Go into almost any Catholic church in this country and you will find two flags displayed there, the white and yellow papal flag and, usually in a like position on the opposite side of the church, the red, white, and blue symbol of the Washington government.

There seem to be few rules governing the practice. The U.S. bishops conference does say that parishes, if they choose to display it, should find a location away from the sanctuary, but flags are often up front, and I have seen them frequently placed on the sanctuary side of what remains of pre-Vatican II altar rails.

I have traveled a bit in my life and, at least in those countries where I have spent more than a month, Spain, France, Portugal, and Canada, I don’t remember ever seeing national banners inside churches, let alone near the altar. Friends tell me they have seen flags in churches in Mexico, strangely so, because that nation’s government has in the past bitterly persecuted Catholicism, and given the Church a healthy supply of local martyrs. In our own country, the practice seems to have picked up steam during and after WW II, probably a sign that the nationalist disease was making inroads among the faithful, undermining the healthy distrust of government once learned by their ancestors in Europe.

I have never liked the custom. Even as an adolescent it struck me that we already had to render enough to Caesar outside church without bringing his symbols inside to further distract us. I thought then that I caught the faint scent of idolatry, that it wasn’t all that hard for a worshipper to conclude that the Cross and Old Glory were but two faces of the same coin. In my naiveté, nonetheless, I concluded that at least the American government seemed generally to be on God’s side of issues. This, of course, was well before Roe v Wade and a host of other decisions and policies totally at odds with Catholic social teaching, when not in flat contradiction to basic tenets of my faith.

But it was George Bush who finally pushed me to act on my growing discomfort with this circumstance. This morning I wrote my pastor requesting he remove the government’s flag from our church. Last night, I told him, the president clearly placed us on the moral plane occupied once by Germany, specifically, in September 1939 when the Luftwaffe bombed Warsaw in the opening stage of that aggression. Pope John Paul II has condemned Bush’s planned aggression in the strongest terms. The head of his Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Archbishop Renato Raffaele Martino, declared just yesterday in relation to U.S. war plans that “War is a crime against peace which cries for vengeance before God.” Keeping all this in mind, I asked him, wouldn’t it be best to retire the federal banner at least till our armies stop killing Iraqis?

My hope, of course, is that he will understand that Bush’s actions have sullied the flag, and that to bring it back would be an insult to God. Personally, I believe Christ would have treated today’s warmongers and their symbols with the same gentleness he once reserved for the money changers.

March 19, 2003

John Grimes [send him mail] is a retired high-school Spanish teacher in New Hampshire.