CHURCH OF SEMPER FI |
- Houses of Worship -- Always Faithful By WILLIAM MCGURN When it came to theology my siblings and I were squared away early on. Thus we knew all the stanzas of "The Marine Corps Hymn" before we learned the Lord's Prayer. We were taught enough Latin to understand the Corps motto (Semper Fidelis, or "Always Faithful"). And for years we stared up at a paper on our refrigerator door emblazoned with these words: "To err is human/To forgive is divine Neither of which is Marine Corps policy." We were red-diaper babies of a sort, inculcated with a near-religious sense of higher truths and a similar sense of mission, though our shade is more accurately recorded as crimson. And in the great divide between those who recognize what Nov 10 is and those who don't, we belong to that special fraternity that knows Marines do not simply celebrate an anniversary. Marines celebrate their birthday. In the 225 years since the Corps's founding, the smoke of battle has moved from muskets to missiles. And from time to time, voices suggest that such developments leave the Marines a colorful anachronism. My guess is that the real challenge is not strategic -- there will always be a Kuwait or Grenada that needs liberating -- but religious: an erosion in the public theology upon which our Constitution rests. In that theology our warriors are not simply necessary evils but the executors of legitimate moral purpose in a world stained by original sin. In the debate over the place of this class in a free commonwealth, the Marine Corps is a leading indicator, if only because Marines are understood to be the archetype of the military ideal. On the silver screen the incarnation of this ideal has given us Sgt. Stryker (John Wayne), Tom Highway (Clint Eastwood) and The Great Santini (Robert Duvall), men who could think of nothing better to do than storm a bunker in a hail of gunfire. Even those who find the caricature frightening find it useful. Witness the celebrated remarks from the Clinton administration assistant secretary for the Army, Sara Lister, calling the Marines "extremists" possibly suffering from a "total disconnection with society." My experience suggests that the real disconnect may be society's own increasing distance from those who protect us. Even among people who do not consider themselves pacifists, I am amazed to find, there appears to be a pronounced and growing belief that the military calling is morally suspect. Families who have someone in uniform subscribe to a far different theology, one in which Marines and their fellow soldiers, sailors and airmen are literally the peacemakers -- the father or husband or brother or son put in the front lines to protect those unable to protect themselves. And its best expression was given not by "The Sands of Iwo Jima" but by "The FBI Story," where Jimmy Stewart's happy family barbecue in 1941 is interrupted when his son walks in and announces he's joined the Marines. Stewart's wife is furious and in tears; the boy is not yet 18 and needed the consent of a parent. "How could you?" she reproaches her husband. Stewart tells her. "My son came in to me and said, 'Dad, I want to defend my country.' And I couldn't think of an answer to that.'" And the line no scriptwriter would write today: "I would have been ashamed if I had." In his superb 1998 book, "Making the Corps," former Journal reporter Tom Ricks wrote admiringly of the boot-camp virtues that make Marines out of our nation's Beavises and Buttheads. But he also had his worries about what he saw as the "open religiosity" of the officers. Recently I stumbled across a copy of the old "Catholic Prayer Book for the Marine Corps" issued in World War II and Korea, when a concern about "open religiosity" would probably not be all that high up on the list of worries about the Corps. There is, of course, a "Prayer for Victory." But there is also a "Prayer for the Authorities," which beseeches the Almighty to ensure that these men use their powers rightfully, a "Prayer for All in Trouble" and even a "Prayer for Our Enemies" that takes into account the fact that the man in the other uniform is also a child of God. It is no coincidence that in a rightly ordered public theology that understood the difference between force and violence, the public vocabulary did not speak of such people as being in "the military." It was "the service." Born in Camp Pendleton and having had long experience of the right way, the wrong way, and the Marine way, I'd be the last to confuse Parris Island with the City of God. But over many years abroad I have seen lots of Marines. And this is one crimson-diaper baby who thanks God they still think of what they do as a sacred trust and not just a job. |
