EWTN News portal reports that Rep. Greg Steube, R-Florida, is urging the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to add the crucifix — a cross bearing the body of Christ — to its list of acceptable emblems for veteran headstones at national cemeteries. The article notes that nearly 50 lawmakers, including 42 Republicans and three Democrats, signed a letter requesting this change, arguing that while symbols for atheists, humanists, Wiccans, Jews, Muslims, and Hindus are permitted, the crucifix — representing the faith of nearly 20% of all veterans — is conspicuously absent. The article quotes “Archbishop” Timothy Broglio of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA, expressing support for the measure. The VA has the authority to add emblems administratively, or lawmakers could introduce legislation if the agency does not act. This seemingly innocuous request for a Catholic symbol on headstones is, upon deeper examination, a revealing symptom of the post-conciliar Church’s systematic abandonment of the crucifix as the supreme sign of Catholic identity, and the complicity of its “clergy” in that betrayal.
The Crucifix: Supreme Sign of Catholic Faith, Abandoned by the Conciliar Sect
Let us begin with what the article takes for granted and therefore never interrogates: why is the crucifix absent from VA headstones in the first place? The crucifix — the cross bearing the corpus of Our Lord Jesus Christ — is not merely one “emblem of belief” among many. It is the supreme symbol of the Catholic Faith, the sign of the Redemption, the instrument of our salvation. As Pope Pius XI taught in the encyclical Quas Primas (1925), “You were redeemed not with corruptible gold or silver… but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Peter 1:18-19). The crucifix is the perpetual memorial of that price. To place it on the same level as the symbols of atheism, Wicca, or Islam — as the VA’s list implicitly does — is not neutrality; it is religious indifferentism, the very error condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), Proposition 15: “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true,” and Proposition 77: “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship.”
The article presents the VA’s list as though it were a neutral, even generous, accommodation of religious diversity. But this framing is itself a capitulation to the modernist principle of Dignitatis Humanae — the conciliar declaration on religious freedom — which Pius IX explicitly condemned as Proposition 79 of the Syllabus: “Moreover, it is false that the civil liberty of every form of worship, and the full power, given to all, of overtly and publicly manifesting any opinions whatsoever and thoughts, conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people, and to propagate the pest of indifferentism.” The VA’s emblem list is a practical application of this condemned principle: all religions are equal, all symbols are equivalent, and the crucifix is merely one option among many. This is not religious freedom; it is the legal erasure of Catholic truth.
The Silence That Condemns: What the Article Refuses to Say
The article’s most damning feature is not what it says, but what it omits. There is no mention — not a single word — of the post-conciliar Church’s own systematic removal of crucifixes from its churches, schools, and institutions since 1958. The conciliar revolution, under the guise of “ecumenism” and “dialogue,” has seen crucifixes replaced by plain crosses, or removed entirely, in Catholic hospitals, schools, and even churches. The “Second Vatican Council” — that watershed of apostasy — produced a liturgical reform that, in practice, diminished the prominence of the crucifix in favor of a stripped-down, Protestantized aesthetic. The “new Mass” of Paul VI (the antipope Montini) often features a plain cross without the corpus, as though the death of Christ were an embarrassment to be softened.
Consider the bitter irony: Rep. Steube and his colleagues must petition a secular government agency for the right to place a crucifix on a headstone, while the “Catholic Church” itself — or rather, the conciliar sect occupying the Vatican — has spent decades removing crucifixes from its own sacred spaces in the name of “ecumenical sensitivity.” The article quotes “Archbishop” Broglio supporting the measure, but Broglio — a product and servant of the post-conciliar apparatus — has never led a campaign to restore the crucifix to its rightful place in every Catholic church, school, and hospital in the United States. His support for a VA emblem is a safe, political gesture that costs the conciliar sect nothing and changes nothing about its own internal apostasy.
As St. Pius X warned in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907), Proposition 65: “Contemporary Catholicism cannot be reconciled with true knowledge without transforming it into a certain dogmaless Christianity, that is, into a broad and liberal Protestantism.” The removal of crucifixes from Catholic spaces is precisely this transformation — a Protestantization of Catholic worship, carried out not by Luther or Calvin, but by the very men who claim to be the successors of the Apostles.
The Crucifix and the Kingship of Christ
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, established the Feast of Christ the King precisely to combat the secularism and laicism that seek to remove Christ — and His cross — from public life. “His reign, namely, extends not only to Catholic nations or to those who, by receiving baptism according to law, belong to the Church… but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” The crucifix on a veteran’s headstone is not merely a personal devotional preference; it is a public confession that Jesus Christ is King, that His sacrifice is the hope of the dying and the dead, and that no earthly authority — not the VA, not the state, not the conciliar sect — has the right to suppress that confession.
Yet the article frames the issue entirely in the language of secular “religious freedom” and “First Amendment” rights. This is itself a capitulation. The Catholic Church does not ask for the crucifix as a matter of constitutional right; she demands it as a matter of divine right. As Pius XI declared: “The Church, established by Christ as a perfect society, demands for itself by a right belonging to it, which it cannot renounce, full freedom and independence from secular authority.” The crucifix is not a “belief emblem” to be negotiated with bureaucrats; it is the sign of the King who has all power in heaven and on earth (Matt. 28:18). To petition the state for permission to display it is already to concede the state’s authority over the Church — a concession no true Catholic should make.
The Complicity of the “Military Archdiocese”
The article quotes “Archbishop” Broglio as supporting the measure, but it fails to ask the obvious question: why has the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA, not already made this a priority? This “archdiocese” — a creation of the conciar military-industrial complex — has existed for decades. It has chaplains, institutions, and resources. If the crucifix is truly “the emblem of belief that most accurately represents the faith of nearly 20% of all veterans,” why has this “archdiocese” not demanded its inclusion on VA headstones years ago? Why must a Protestant congressman — Steube is identified as Protestant by Pew Research — lead the charge?
The answer is clear: the conciliar “clergy” have no interest in the crucifix as a public symbol of Catholic kingship. Their “military archdiocese” is a chaplaincy service designed to provide generic “spiritual care” to soldiers, not to confess Christ the King before the nations. Their “chaplains” serve alongside Protestant ministers, Jewish rabbis, and Muslim imams in a framework of religious pluralism that treats the crucifix as one option among many. This is the ecumenism condemned by Pope Pius XI in Mortalium Animos (1928): “The union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it, for in the past they have unhappily left it.” The conciliar “military archdiocese” does not seek the return of non-Catholics to the one true Church; it seeks to make Catholic soldiers comfortable in a pluralist framework that denies the Church’s exclusive claim to truth.
The Deeper Apostasy: A Church Without the Cross
The article’s treatment of the crucifix as a political issue — a matter of congressional letters and VA administrative procedures — reveals the depth of the post-conciliar apostasy. The crucifix is not a political symbol. It is the sign of the Redemption, the instrument of our salvation, the throne upon which Christ conquered sin and death. As the Church has always taught, “We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumbling block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness” (1 Cor. 1:23). The crucifix is meant to be a stumbling block — a scandal to the world that proclaims the absolute, exclusive, and sovereign claim of Jesus Christ over every soul, every nation, every cemetery, every headstone.
But the conciar sect has no interest in scandal. It seeks accommodation, not confrontation. It prefers the plain cross — a vague symbol of “hope” or “sacrifice” that offends no one — to the crucifix, which proclaims that God Himself died on a Roman instrument of torture for the sins of the world. The plain cross is ecumenical; the crucifix is Catholic. The plain cross can hang in a Protestant church, a Masonic lodge, or a VA chapel; the crucifix belongs only to the one true Church of Christ.
As St. Robert Bellarmine taught — and as the sedevacantist position articulated in the source documents confirms — a manifest heretic loses his office ipso facto. The men who have led the conciliar revolution — from John XXIII through Leo XIV (Robert Prevost) — have promoted religious indifferentism, false ecumenism, and the Protestantization of Catholic worship. They have, in practice if not in explicit words, denied the very truths that the crucifix represents. Their “support” for the crucifix on VA headstones is not a confession of faith; it is a political maneuver that conceals their deeper apostasy.
Conclusion: The Crucifix Demands More Than a Headstone
The request to place crucifixes on veteran headstones is, in itself, a reasonable and just demand. But it is a demand that exposes the bankruptcy of the entire post-conciliar framework. A Church that has removed crucifixes from its own churches cannot credibly demand them on headstones. A “clergy” that has embraced religious indifferentism cannot credibly claim the crucifix as a unique symbol of Catholic identity. A “Church” that has denied the social kingship of Christ cannot credibly insist on His symbol in a national cemetery.
The crucifix belongs on every Catholic altar, in every Catholic home, on every Catholic soldier’s chest, and — yes — on every Catholic veteran’s headstone. But it belongs there not because the VA permits it, not because Congress legislates it, but because Jesus Christ is King, and no earthly authority has the right to suppress the sign of His reign. Until the conciliar sect repents of its apostasy, restores the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in its integrity, and confesses the social kingship of Christ over all nations, its “support” for the crucifix is nothing more than a political gesture that changes nothing and redeems no one.
As Pius XI concluded Quas Primas: “When all willingly accept the reign of Christ and obey Him, and every tongue will confess that our Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.” That confession — not a VA form — is what the crucifix demands. And that confession is precisely what the conciliar sect, in its entirety, has refused to make.
Source:
Lawmaker calls for allowing crucifix symbol on veterans’ headstones (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 15.04.2026