On Being a Catholic in the Army

Extract

'We may not look to go to Heaven in feather beds'

St Thomas More

After twenty-one years’ commissioned service in the army, the writer's feelings are largely of regret. Regret at opportunities missed, duties neglected or perfunctorily performed; in short a lively sense of failure.

The failure was in part due to ignorance, and it is in the hope of assisting young officers that this paper is written. Si jeunesse savait…. This is not the place for detailed statistics, even were there any accurate ones available, but this paper is written with the following premises in mind:

1. 1. Catholics are about 14 per cent of the army.

2. 2. Of Catholics in the army, very approximately, one third have abandoned their faith, one third practise intermittently, and one third practise as fully as circumstances and human frailty permit.

3. 3. There is about one priest to two thousand Catholic soldiers.

4. 4. The general religious climate in the services is the same as that in the country at large. Most soldiers would call themselves Christian, though on analysis, as the Incarnation is regarded as an improbable theory at best, a vague theism, is perhaps a better term.