by Captain Emily Rainey

Emily Grace Rainey is a former Army Special Operations Officer who deployed to Afghanistan as the leader of a Cultural Support Team, where she conducted dozens of helicopter infil night raids while assigned to the 75th Ranger Regiment. Later she was selected into Psychological Operations, the primary propaganda arm of the Department of Defense and deployed to Iraq as the commander of a tactical PSYOP detachment. The highly decorated Captain Rainey resigned her commission in July of 2021 after receiving career ending reprimands for defying Covid lockdowns as well as peaceably attending the Jan 6 rally in Washington DC. Since leaving the military she bought a homestead and named it Vendee Farms after the stalwart Catholic martyrs of the demonic French Revolution.  She has been on Tucker Carlson.

I’m going to make a safe assumption that you, the reader, follows enough mainstream media to be unsurprised that the military is no longer the bastion of toughness and honor that is portrayed on TV. Top Gun Maverick, although we shall award it 5 stars for entertainment, has no basis in reality, and not because humans can’t survive pulling those kind of Gs. The sad fact is, executing valorous actions in battle against a truly evil enemy has been replaced. Military success is, instead, epitomized by sophists wordsmithing their Situation Reports (SITREPs) to give their bureaucratic bosses a c.y.a. for every action taken. Selfless service traded for benefits. Discipline traded for blind obedience, and Integrity crushed under the jack boot of ‘wokeism’. Look no further for proof of the military’s growing impotence than a by-name roster of the General Officer Corps across all services.

Nothing typifies the moral wasteland present in today’s military better than the religious purity tests servicemembers were subjected to after they submitted religious exemptions for the so-called ‘vaccine’, and the near total denial of every exemption submitted to date. I, myself, know many large traditional Catholic military families who will soon be looking for new jobs and new places to live after being unceremoniously tossed out because of their faith.

Perhaps as the C19 hysterics pass this treatment can be forgiven? After all, there is nary a company on the planet that didn’t discriminate against and abuse their unmasked/unvaxed employees in some form or fashion. Perhaps the military is still the lesser of many evils. At the end of the day love and service of country is encouraged by our Faith. What is really so wrong with a Catholic joining the military? To answer this, I need to address the well-meaning yet totally misguided argument that Catholics should join or stay in the military with an intent to reform or evangelize it. There are several reasons why this is a bad idea.

The military does not resemble a civilian profession. It has no comparison with large private companies or even with other forms of government service. Not only are servicemembers held to an entirely separate justice system that can and does punish those who are unwilling to compromise their values in the name of social or medical experimentation, it actively puts men and women in moral dilemmas as a matter of course. These dilemmas go far beyond the questionable nature of the last 70 years of conflicts; none of which in my estimation resemble ‘just wars’. Whether it is forcing leaders to take an active role in supporting the physical mutilation of a serviceman who wants to be a servicewoman, or the disturbing trend in recent years to suspend posse comitatus in an ‘emergency’ and using active duty troops in the homeland, the military is on the wrong path and signing up now is signing up for unmitigated ‘near occasion of sin’. Only the truly arrogant or the unforgivably naïve can deny this. Be a true Catholic. Be a true Patriot, don’t join the military. In the words of the indefatigable and courageous martyrs, the Cristeros, who used their masculine sense of honor and desire to fight for Holy Victory, ¡Viva Cristo Rey!

CPT Rainey is on Instagram @emilygracerainey and Facebook at emily.rainey.94.  She has been on the Padre Peregrino channel here and here.