From the NYPOST:
GOP lawmakers demand answers over Walter Reed’s ‘cease and desist’ order to Catholic priests at hospital during Holy Week
Republican lawmakers penned a scathing letter Pentagon officials after Walter Reed National Military Medical Center sent a “cease and desist” letter to Catholic priests to stop providing care during Holy Week when their contract expired.
In a letter obtained by Fox News, 24 Republicans are demanding answers from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and slamming the White House administration’s alleged “attack on Christian faith.”
Last week, Walter Reed terminated a contract for pastoral care for its patients and issued a “cease and desist” order to a community of Catholic priests just days before Holy Week, The Catholic Archdiocese for the Military Services said.
The hospital had ended a contract with Holy Name College Friary — a Franciscan community of priests and brothers that has served at the center for nearly two decades.
“Forcing priests to stop providing care during Holy Week is not only morally wrong, but also a violation of the First Amendment,” Republicans wrote in their letter on Wednesday, according to Fox News.
[…]
Biden, for whom tens of people showed up when he wasn’t in in his basement for most of the last election cycle, is a perennial and unrepentant promoter of abortion.
Loading ...
This has happened at another Federal agency in the past, at the NIH Clinical Center. Basically, the game is “spiritual ministry”, with non-denominational chaplains, one size fits all, for patients. I am sure that the same game is being played in the armed services. A close friend of mine was terminated years ago at NIH since his sacramental services were no longer needed. The “spiritual ministry” team could take his place. He brought is case to the Federal Equal Opportunity Commission and won. His case was that for a Catholic patient, the expected ministry involves sacramental ministry. He argued that his termination was a denial of freedom of worship for Catholic patients.
Just wondering. If members of the Friary had shown up at Walter Reed in rainbow vestments, would they and the Catholic patients been denied their First Amendment rights? Just wondering.
This on the heels of an undercover agent going to the SSPX chapel in Richmond. I discovered this on YouTube last night.
Here’s the news clip from 2 days ago:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s-p-utgZrBQ
I suppose retracting the memo 2 months ago was a farce.
I could really write a lengthy tirade but I’m sure anyone that reads this blog already feels like I do.
I don’t know the protocol of WR, but couldn’t the clergy that served the patients go to WR as “visitors” to the patients? Even better, ask the patients to specifically request those “visitors” or ask that they be put on an “approved visitors list” or something. I know that the clergy would be there on their own dime, but as (hopefully) a temporary measure until this gets worked out, this would at least allow the patients to get their much needed spiritual needs met.
Father, I’m going to use this post to share this link from Rorate Caeli. There’s really something going on right now that’s diabolical.
https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2023/04/warning-to-traditional-orders-parishes.html
Yes, Father, it makes me angry also. Any attack on the military does the same, because we are a (retired) military family through and through, for more than one generation. I remember years ago, going to a military base near our home for daily Mass, being told there was no Catholic chaplain! This was a base for the training of thousands of new recruits. So sad.
Here is a link to an article with more information:
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2023/04/11/walter-reed-military-hospital-says-new-catholic-pastoral-care-contract-under-review/?mkt_tok=NDI3LUxFUS0wNjYAAAGLGPrt6nzxAPxapUi8wkl_aNUOOqnnRNCJxnZBPNMdyAGM7Qk62D2H8GNiBPHNg2xdl4B3UFIv6fCIGVe7boOYQmsmDmA9VrchEudJ9g
So, as usual the simplest explanation is probably the most likely. As a retired officer and Trad Cath this strikes me more as incompetence and stupidity than malice. This has happened before… a couple of years ago Naval Region SW and NAS North Island in Coronado, CA terminated their contract with the local diocese because of cost cuts. Very few active service members were attending Mass on base; the base chapel Catholic community was mostly local retirees. So they made a fiscal decision to end their relationship with contracted priests esp. since there are many Catholic parishes in Coronado and the greater San Diego area. My guess is that something similar is going on with the Army Installations Command (who operates bases & support services), and they were just incredibly insensitive and dumb that it took place right at Easter. Whichever contracting officer (and their chain of command) that made that decision is probably not Catholic and had no idea what they were doing. In any case, it seems charitable to me to at least consider that there might be another explanation than wicked intent on the part of the Biden Administration. Frankly, I doubt they are that smart and would probably not be able to come up with that diabolical of a plan.
Looks like they got the memo. There are no coincidences.
And this during the administration of such a Catholic president, imagine that.
One problem with relying on visiting priests from local parishes to serve Catholic patients at Walter Reed or the NIH Clinical Center is that many of the patients are not locals but come from far-away places for specialist care. Thus they have no connection with local clergy or local parishes. Many patients in these places are often there for longer periods, so that a full-time chaplain can accomplish quite a bit with such patients, such as taking the time to prepare lapsed Catholics for reconciliation.
@ ahcollier:
Incompetence may account for the stupidity of the cost-cutting effort. It does not account for generating a “cease and desist” order. The basics here: if a person is sweeping a city sidewalk because he is a paid city worker, that’s great. If he gets fired, and he sweeps the sidewalk because he is a city inhabitant who like a clean sidewalk, what possible purpose is served by the city saying “no, you MUST STOP doing that on your own nickel! We cannot tolerate you doing that without being paid!?
Getting rid of a contract for services means that the service won’t be paid for. It doesn’t represent the idea that the service is undesirable and you no longer want it done.
I know that priests doing the service in a military installation creates some headaches for the brass, but (as Saint110676 indicates above) the patients have a civil right to receive such services, and a snafu with some military payment contract to provide the service cannot defeat that right. Anyone high enough to have signed a cease and desist order should have known that fact. It is far more likely that the executive has it in for religion, especially a religion like Catholicism that claims God saves people through the one Church.
I’ve called the USCCB office in Washington twice so far and and left messages with the office of communications asking where the strongly worded statement condemning this is and why the full force of the USCCB is not bearing down on this administration from the bishops.
So far, crickets.
So much for freedom of religion….
Now more than ever, Semper Fidelis.
This is sad.
I’m a Gen Xer ( and son and grandson of servicemen. Dad served in the Army and later the U.S. Air Force. Grandpa fought Chinese Communists in the Korean War with the Iowa Army National Guard. Two Purple Hearts and had Chinese Communist shrapnel in his body until the day he died. ) and I still remember the dark days of the Vietnam funk from the Reagan years. My dad told me the story of when he returned from Army basic training in the early 1970s and my grandfather ( Proud of his son ) had to coax him to wear his Army uniform to a bar in his small rural Iowa hometown.
It still angers me what protesters did to soldiers returning home from Vietnam. Fresh from the combat zone, even.
Our veterans served, fought and bled ( Others died ) to defend our country’s freedom and way of life against Nazis, Communists and Islamic terrorists ( Who use children in combat ) and they deserve things that the government doesn’t give them still. And now this?
The FBI is targeting traditional Catholics, as if we’re the problem, while firebombings of emergency pregnancy centers and vandalization of Catholic churches result in no FBI raids on these folks’ homes and families, and now Catholic veterans at Walter Reed cannot receive priestly care?
I understand that government bureaucracy often makes dumb decisions but given this Administration’s anti Catholicism I doubt this is just another round of dumb bureaucratic decisions.