers are Catholic, I am astounded how many Police officers in Scotland are Catholic.

Who was the “unbelieving Freemason” in the Spanish military junta? Was it Millan Astray?

After watching the entire run of the excellent Navy detective show NCIS, I realized that most of the agents on the show are Catholics, and a couple of characters whose religions are unspecified are probable Catholics (Irish surnames).

Since I live in the Bible Belt where Catholics are in the minority, this surprised me, but when I remarked on it to a friend, she told me that this reflects reality, that a lot of agents of the FBI, NCIS, etc. are Catholic – that is, more than the demographics of the U.S. would lead one to expect.

The unbelieving Freemason in question was General Miguel Cabanellas who was nominally president of the junta formed in Burgos in July 1936. He died two years later.

To be fair, the early Christians were forbidden to serve in the Roman military because it typically involved making occasional sacrifices to pagan gods, not because of an objection to the military service itself.

To really be fair, the early Christians did not serve in the military for both reasons: they abhorred its violence as well as the idolatry involved. These two reasons are not in competition, as many assume when they argue for one over the other as an explanation for their refusal to serve. Rather, both realities — violence and idolatry — were intimately related. The religio of the empire demanded sacrifice: that soldiers kill and be willing to be killed.

The same idolatry exists today in our own imperial reality. The Catechism passage you quoted is nice, but it says nothing about the conditions under which it would be impossible for a Catholic to serve in the military. Surely the Church is not teaching us that it is always and everywhere honorable to serve in the military. I think we need to ask the hard question of whether it is really honorable to serve in the united states military as it exists in the present rather than relying on universal teachings such as the one quoted which give no concrete guidance for Christian discipleship.

The Provisional IRA has been overwhelmingly Catholic, but the McCartney sisters have drawn little comfort from that fact.

Yes, you’re correct on all points. Try knocking some sense into the folks at LewRockwell.com while you’re at it. And a very good point on the Spanish civil war. Francisco Franco, ora pro nobis!

“Not at all!”

Ask the residents of Guernica.

WAC

Ask the residents of Guernica.

The bishop of the diocese in which Guernica is located recently suggested that, given the accommodationist stance the PP is now taking, Basques and other Spaniards should think about voting for the neo-Falangists and other “far-right” parties.

Franco, who denied any personal hand in the German attack on Guernica, did actually try to have Picasso’s famous painting displayed in Spain, but Picasso (the swine) wouldn’t have it.

Robert Harrington,

My point is only that Gen. Franco’s life is not without sufficient moral controversy to make a cultus in his honor excessive.

wac

Fair enough, but the cultus is coming forth nonetheless. It will continue to grow and eventually the Church will have to either condemn it or recognize it. Miracle are the proof in the pudding though, so we should keep praying!

It’ll still be a great deal of time before the Good Man is even beatified, maybe a century, but these things move faster and faster these days. (On the other hand, people say our current Pope would like to make the canonization process a bit more careful and procedural, and he’d be right in doing so).

The very notion of General Franco beatfied strikes me as utterly bizarre.

Mr Harrington, this link is for you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQSAan35tbg

YouTube certainly is a repository of the bizarre!

I don’t know why you find the notion of Franco beatified bizarre, but perhaps you are unfamiliar with him (or perhaps only familiar with the version of him created by leftist propaganda and unthinkingly absorbed into the back of society’s mind).

No doubt there is much that is bizarre on YouTube. Certainly that could be said of the Internet in general.

I am quite familiar with General Franco, and with the contoversy surrounding his rule. Was he the “savior” of Spain or a war criminal? Did he win the Spanish Civil War with or without the help of Hitler and Mussolini? Was he a great commander or mediocre at best? Opinions about Franco are polarized, and it is not simply a matter of leftist versus right wing propaganda. Many sober historians see the very fexibility of Franco’s regime as problematic when judging the man.

The fact remains that large numbers of citizens (non-combatants I believe is the current term) were killed either summarily or after a hasty trial during his regime. Military historians disagree on the exact number. Some say 100,000 while other say two million. Perhaps we will never know what the number really is or to what degree Franco was or was not “personally” responsible for these deaths, whether one calls them murders or executions or anything else. That they happened during “his watch” would be highly problematic for those who wish to see him beatified, I should think.

Liz,

Miracles are the last proofs on the road to beatification and sainthood.

Even showing that he lived a (mostly, at least) “blameless life” comes later in the process.

Those are some high hurtles. But they come much later.

Proponents of the cultus should begin by stating proof of Gen. Franco’s “heroic virtue.”

As a student of history and a Catholic, I, for one, would like to hear what the young Francoistas here think about the man’s provable “heroic virtue.”

wac

I, for one, would like to hear what the young Francoistas here think about the man’s provable “heroic virtue.”

Well, let’s see. He led the (admittedly very widespread) effort to save Spain from the Communists (who were massacring priests, nuns, those who committed the crime of being bourgeois, and other ordinary people who didn’t want to participate in their evil).

He kept his vow (made at the end of the Civil War) to never take up his sword unless Spain was threatened, despite much pressure during the Second World War.

He was instrumental in keeping the Spanish border open to Jews fleeing the Nazis through France.

He founded a Benedictine monastery.

He was incredibly supportive of the Church’s efforts. As head of state he often directed the state to be at the Church’s disposal and worked in cooperation with the Church’s efforts (to cite just one example, the Universidad Laboral that Cusack’s written about).

(Even so, he was attacked by Cardinal Segura, who condemned Article 6 of Franco’s constitution which guaranteed that non-Catholics would not be disturbed or persecuted by the State).

And he was just a good guy! There was another bishop who was a thorn in his side who Franco (towards the end of his life) was given to embracing very warmly with a hug, after the more proper kissing of the ring, to show there was no hard feelings.

Franco founded the academy of the Basque language, our version of l’Académie française.

Robert,

While your citations from the public life of Franco are good indices of public virtue, they seem little more than what would be expected of the dictator of any Catholic country.

“Heroic Virtue,” as a term of art, means the common supernatural practice of virtue wholly detached from the world.

So, apart from his duties and proclivities as Dictator, how was his relationship with God?

Who actually are these “early Christians”?

On the subject of Christians doing military service under pagan emperors, Gregory XVI had the following to say in his great encyclical Mirari Vos [18]:

And it is for this reason that the early Christians, lest they should be stained by such great infamy deserved well of the emperors and of the safety of the state even while persecution raged. This they proved splendidly by their fidelity in performing perfectly and promptly whatever they were commanded which was not opposed to their religion, and even more by their constancy and the shedding of their blood in battle. “Christian soldiers,” says St. Augustine, “served an infidel emperor. When the issue of Christ was raised, they acknowledged no one but the One who is in heaven. They distinguished the eternal Lord from the temporal lord, but were also subject to the temporal lord for the sake of the eternal Lord.” St. Mauritius, the unconquered martyr and leader of the Theban legion had this in mind when, as St. Eucharius reports, he answered the emperor in these words: “We are your soldiers, Emperor, but also servants of God, and this we confess freely . . . and now this final necessity of life has not driven us into rebellion: I see, we are armed and we do not resist, because we wish rather to die than to be killed.” Indeed the faith of the early Christians shines more brightly, if with Tertullian we consider that since the Christians were not lacking in numbers and in troops, they could have acted as foreign enemies. “We are but of yesterday,” he says, “yet we have filled all your cities, islands, fortresses, municipalities, assembly places, the camps themselves, the tribes, the divisions, the palace, the senate, the forum….For what war should we not have been fit and ready even if unequal in forces–we who are so glad to be cut to pieces–were it not, of course, that in our doctrine we would have been permitted more to be killed rather than to kill?…If so great a multitude of people should have deserted to some remote spot on earth, it would surely have covered your domination with shame because of the loss of so many citizens, and it would even have punished you by this very desertion. Without a doubt you would have been terrified at your solitude…. You would have sought whom you might rule; more enemies than citizens would have remained for you. Now however you have fewer enemies because of the multitude of Christians.”