CHESTERFIELD — The pastor of Ascension Catholic Church has apologized for a bulletin announcement calling for a militia to protect the parish, saying he thought the organizer only wanted to start a club for young men.
Monsignor Patrick Hambrough addressed the Ascension congregation about the bulletin item at the end of each Mass on Sunday. He said he did not “thoroughly check” the full-page notice and did not realize what would be published.
The item, headlined “JOIN NOW,” called “all young men back to the Church to form a militia.”
It said the militia would be named the “Legion of the Sancta Lana,” which means “holy wool” in Latin. It called on men ages 18 to 29 to protect “the Holy Eucharist, our congregation, our clergy, and the church grounds from violent and non-violent attacks.”
Hambrough said an Ascension parishioner met with him last month to ask about starting a “club for other young men in their 20s ... to live their Catholic faith in a better way.”
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This was the militia recruitment ad placed in the June 16 bulletin at Ascension Catholic Church in Chesterfield.
Hambrough told the man he could have an entire page in the June 16 bulletin to get his message to the parish of nearly 3,000 households.
The page included a link to an online application that said, “Ascension Parish in Chesterfield, MO has been chosen as the testing ground for the militia and, if successful, we hope to establish platoons at parishes around the world.”
The publication of the announcement “proved to be disastrous,” Hambrough told the congregation. The rectory has been inundated with phone calls expressing concern and outrage. The church pulled a copy of the bulletin off its website and later shut down its Facebook page after attracting harsh criticism.
An email address in the militia application was traced by the Post-Dispatch to a parishioner named John Ray. When reached at his office at St. Louis University, Ray declined to comment and referred reporters to the Archdiocese of St. Louis.
Ray’s “choice of wording by his own admittance was a mistake and the wording that he used reverberated across our country in a negative way, and he is very upset about that,” Hambrough told parishioners.
The archdiocese “has communicated with all those involved to be certain that this group does not proceed,” according to a statement Monday from spokesperson Brecht Mulvihill.
Church leaders also “proactively reached out to authorities to apprise them of the situation,” he said.
Ascension has changed its publication procedures by limiting who can submit bulletin items and adding steps to the editing process. Parish staff will be empowered to “revise or reject unsuitable material,” Mulvihill said.
“We will encourage other parishes who do not have a similar process to adopt this approach,” he said.
A previous statement on the Ascension website said there are no threats to the parish.
The militia proposal included plans for men to complete “physical fitness and combat training” and to serve as readers and ushers during Mass while wearing “bright white uniforms,” which were depicted in a sketch in the online application form. Training sessions on Saturdays would include “strict physical fitness standards, classroom study, and instruction in military operations.”
The application, which has been taken down, said legionnaires would not serve as armed guards outside the church but “could be called upon by the Pastor of the Parish to take up arms defensively” if the congregation were threatened.
Other longstanding Catholic groups have invoked military language and imagery, including the fraternal organization Knights of Columbus and evangelists Militia of the Immaculata. But the groups consider their “battles” spiritual, aimed at saving souls and spreading their faith.
Hambrough said at Sunday Mass he was disappointed with himself for not fully vetting the announcement.
“This wonderful parish with a great 101-year history of serving God in many faithful ways has been besmirched, and the good people of this parish like yourselves have somehow been tainted by a decision I made and I am very hurt by that,” he told the congregation. Ray “is sorry and so am I, and I apologize to you.”
Beth O’Malley of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.
View life in St. Louis through the Post-Dispatch photographers' lenses. Edited by Jenna Jones.