A Follow-Up On The Mystery Of Ascension Catholic Parish

The Saint Louis Post-Dispatch has published another article, identifying the person responsible for the Legion of Sancta Lana and the advertisement. / image via Pixabay

Let’s talk about Ascension Catholic Parish again.

As I mentioned just a week ago, this typical-looking Catholic parish in the affluent suburb of Chesterfield, Missouri, became the subject of a media uproar when they published a very strange ad in their bulletin. The ad called for young men of the parish to join the “Legion of Sancta Lana” and become militiamen ready to wear a white uniform and take up arms to protect the parish. The Militia would feature combat training for its members, but in the event that nobody happened to attack the Catholics of Chesterfield, they would serve as lectors at Mass. People were, understandably, horrified by this. The story garnered national and international attention. The pastor was mortified and tried to tell everyone that this was all a mistake. “There is no militia!” he insisted.

In my last article, I did a deep dive into any information I could find on Ascension Parish. I found that they seemed like a typical, busy, conservative-leaning parish, exactly what I’d expect to find in Chesterfield. I said that the pastor’s consternation seemed real, and I thought this was all a big mistake. I suspected that the archdiocese might be to blame rather than the parish because the way bulletins are printed means that there’s actually a very good chance that the parish might not find out what ads went into their bulletin until the bulletins are already being distributed. And it turns out that I was partly right and partly wrong.

The Saint Louis Post-Dispatch has published another article, identifying the person responsible for the Legion of Sancta Lana and the advertisement. I was correct that, as far as anyone can tell, this was an honest mistake stemming from the pastor and his staff not looking at the ad in the bulletin until after it was published. I was wrong that it happened at the diocesan and not the parish level.

The person responsible for the Legion of Sancta Lana is a man named John Ray.

The pastor of Ascension Catholic Parish, Monsignor Patrick Hambrough, explained that he’d been approached last month by Ray, who said he wanted to start “a club for other young men in their 20s… to live their faith in a better way.” He gave permission for a flier about the men’s club to be published. He didn’t fully vet what the flier said until it was too late. And I’m not going to sugar-coat this: that was a stupid mistake. Nobody deserves harassment, but I certainly don’t fault the myriad of people who started calling the parish to express their concern. However, Hambrough is atoning for his mistake in the best way I could ask for. He apologized profusely. He expressed embarrassment at the way this “tainted” and “besmirched” the reputation of the parish, and he is setting up a new system of editing the church bulletin and giving parish staff the power to accept or reject ads. If only every parish caught in a scandal handled it so proactively, the Church would be a lot safer all over the country. So, I’m still of the opinion that Ascension Catholic Parish is a relatively normal Missouri parish, probably too right-leaning for my filthy liberal taste, but not a bunch of violent weirdos, and I encourage everyone to stop bothering them about this.

John Ray himself told KMOV 4 the following: “Seeing the closure of Catholic churches and the dwindling congregations across St. Louis, it was my intention to create an organization for young men to push themselves mentally, physically, and spiritually through the practice of discipline, study, and fitness modeled after the military. The use of the term “militia” is regrettable and does not accurately represent the intention of the organization. However, the current state of the Church in The West is equally regrettable and I’m sure we can all agree that we are in desperate times.”

I wanted to find out more about this John Ray. The Post-Dispatch mentions contacting him “at his office at Saint Louis University,” so I tried to use the SLU faculty search, but the People Finder page was down. Fortunately, in a later article, they identified him as the assistant director of marketing and recruitment at SLU’s INTO department, which serves international students. “According to an online biography, the St. Louis native graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in International Studies and has a master’s degree in Defense and Strategic Studies from the University of Texas. Ray studied abroad in Russia and taught English in China and also worked in the United Arab Emirates.” There are so many red flags in that biography I don’t know where to start. If Tom Clancy were alive and writing novels about the present day, Mr. Ray might be a character.

The Post-Dispatch quotes Mr. Ray as calling his use of the word “militia” “regrettable,” and reiterating that he only did this because so many Catholic parishes have closed in Saint Louis. He also dog whistles “The Church in the West” and “desperate times” again, for anyone who missed the point. And he closes with “To those young men who do not practice the One True Faith and can find no fertile soil to plant that mustard seed, brothers, be courageous and COME HOME. I will never stop praying for you,” and signs the missive “A ‘Radical’ Sinner.”

I wonder about that name: the Legion of Sancta Lana. Sancta Lana means “the holy wool.” I’ve looked, but I can’t find any other devotions named “Sancta Lana” in Catholic lore so far. There is a beautiful Eastern Catholic and Orthodox Christian tradition portraying the Virgin Mary holding a spindle in Annunciation icons, because she is the ewe lamb who gave birth to the Lamb of God, but Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches don’t use Latin the way Roman Catholics do; if they have a devotion to the Holy Wool because of Mary, they’d say it in Old Slavonic or Greek. In other circumstances, I would love a devotion to the Holy Wool in honor of the Virgin Mary. I can imagine a “Legion of Sancta Lana” wearing warm cloaks secured with a spindle-shaped brooch, going around doing good deeds in Mary’s name. We could visit hospitals and nursing homes, form a brigade bringing shut-ins groceries. It would be fun. I’m sad that the name has been spoiled by this debacle.

I wonder, not for the first time, what we’re guilty of in America that makes people think a militia of combat-trained men would be a great way to recruit young men to Catholicism. Why is American Catholic culture so enamored of violence? How can we be converted of that? How can we be channels of peace?

I guess if there’s one lesson to be learned from all of this, it’s that you need to carefully proofread your church bulletins.

Let’s all try to make it a better world.

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows an d Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.