What habits are conducive to the practice of Christian virtues, and how does one develop them? Justice Scalia’s high school—Xavier High School in Manhattan—is a Jesuit institution with a military regiment. When he returned there to speak in 2011, the justice reflected on what he called the “union between faith and service.” Justice Scalia argued that because military service helps form the necessary habit of courage, it “is not only appropriate for Christians, it is conducive to Christian virtue.”
Men of Xavier: Many thanks for your warm and generous welcome. It is my great pleasure to be with you this evening to celebrate the Regiment and to recognize the achievements of those being honored with awards. The Regiment, as I remember it, is a place where awards are earned; so I have no doubt you and your families are deservedly proud of what you have accomplished. Congratulations.
Whatever regimental glory I won when I graduated in 1953 is unrecorded. The one distinctively military item I recall is that I rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel, commanding officer of the marching band. I count that an honor because traditionally the post had been held by a major. Xavier’s official history—published in 1997 on the occasion of the school’s 150th birthday—notes only one achievement of mine: while an underclassman, I represented Xavier on a panel of students from schools throughout the city on a Sunday-morning television show called Mind Your Manners. It was reported afterward that my “keen sensible answers, well seasoned with a bit of humor, stole the show.” I think that may have been the peak of my favorable press coverage.
My talk this evening is about the legacy to which you and I are heirs. Xavier High School was the most formative institution in my life; and as I look back on those times, fifty-eight years later, it is the Regiment I remember most. Then as now, military training was the distinctive tradition that set Xavier apart (and Xavier men apart) from the other Jesuit schools in the city—a link to the broader tradition of American military academies. And situated in New York, in the heart of American Catholicism, the Regiment has also been a visible sign of the patriotism of the Catholic citizens of this country.
Xavier’s contribution to the armed forces began even before it became a military school. At the outset of the Civil War, about half the population of the city was made up of Catholics; and in those days, to put it mildly, Catholics were not universally beloved, or even trusted, by their Protestant brethren. Military service on behalf of the Union did much to dispel that mistrust. In 1861, eight regiments of predominantly Catholic New Yorkers volunteered to fight for the Union. Many of them were Irish—no surprise there, since the Irish national anthem begins, “Soldiers are we.”
Although Xavier was small and young then, she sent a number of her sons to the Union Army, including James Rowan O’Beirne, who won the Medal of Honor for holding a line under withering enemy fire, and later, as provost marshal of Washington, led the manhunt for Lincoln’s assassins.
Xavier also sent three of her priests to serve as chaplains. One of them, Father Michael Nash, had been a prefect at Xavier, and evidently a strict one. Father Nash was assigned to minister to a famously rough company of volunteers called Wilson’s Zouaves. When they first met Father Nash, Wilson’s Zouaves had less interest in confession than they did in drinking and brawling. But Father Nash stuck it out, and by the time the whole company had sailed to Florida, where they were to serve, they carried him ashore on their shoulders. According to an 1897 history of Xavier, thanks to Father Nash the Zouaves “proved to be true patriots, obedient and brave, a bulwark of the country, the terror of the enemy.” If that seems to you a bit much to attribute to a chaplain, you should know the aforementioned history was written by the Alumni Association. But whatever its motivations, the account properly recognizes that the military service of Xavier’s priests was in the best tradition of the Church and the Society of Jesus. It says:
Called from the professor’s chair to bear all the hardships of military life, they showed again and again that the sons of the knightly Loyola have inherited the undaunted soul of their founder….By their faithful work as Christian priests they infused into their men greater and nobler and purer patriotism. On the field of battle, scorning fear and danger, they sought the wounded and dying amidst flying bullets, and were good Samaritans alike to Catholic and non-Catholic, to friend and foe.
A few decades later, Xavier’s military tradition began in earnest. By the 1890s, Xavier would become “the Catholic military school.” Military training became compulsory for all students; and the Regiment became the public image of the school in New York. Captain John Drum, an army officer who would later give his life on San Juan Hill, organized students into separate companies and taught them military drill. A fife-and-bugle corps was established, and Xavier’s cadets began to assume a place of honor in New York City parades on public holidays like St. Patrick’s Day, Decoration Day (what we now call Memorial Day), and Columbus Day. Those honors culminated in 1897, Xavier’s golden-jubilee year, when the corps of cadets was invited to participate in the dedication of Grant’s Tomb. An account written that year records that “[t]he department of Military Science has become more and more a part of the life of the College.”
I have no doubt those first Xavier cadets played a small but important role in reinforcing public perceptions of Catholic loyalty and civic virtue. The need for such reinforcement should not be underestimated. In the late nineteenth century, religious hostilities were real and deep. In 1884, Republican presidential candidate James G. Blaine came to New York to attend a morning meeting. Blaine looked good to win the election, which was just days away. But on that fated morning, a Presbyterian minister named Samuel Burchard rose to give a speech supporting Blaine. Burchard assailed the Democrats as “the party whose antecedents have been rum, Romanism, and rebellion.” Blaine failed to rebuke Burchard, and Irish Catholics in this city, as you may imagine, did not care for that a’tall a’tall. They turned out in droves and defeated Blaine in New York by just over one thousand votes—costing him the election.
That was the era when Xavier’s students began to put on the cadet’s uniform, and I think it improved the public’s perception of Catholics. For once, the New York Times agrees that I am right—even if you have to go back to May 31, 1894, to read about it. The Times published a rebuke of an anti-Catholic organization called the American Protective Association and its leader, the Reverend Madison C. Peters. The APA and Peters accused Catholics of “Romanizing the army and navy” and proposed to prevent them from holding public office or command positions in the armed forces, on the grounds (I suppose) that if given a battalion to command, a Catholic colonel might turn the unit over to the Pope. To its credit the Times published a piece entitled “Object Lesson for Bigots: Catholic and Protestant in the Memorial Parade.” The article reminded the reader that the previous day New York had hosted a parade for the Grand Army of the Republic—a procession of veterans of the Civil War. The procession comprised “men of all creeds and nationalities who had followed the Stars and Stripes together in many a hard fight regardless whether the men in front of them or behind them were Roman Catholics or Protestants, Jews or Gentiles.” The article described a memorial service that had been held that day in the Church of St. Francis Xavier, at which “the students of [the college], to the number of 300,” who had been “under the instruction and drill of Capt. Drum of the United States Army,” “appeared in full military costume in honor of the occasion.” The Times continued:
It is instructive to turn from these terrible and distorted pictures of the Roman Catholics and their Church, as Mr. Peters draws them, to the reality as witnessed yesterday at St. Francis Xavier’s….The great edifice was crowded to the doors with devout worshippers, who were privileged to listen to a sermon that was as full of glowing, broad-minded patriotism as are the sermons of Mr. Peters full of prejudice and bigotry.
That sermon was delivered right here, in this church. It reminded those present that obedience to lawful authority is the religious duty of every Catholic, and that Catholics had proved their loyalty on the battlefield.
It is easy for us, more than a century later, to take for granted that no serious person seriously doubts the patriotism of his Catholic neighbors—though the ugly old slanders do occasionally rear their heads. But we should not forget the small debt we owe to the members of this Regiment who were willing to become conspicuous examples of Catholics living their faith by serving their country. Probably the most striking symbol of that union between faith and service was the military Mass. One historian reports that by the end of the nineteenth century (and partly as a protest against the Reverend Peters and his APA), Xavier began holding special military Masses to open the month of May and its special devotions to Mary. At that Mass, “the cadets processed into church and the officers sat in the front pews with their swords unsheathed—imitating the crusading knights of the past—during the reading of the Gospel and the profession of the Creed. A trumpet sounded during the Consecration of the bread and wine.” It was ceremonial flair with a purpose. The tradition was still alive during my days here. On First Fridays the regiment would attend morning Mass in dress blues (dress blues were the uniform of the day on Fridays). Just before the consecration, the regimental officers would march down the center aisle in a column of twos, swords drawn and resting on their right shoulders; the front of the column would divide left and right at the altar rail, producing a single line across the transepts and forming, with the officers remaining in the main aisle, a cross of regimental blue. The elevation of the Host would be announced by a bugle’s flourishes instead of a bell, and the officers, from front to rear, would present swords.
By the 1930s, the Regiment had become a part of the pageantry of the city. In 1932, New York held the biggest parade since World War I to celebrate the bicentennial of George Washington’s birthday. Xavier was the only high school unit to participate—a great honor. The entire Regiment assembled for the parade, stretched out for three or four blocks east of Fifth Avenue. They did draw dreary duty, however: they marched last, so they were stuck where they stood from morning until late afternoon. The whole regiment continued to march in major New York parades during my days here—and its place in the pageant had improved considerably. We used to march right behind the first military unit in the parade, the Fighting 69th, New York City’s regiment. I will never forget participating in what I have been told was the last real ticker-tape parade, before the ticker-tape machine became technologically obsolete: the parade celebrating General Douglas MacArthur’s return from Japan.
Over the years, it became commonplace to see Xavier cadets in their ROTC uniforms, or in dress blues on Fridays, on the subways from four boroughs (Staten Islanders took the ferry), on the trains from New Jersey, and even from as far up the Hudson as Verplanck, New York (one of my classmates was from there). I was a member of the JV rifle team, so I occasionally had to bring my .22 carbine on the subway from Queens to school, or to the gunsmith in Brooklyn. (Imagine that today.) Periodically, on the occasion of major liturgical celebrations, the police would stop traffic on 16th Street while the whole Regiment marched, to the music of the band and the drum-and-bugle corps, down the impressive front steps of the school, column left along 16th Street, and column left again into the Church of St. Francis Xavier for Mass; and afterward we would parade back—all in dress blues.
But the Regiment’s most important legacy, of course, was not pageantry; it was discipline, and duty, and sacrifice. Nearly a thousand of Xavier’s sons served in the First World War—including Captain Drum’s son, Hugh, a Xavier man who eventually rose to the rank of lieutenant general. World War II saw nearly fifteen hundred Xavier men fight for their country, fifty-four of whom gave their lives. Like Father Nash in the Civil War, ten Jesuit teachers and nine lay faculty left the school to serve. Historian Helen McNulty writes that Xavier was “one of the few high schools in the country which had thoroughly prepared students to participate in modern military warfare….It is believed that no high school in the United States made a greater contribution in manpower and effort during WWII than Xavier High School.” I believe it. And at a military Mass in 1947, with the war over, Cardinal Spellman—who was archbishop of both New York and the United States military—read aloud Pope Pius XII’s handwritten letter to Xavier’s president, Father Tynan, offering the Holy Father’s “prayerful remembrance…of those whose courage and self-sacrifices made the proud present possible.”
But as you know, the tradition of Xavier as a thoroughly military academy did not survive the anti-military sentiment of the Vietnam War. I lamented when the school announced that the Regiment would no longer be compulsory, and I continue to think that was a mistake. This country has a rich tradition of military schools. It was born partly of necessity—since with independence from Britain came the need to have an army and to run it competently—but it was also born partly of democratic theory. Congress first authorized the creation of the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1802. But that academy, of course, could not educate the whole country in military matters—and in those days, the whole country might well be called upon to serve as militia. Following the War of 1812, the Committee on Militia of the House of Representatives reported to Congress its belief that
the safety of a republic depends as much upon the equality in the use of arms amongst its citizens, as upon the equality of rights; nothing can be more dangerous in such a government than to have a knowledge of the military art confined to a part of the people—for sooner or later that part will govern.
Military schools followed different paths in the North and South. In the South, it became common for states to establish and fund public military academies. Two of them—the Virginia Military Institute and South Carolina’s Citadel—were resurrected after the Civil War and continue an illustrious tradition. But in the North, states took a more laissez-faire approach. Private military schools sprang up, including many run by religious denominations. Xavier was one of a number of Catholic military secondary schools established in the nineteenth century—including LaSalle Military Academy on Long Island, and Canisius College (Jesuit, of course) in Buffalo. All Hallows College in Utah was a military school, and Catholic universities, such as Notre Dame and St. Louis University (Jesuit), had compulsory military training. It was, as I have said, part of the long connection between Catholics and the armed forces. West Point has had a disproportionate share of Roman Catholics, enough to justify a separate chapel since 1899.
Xavier has been a prominent part of that Catholic tradition. Catholicism, of course, has never had that contempt for the soldier that came to the fore in Vietnam-era America. The Roman centurion at the Crucifixion who said, “Truly this was the son of God,” was not one of the bad guys. Nor the centurion who asked Jesus to heal his servant without the necessity of going there (the famous line, echoed at Mass, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my servant will be healed”). Of him, Jesus said he had not seen such faith in Israel. And while Jesus said that he who lives by the sword will die by the sword, He did not regard soldiers as men who lived by the sword. His advice to them was not “Throw down your arms,” but “Be content with your wages.” (The real villains in the Gospels, I am sorry to say, were the lawyers—though to be fair they were lawyers in a theocratic state, so that their closest modern equivalent is probably, imagine that!, theologians.) Two of the earliest and most venerated of Christian martyrs, St. Sebastian and St. George, were soldiers of Diocletian. And come to think of it, Ignatius Loyola—“the knightly Loyola,” as the Alumni Association puff piece I quoted earlier described him—was a soldier. And his successors are still called generals.
The defining virtue of a soldier is courage. What chastity is to a nun, or humility to a friar, courage is to a soldier. In The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis imagines a senior demon, Screwtape, sending advice to his nephew Wormwood on how to ensnare the soul of an Englishman living on the brink of World War II. Screwtape tells Wormwood that the demons have managed to fool mankind into believing that many virtues are vices—that modesty is prudishness, for example. But that has not worked for the virtue of courage.
We have made men proud of most vices, but not of cowardice. Whenever we have almost succeeded in doing so, the Enemy [that is, God] permits a war or an earthquake or some other calamity, and at once courage becomes so obviously lovely and important even in human eyes that all our work is undone, and there is still at least one vice of which they feel genuine shame.
I believe that military service is not only appropriate for Christians, it is conducive to Christian virtue. I know of no other profession where one commits to laying down his life for his friends. I have nine children, whom I have sent to many different colleges, including two Jesuit colleges. I can say in all honesty that the school which took most seriously, which made a large part of each day’s instruction, the task of moral formation—of developing character, and instilling fidelity to duty, honor, country—was West Point. And training oneself to be a soldier, preparing oneself to make that sacrifice if needed, is not just one more interchangeable way for a Christian to develop good character. Let no one demean it. It is good training indeed.
Let me leave you with this illustration: There was a Xavier man in the class above me named Donald Cook. On New Year’s Eve, 1964, Marine Captain Donald Cook was taken prisoner by the Viet Cong—and remained their prisoner until his death. For his conduct as a prisoner of war, Cook was posthumously promoted to colonel and awarded the Medal of Honor. His citation for conspicuous gallantry reads in part:
Despite the fact that by doing so he would bring about harsher treatment for himself, [Cook] established himself as the senior prisoner, even though in actuality he was not. Repeatedly assuming more than his share of [responsibility for] their health, Colonel Cook willingly and unselfishly put the interests of his comrades before that of his own well-being and, eventually, his life. Giving more needy men his medicine and drug allowance while constantly nursing them, he risked infection from contagious diseases while in a rapidly deteriorating state of health. This unselfish and exemplary conduct, coupled with his refusal to stray even the slightest from the Code of Conduct, earned him the deepest respect from not only his fellow prisoners, but his captors as well. Rather than negotiate for his own release or better treatment, he steadfastly frustrated attempts by the Viet Cong to break his indomitable spirit and passed this same resolve on to the men with whose well-being he so closely associated himself. Knowing his refusals would prevent his release prior to the end of the war, and also knowing his chances for prolonged survival would be small in the event of continued refusal, he chose nevertheless to adhere to a Code of Conduct far above that which could be expected. His personal valor and exceptional spirit of loyalty in the face of almost certain death reflected the highest credit upon Colonel Cook, the Marine Corps, and the United States Naval Service.
It also reflected great credit on the Regiment. To return to C. S. Lewis (I can’t resist): Screwtape warns Wormwood that a war can be dangerous for their satanic cause, because it awakens men from their moral stupor. He says:
This, indeed, is probably one of the Enemy’s motives for creating a dangerous world—a world in which moral issues really come to the point. He sees as well as you do that courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty, or mercy, which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful till it became risky.
The indispensability of courage is easier for the soldier to appreciate, whose very life may depend upon the courage of his comrades. Its value is harder to appreciate in the layman’s endless days of peace, where the type of courage that is called for is rarely the physical courage to risk one’s life. But for most of us, that is the long fight we are in for—courageously setting things right in the world God has created, starting with ourselves. The habit of courage is not acquired by study; it is forged by practice. And there is no better practice than the Regiment. By demanding obedience to duty, manly honor and discipline, frank and forthright acknowledgment of error, respect for ranks above and solicitude for ranks below, assumption of responsibility including the responsibility of command, willingness to sacrifice for the good of the corps—by demanding all those difficult things the Regiment develops moral courage, which, in the Last Accounting we must give, is the kind that matters. That is why military training is not, and never will be, just one more interchangeable way for young Christians to develop good character or learn to serve others. It is one of the noblest ways, and never let anyone tell you otherwise.