“God Deserves All the Glory” — No, Mr. Hegseth. He Does Not.

At a Pentagon press briefing yesterday morning, Secretary Pete Hegseth declared a “decisive military victory” in Iran and proclaimed, “Our troops, our American warriors, deserve the credit for this day, but God deserves all the glory. Tens of thousands of sorties, refuelings, and strikes carried out under the protection of divine providence — a massive effort with miraculous protection.”

I am a Catholic priest. I have spent nearly 52 years at the altar. And I am telling you plainly: what Mr. Hegseth said yesterday morning is not faith. It is blasphemy dressed in the language of devotion.

To say that God deserves the glory for a bombing campaign that struck more than 13,000 targets in less than 40 days is to conscript the Almighty into the service of the Pentagon’s press office. It is to make God the chaplain of a war machine. It is precisely the kind of theological arrogance that has soaked every unjust war in history with the blood of the innocent — and the rhetoric of the righteous.

This is not new. This is not surprising from a man who has publicly prayed for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy” and for God to “break the teeth of the ungodly.” A man with crusader tattoos and a theology of holy war is not a man equipped to speak for the God revealed in the Sermon on the Mount.

God does not root for armies. God does not award victory points to the nation with the most combat sorties. The God I have spent my priesthood worshipping weeps over war — all war — because war is not a triumph. War is the catastrophic, irrevocable failure of everything best in the human person. Every ceasefire is not a victory. It is a confession of how badly we have failed one another.

Archbishop Timothy Broglio said in a Sunday interview that he did not agree with Hegseth’s efforts to paint the Iran war as something Jesus would justify. The Archbishop is right. And his restraint is more episcopal than I am capable of this morning.

Mr. Hegseth is an Evangelical shaped by a theology of conquest that has no home in Catholic tradition, in just war doctrine, or in any serious reading of the New Testament. But this is not a sectarian complaint. This is a human one. When the machinery of war is wrapped in the language of divine blessing, the people who question that war — its proportionality, its civilian cost, its long-term consequences — are implicitly cast as enemies of God. That silencing is precisely what religious war rhetoric is designed to accomplish.

Do not let it work on you.

God is not an American. God was not cheering in the situation room. And the glory — if there is any glory to be claimed in a ceasefire struck after 13,000 targets and incalculable human suffering — belongs to the diplomats, the peacemakers, and the negotiators. You know, the ones Jesus called blessed.

Monsignor Arthur Holquin, S.T.L.

Retired Catholic Priest, Diocese of Orange

Retired Rector, Mission Basilica San Juan Capistrano