EWTN News portal reports on a National Catholic Register article suggesting activities to teach children about Memorial Day. The piece, authored by Jen Fulwiler and updated for 2026, proposes six activities ranging from crafts to prayers for fallen soldiers. While seemingly innocuous, the article reveals the profound theological anemia of the post-conciliar sect, which has reduced the supernatural order to mere civic sentimentality, stripped of any reference to the Church’s immutable teaching on the salvation of souls, the reality of eternal judgment, and the primacy of the Catholic faith as the sole ark of salvation.
The Reduction of Sacred Duty to Sentimental Naturalism
The article in question, sourced from the National Catholic Register and republished by EWTN News, presents itself as a guide for Catholic parents to instill in children the meaning of Memorial Day. Yet, upon rigorous examination through the lens of integral Catholic theology, it becomes evident that what is offered is not Catholic catechesis but a diluted, naturalistic program indistinguishable from secular civic education. The very premise — teaching children about a national holiday without anchoring it in the fullness of Catholic doctrine — is symptomatic of the post-conciliar catastrophe, where the supernatural mission of the Church has been supplanted by a horizontal, humanitarian ethos.
The article’s six suggestions include: creating memorial flower boats, writing letters to soldiers, visiting veterans’ cemeteries, making pins for veterans, baking an American flag cake, and saying a prayer for the souls of departed soldiers. On the surface, these activities appear benign, even praiseworthy. But the devil, as the Fathers teach, is in the details — and, more critically, in the omissions. What is conspicuously absent from this entire program is any mention of the Catholic Church as the one true Church outside of which there is no salvation (*Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus*), any reference to the necessity of the state of grace for eternal life, any acknowledgment of the reality of Hell, or any teaching on the distinction between the just and the unjust, the faithful and the infidel, in the sight of God.
The Flower Boat: A Pagan Ritual Disguised as Remembrance
The first suggestion — creating a “memorial flower boat” based on the Navy’s tradition of “floating flowers out into the sea” — is particularly revealing. The article acknowledges that this practice is rooted in a naval tradition, not in Catholic liturgy or piety. The Church has her own sacred rites for the dead: the Requiem Mass, the Absolution of the Dead, the prayers of the commendation, and the sprinkling of holy water. These are not mere cultural customs but sacramental actions instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church for the salvation of souls. To substitute a folk tradition — one that bears uncomfortable resemblance to pagan offerings to water spirits — for the Church’s own sacred rites is not piety but superstition. As Pope Pius XI taught in *Quas Primas*, the reign of Christ extends over all aspects of life, including how we honor the dead. The Church does not need to borrow from secular or pagan traditions; she possesses the fullness of means for the sanctification of every human reality.
Letters to Soldiers: Patriotism Without the Faith
The suggestion to write letters to soldiers is presented in purely naturalistic terms: “Talk to your children about what our men and women in uniform do for our country.” But what does the Church teach about war and military service? The just war doctrine, articulated by St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, requires not merely national defense but a morally ordered cause, legitimate authority, and right intention. The article makes no distinction between just and unjust wars, between defense of the Catholic faith and service to a secular state whose laws are increasingly hostile to God. The *Syllabus of Errors* of Pope Pius IX condemns the proposition that “the violation of any solemn action… is not only not blamable but is altogether lawful and worthy of the highest praise when done through love of country” (Proposition 64). To teach children to honor soldiers without this moral framework is to baptize nationalism — a sin the Church has consistently condemned when it supersedes loyalty to God and His Church.
The Cemetery Visit: Where Is the Church’s Liturgy?
Visiting a veterans’ cemetery with flowers is presented as an act of piety. But the Church’s own tradition for visiting cemeteries is not a casual stroll with a bouquet — it is the recitation of the *De Profundis*, the *Requiem Aeternam*, and the prayers for the faithful departed prescribed in the Rituale Romanum. The Church teaches that the souls in Purgatory are assisted by the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, by prayers, by indulgences, and by almsdeeds offered on their behalf. The article is entirely silent on these supernatural means of assistance. It reduces the care of souls to a social gesture, a civic courtesy, as if the dead were merely to be remembered rather than actively aided by the Communion of Saints. This is the theology of the graveyard, not the theology of the Resurrection.
The Flag Cake: Sacramentalizing Nationalism
Perhaps the most telling suggestion is the American flag cake, where children are to “chat about what the American flag represents and all the people who have given their lives to defend it.” The American flag represents a nation whose founding principles include religious indifferentism — the very error condemned by Pope Pius IX in the *Syllabus* (Proposition 15: “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true”). The United States was founded not on the Catholic faith but on Enlightenment liberalism, on the very principles of naturalism and rationalism that the Church has consistently condemned. To teach children to venerate the flag as a sacred symbol — and to bake a cake in its shape as a quasi-liturgical act — is to engage in a form of civil religion that rivals the worship due to God alone. Pope Leo XIII, in his encyclical *Immortale Dei*, warned against the separation of Church and State and the elevation of civil authority to a role that belongs to God alone. The flag cake is a domestic catechism of the very errors the Church has condemned.
The Prayer: A Single Grammatical Supernatural Obligation in an Entirely Naturalistic Program
Of the six suggestions, only one — “say a prayer for the souls of departed soldiers” — explicitly references the supernatural order. But even this is presented in the most generic, minimalist terms: “Simply take a few moments today and have your family pause to say a prayer.” What prayer? The *Requiem Aeternal*? The *De Profundis*? A decade of the Rosary for the repose of souls? The article does not specify, because specificity would require theological competence — something the post-conciliar sect has systematically eradicated. A single sentence of generic prayer in an article of otherwise entirely naturalistic content is not Catholic piety; it is a fig leaf covering the nakedness of secularism.
The Fundamental Omission: Christ the King and the Salvation of Souls
The gravest defect of this article is not what it includes but what it omits. There is no mention of:
– **The necessity of the Catholic faith for salvation.** The fallen soldiers may have been Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, or atheist. The Church teaches that only those who die in the state of grace and in communion with the Catholic Church can attain eternal life. To pray for “all” the dead without distinction is to deny the reality of heresy, schism, and infidelity — errors condemned by the First Vatican Council and by Pope Pius XII in *Mystici Corporis*.
– **The reality of judgment.** Every soul, upon death, faces the Particular Judgment, where it is assigned to Heaven, Purgatory, or Hell. The article treats death in service as if it were inherently meritorious before God. But the Church teaches that it is not death but the state of the soul at death that determines eternal destiny. A soldier who dies in mortal sin — regardless of how heroic his service — faces eternal damnation. To omit this truth is to offer false comfort and to deny the gravity of sin.
– **The duty of the state toward Christ.** Pope Pius XI, in *Quas Primas*, explicitly teaches that rulers and governments have the duty to publicly honor Christ and to order their nations according to God’s commandments. The United States, by its founding and its current laws, has systematically rejected this duty. To celebrate Memorial Day without acknowledging this fundamental disorder is to be complicit in the very secularism that Pius XI identified as the “plague that poisons human society.”
– **The Church’s own means of grace.** There is no mention of having a Requiem Mass offered for the souls of the fallen, no mention of gaining indulgences for the dead, no mention of the sacraments as the means by which soldiers might have prepared their souls for judgment. The entire program is constructed as if the Church’s sacramental and liturgical life were irrelevant to the question of how we remember the dead.
The Post-Conciliar Captivity: EWTN and the National Catholic Register
The fact that this article appears on EWTN News — an organization that, despite its claims of orthodoxy, operates within the structures of the conciliar sect and recognizes the authority of the antipopes from John XXIII to the current usurper Leo XIV — is itself instructive. EWTN, like the National Catholic Register, has consistently refused to draw the necessary conclusions from the post-conciliar apostasy. It presents a Catholicism that is compatible with American civil religion, with patriotic nationalism, and with the very secularism that the pre-conciliar popes condemned. This article is a perfect specimen of that captivity: it offers a “Catholic” program that is, in substance, indistinguishable from what any Protestant church or secular civic organization might produce, with the addition of a single generic prayer.
The post-conciliar sect has systematically replaced the supernatural with the natural, the sacred with the secular, the eternal with the temporal. This Memorial Day article is not an aberration but a symptom — a small, domestic manifestation of the same apostasy that has produced the Novus Ordo Missae, false ecumenism, religious liberty, and the cult of man. It is the Catholicism of the abomination of desolation: a temple that retains the outward form of religion but has been emptied of its divine content.
Conclusion: The Duty of Catholic Parents
Catholic parents who wish to teach their children the meaning of Memorial Day — or any civic observance — must do so within the framework of the Church’s immutable teaching. This means:
1. **Teaching the full doctrine of the faith**, including the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation, the reality of sin and judgment, and the distinction between the just and the unjust.
2. **Having Requiem Masses offered** for the souls of the faithful departed, particularly those who may have died without the fullness of the faith.
3. **Praying specifically and liturgically** — the *De Profundis*, the *Requiem Aeternal*, the Rosary for the dead — rather than offering generic, contentless “prayers.”
4. **Refusing to baptize nationalism** or to treat the symbols of secular states as quasi-sacred objects of veneration.
5. **Recognizing that the post-conciliar structures** — including EWTN, the National Catholic Register, and all organizations that recognize the antipopes — are not reliable sources of Catholic teaching and must be approached with the utmost caution.
The souls of the dead deserve more than flower boats and flag cakes. They deserve the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the prayers of the true Church, and the uncompromising proclamation of the full Catholic faith. Anything less is not piety but betrayal.
Source:
6 easy activities to help children understand Memorial Day (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 25.05.2026