The EWTN News portal reports that Acting Secretary of the U.S. Navy Hung Cao, under the direction of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, has inaugurated a “Chaplain In-Service Procurement Program” allowing active-duty Navy and Marine Corps personnel to become chaplains without leaving military service. The initiative, hailed as the “first win” of the newly established “Office of Religious Affairs,” funds theological degrees while members remain on active duty, requiring only a brief intermission for “religious leadership experience.” “Archbishop” Timothy Broglio, head of the conciliar Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA (AMS), welcomed the “effort” but declared it of “little value to prospective Catholic chaplains” because the program envisions only three years of formation versus the seven years plus three years of civilian pastoral experience required by his jurisdiction. The article details a concurrent “discernment retreat” for 33 prospective conciliar chaplains at St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore. This collaboration between the Pentagon’s bureaucratic machinery and the conciliar hierarchy exposes the utter bankruptcy of a counterfeit church that bargains for canonical technicalities while legitimizing the idolatrous cult of the secular state.
The Secular State’s Instrumentalization of the Sacred: Spiritual Readiness is Combat Readiness
The linguistic perversion at the heart of this announcement is the equation of the supernatural with the tactical. Secretary Hegseth’s mantra — “Spiritual readiness is combat readiness” — reduces the cura animarum to a force multiplier for the war machine. This is the quintessence of the laicism condemned by Pope Pius XI in Quas Primas: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed”. The “Department of War” (a telling reversion to the pre-1947 nomenclature) does not seek the glory of God or the salvation of souls; it seeks unit cohesion and warfighting capability. The “Office of Religious Affairs” is not an ecclesial tribunal but a human resources division managing “faith traditions” as diversity assets.
Hegseth’s invocation of Isaiah — “Here I am, send me” — is a blasphemous appropriation of the prophetic vocation to legitimize service to the imperium. The “divine calling” he references is not a call to the altar of the True God, but a summons to the altar of the state. As the Syllabus of Pius IX condemns: “The civil government… has a right to an indirect negative power over religious affairs… In the case of conflicting laws enacted by the two powers, the civil law prevails” (Errors 41, 42). The new program codifies this subversion: the state funds the formation, the state dictates the timeline, the state commissions the “chaplain.” The “endorsing organization” (the conciliar hierarchy) is reduced to a subcontractor providing spiritual personnel for the legions.
Indifferentism as Official Policy: “From Every Faith Tradition”
Acting Secretary Cao explicitly urged leaders to identify candidates “from every faith tradition”. This is not mere inclusivity; it is the dogmatic indifferentism anathematized by the Syllabus: “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true… Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation” (Errors 15, 16). The “Office of Religious Affairs” functions as a Ministry of Cults for the Masonic state, treating the Catholic religion, Protestant sects, Judaism, Islam, and paganism as functionally equivalent “spiritual readiness” resources.
The conciliar hierarchy’s participation in this scheme is the practical application of the heresy of Dignitatis Humanae and the false ecumenism of Unitatis Redintegratio. By providing “endorsers” for this interreligious bazaar, the conciliar “archdiocese” implicitly denies the Social Kingship of Christ the King, cui omne datum est potestatem in caelo et in terra (Matt 28:18). Pius XI taught that “His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ” (Quas Primas). The Pentagon’s program asserts the opposite: that the state stands above all religions, arbitrating their utility for the common temporal good.
The Conciliar Hierarchy’s Complicity: Haggling Over Time, Silent on Truth
The objection of “Archbishop” Broglio is revealing in its pettiness and its silence. He does not object to the nature of the program — the subordination of the priesthood to the Pentagon, the indifferentist framework, the invalidity of the Novus Ordo “ordination” rite, or the fact that the “chaplains” will preside over a Protestantized “table of assembly” rather than the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary. He objects only to the insufficient duration of formation: “the initiative is of little value to prospective Catholic chaplains… the program only envisions three [years]”.
This is the bargaining of a vassal seeking better terms from his suzerain. Broglio’s “seven years of academic, pastoral, and spiritual formation” produces not sacerdotes but functionaries of the Novus Ordo, ordained under the invalid rite of Paul VI (1968), devoid of the power to confect the Eucharist or absolve sins. The “three years of civilian pastoral service” is not a preparation for the cura animarum but an internship in the conciliar bureaucracy. As St. Pius X condemned in Lamentabili Sane Exitu: “The sacraments arose as a result of the interpretation by the Apostles or their successors of Christ’s thoughts and intentions, under the influence and encouragement of circumstances and events” (Prop. 40) — the Modernist evolution of the priesthood into a “ministry of presence” finds its logical terminus in the military chaplaincy program.
The “Discernment Retreat”: Staging Vocations for the Neo-Church
The article’s description of the “Fall Discernment Retreat” — adoration, Holy Hours, talks on “discernment” and “spiritual fatherhood” — is a Potemkin village of piety. Thirty-three men “prayed together” at St. Mary’s Seminary, an institution of the conciliar sect, to discern a “vocation” that consists in serving as religious contractors for the American empire. The presence of “Father” Paul-Anthony Halladay and conciliar “military chaplains” as formators guarantees that the “discernment” will not extend to questioning the legitimacy of the Novus Ordo, the validity of the post-1958 “popes,” or the Masonic nature of the state they are enlisting to serve.
This is the aggiornamento in its final form: the Church militant reduced to a chaplaincy corps for the Civitas Terrena. The “National Vocation Awareness Week” branding reveals the marketing mentality: vocations are “recruited” like infantry. The true vocatio is a call from God to the sanctificandi office, requiring the character indelebilis conferred by a valid bishop in the apostolic succession — a succession broken in the conciliar sect by the new ordinal and the heretical intent of its “bishops.”
EWTN: The Propaganda Arm of the Conciliar Establishment
The source of this report, EWTN News, functions as the Pravda of the neo-church. The article is framed as straight news, uncritically transmitting the Pentagon’s talking points (“first win,” “bipartisan support,” “President Trump’s Department of War”) and the conciliar hierarchy’s negotiated surrender. The byline — Amira Abuzeid, “senior editor… with a special interest in bioethics, technology, theology, and religion in public life” — signifies the technocratic, worldly orientation of this media apparatus. The embedded newsletter signup (“Daily/Weekly… I agree to receive communications from EWTN”) completes the picture: the faith commodified, the faithful reduced to subscribers.
EWTN’s promotion of the “Ulma Family” cult, the “Divine Mercy” devotion (condemned writings of Faustina Kowalska on the Index), and the “canonizations” of John Paul II and John XXIII confirms its role as the chief architect of the cultus hominis that has replaced the cultus Dei. It celebrates the “reform” of the military chaplaincy while the true Church — Ecclesia Catholica — languishes in the catacombs, served by true bishops and priests who refuse the missa nova and the novus ordo hierarchy.
Conclusion: Non est potestas nisi a Deo
The “Chaplain In-Service Procurement Program” is a masterpiece of Masonic engineering: the state finances, controls, and deploys “religion” as a strategic asset. The conciliar hierarchy, headed by the usurper antipope Leo XIV (Robert Prevost) and his “archbishops” like Broglio, collaborates willingly, content with jurisdictional crumbs. They have forgotten — or rejected — the doctrine of Quas Primas: “Let rulers of states therefore not refuse public veneration and obedience to the reigning Christ… For what we wrote at the beginning of Our Pontificate about the diminishing authority of law and respect for power… ‘When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed'”.
There is no “Catholic chaplaincy” in the U.S. military. There are only conciliar functionaries administering invalid sacraments to souls deceived into believing they serve Christ while serving Caesar. The only path for a Catholic man is to reject the Novus Ordo, reject the conciliar sect, reject the Masonic state’s idolatrous demands, and cleave to the Tradition of the Fathers, the Tridentine Mass, and the true bishops who preserve the depositum fidei intact. Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus; outside the true Church — which is not the structure occupying the Vatican — there is no priesthood, no sacrifice, no mission.
Source:
Active-duty military service members have new pathway to become chaplains (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 03.11.2026