On May 19, 1977, Salvadoran security forces occupied the town of Aguilares, expelled the Jesuits who were ministering there, and took over the parish church — turning it into a barracks. They opened fire on the tabernacle and scattered the consecrated hosts across the floor. Soon afterward, Archbishop Óscar Romero tried to enter the town to support the people and recover the Blessed Sacrament from the desecrated sanctuary, but was stopped by soldiers at a checkpoint.

After the month-long occupation ended, Romero returned to celebrate Mass in the same church, and told the congregation that what had been profaned was not only their church but they themselves. Afterward, he processed with the Eucharist out into the street. As the procession approached the town’s municipal offices, armed troops stood watching. The people stopped and looked back at the archbishop, who was walking behind them, carrying the monstrance.

“¡Adelante!” he told them. “Forward.”

The procession moved, and the soldiers allowed it to pass without incident.

These events were condensed into one dramatic scene in the 1989 film Romero, starring Raúl Juliá. In the film, Romero enters the occupied church and tells the officer in charge that he has come for the Blessed Sacrament. The officer answers by turning around and firing his machine gun at the altar and tabernacle. Romero leaves the building and almost gets into a car, but — seeing the faces of the people of the town — pauses, turns around, and walks back into the church. He kneels and gathers the scattered hosts from the floor with his hands. A soldier fires his gun just above Romero’s head, then kicks him to the ground. Two other soldiers then wrestle him to his feet and drag him out of the church.

I thought about that scene on July 23, when Shawn Ryan, the former Navy SEAL and CIA contractor whose podcast ranks among the most listened-to in the country, presented Fr. Chad Ripperger with a SIG MCX Spear 5.56 rifle, fitted with a suppressor, optic, and magnifier, during an episode filmed in the chapel of Ripperger’s community (the Doloran Fathers) in Colorado.

Ripperger thanked him and said they would have to test it out that afternoon. He added that Ryan’s previous gift to him — a handgun — had been “well received.” Ryan then explained that the rifle came from his friend Jason at SIG, who was a “huge fan” of Ripperger.

During his March appearance on the podcast, Ripperger said that he carries a firearm and mentioned that his community has a target range on its property where he would try out the pistol.

After the presentation of the gift, Ryan asked the priest to lead the program in prayer. (The full episode is available on the Shawn Ryan Show website.)

A photograph that circulated afterward showed both men facing the camera and standing in front of the altar and tabernacle, with Ryan’s arm around the priest’s shoulders and Ripperger holding the rifle. Many Catholics on social media expressed shock at the sight of a priest in full cassock displaying a weapon in the sanctuary of a church. Others expressed approval, suggesting that a gun-toting priest is “based,” or that this was a display of priestly masculinity. Several LifeSiteNews social media accounts posted the image with the caption “This is my politics.”

This is my politics. pic.twitter.com/JxV3efhDxY

— LifeSiteNews (@LifeSite) July 24, 2026

The two priests — Romero and Ripperger — present radically different visions of priesthood. In one, a priest walks toward armed men carrying the Eucharist. In the other, a priest poses with his own rifle in front of a tabernacle.

Many Catholics likely intuit that the Ripperger photograph does not sit right, even if they can’t explain why. But there is a good reason: the idea of a priest proudly displaying a weapon — let alone in the sanctuary of a church — runs against centuries of Catholic tradition and canon law.[1]

This is not to say that every priest who owns or carries a firearm commits a sin or explicitly violates (current) canon law. But for a priest to publicly celebrate his enthusiasm for guns and other weapons runs contrary to a fundamental principle that the Church maintained for centuries — a strong presumption that bearing arms was foreign to the clerical state. Both history and canon law have shown that there are exceptions — a weapon might be tolerated in circumstances of genuine necessity. But as a general principle, the Church has long taught that weapons are not befitting the office of priest.

The clerical tradition

The Church distinguishes between what is sinful in itself (“intrinsically evil acts”) and what is unbecoming to a particular state of life. The Church does not have prohibitions on laypeople hunting, gambling, serving as soldiers, or carrying weapons. But traditionally, clerics were restricted from doing these things — not necessarily because they were inherently immoral, but because they did not belong to the priesthood.

The principle runs back to the early Church. Origen argued that even some pagan societies kept their priests’ hands free from blood and did not require them to enlist in the military, and that Christian priests should likewise keep “their hands pure,” “wrestling in prayers to God on behalf of those who are fighting in a righteous cause, and for the king who reigns righteously” (Contra Celsum, Book VIII, ch. 73). The Apostolic Canons ordered — recalling that Christ, when he was struck, did not strike back — “If a bishop, presbyter, or deacon shall strike any of the faithful who have sinned, or of the unbelievers who have done wrong, with the intention of frightening them, we command that he be deposed” (can. 27 [28]).

The Concilium Germanicum held under St. Boniface in 742 forbade the servants of God to carry arms or fight in battles. Priests were, however, permitted to accompany armies in order to celebrate Mass, carry relics, hear confessions, and impose penances.

St. Thomas Aquinas provides a theological justification for this tradition. Although he taught that just wars can be fought, “warlike pursuits are altogether incompatible with the duties of a bishop and a cleric.” He argued that participation in war not only distracts from prayer and contemplation, but that clerics are deputed primarily to the ministry of the altar, where the Passion of Christ is sacramentally represented. It is therefore fitting that they be prepared to shed their own blood for Christ rather than the blood of others.

Clergy may accompany an army to give spiritual assistance to those fighting justly, Aquinas explained, but it would be an abuse of that permission for them to take up arms themselves. It would also not be congruent with their vocation. He wrote, “they are forbidden to take up arms, not as though it were a sin, but because such an occupation is unbecoming their personality.”

The law and its rationale

The 1917 Code of Canon Law gathered this inheritance into canon 138. It stated:

“Clerics must abstain from all things that are unbecoming their state: they must not exercise unbecoming arts; not play games of chance with money; not carry weapons, unless there is justified cause for fear; not indulge in hunting and never in that kind of hunting that is done with much display and publicity; not visit saloons and places of the same nature except in cases of necessity or for any other just cause approved by the Ordinary.”

Canon 141 addressed clerics serving in the military:

“Clerics shall not volunteer for military service, unless they do so with the permission of the bishop in countries where they are forced to serve, in order the sooner to put in their period of service. Clerics must not take part or help in any way, in internal revolts and disturbances of public order. Clerics who in violation of this law volunteer for military service thereby forfeit their clerical standing.”[2]

Contemporary commentators explained that these provisions existed to protect the character and work of the priesthood. In the second volume of his commentary on the Code, Charles Augustine Bachofen wrote that the canons safeguarded the decorum of the clerical state and protected priests from distractions that would impede their sacred ministry. He also noted a recent case where exceptions were granted:

“We remember that, about ten years ago, when there was a morbid agitation against the clergy in Italy, and especially in Rome, many priests received license from the Pretor to carry a revolver. This was purely a means of self-defence; hence the very reasonable clause in the new Code” (p. 87).

The 1983 Code

Admittedly, canon 138 is no longer in force, and canon 285, which replaced it in the 1983 Code, does not state explicitly that a priest may not carry a firearm. It says:

“Can. 285 §1. Clerics are to refrain completely from all those things which are unbecoming to their state, according to the prescripts of particular law.

§2. Clerics are to avoid those things which, although not unbecoming, are nevertheless foreign to the clerical state.”

It is important to note, however, that canon 6 §2 states, “Insofar as they repeat former law, the canons of this Code must be assessed also in accord with canonical tradition.” In other words, as a general rule, interpreters are instructed to read canons in the current Code in light of canonical tradition.

This does not automatically mean that we are to read the current canon 285 as identical to the old canon 138. But it does help us understand what things under canon 285 may be considered “unbecoming” or “foreign” to the clerical state.

The omission of a specific prohibition from the revised Code does not necessarily mean that the Church has reversed the judgment behind it. One clear example is the Church’s prohibition against joining the Freemasons.

Canon 2335 of the 1917 Code named Masonic organizations explicitly and imposed a specific penalty:

“Those who give their names to a Masonic sect or to other associations of the same kind which plot against the Church or legitimate civil powers incur, by that very fact, an excommunication simply reserved to the Apostolic See.”

The 1983 Code replaced this with the more general language of canon 1374:

“A person who joins an association which plots against the Church is to be punished with a just penalty; one who promotes or takes office in such an association is to be punished with an interdict.”

The new canon did not name Freemasonry. It also did not retain the automatic excommunication imposed by the former canon. This led some Catholics to wonder whether joining a Masonic lodge was now permitted.

The day before the new Code took effect, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a declaration answering the question:

“It has been asked whether there has been any change in the Church’s decision in regard to Masonic associations since the new Code of Canon Law does not mention them expressly, unlike the previous Code. This Sacred Congregation is in a position to reply that this circumstance is due to an editorial criterion which was followed also in the case of other associations likewise unmentioned inasmuch as they are contained in wider categories.

Therefore the Church’s negative judgment in regard to Masonic associations remains unchanged since their principles have always been considered irreconcilable with the doctrine of the Church and therefore membership in them remains forbidden. The faithful who enrol in Masonic associations are in a state of grave sin and may not receive Holy Communion.”

That judgment was reaffirmed by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in November 2023, in response to a request from Bishop Julito Cortes of Dumaguete in the Philippines. The DDF stated that “active membership in Freemasonry by a member of the faithful is forbidden because of the irreconcilability between Catholic doctrine and Freemasonry.” It added that the same provisions apply to clerics who enroll in Masonic organizations.

The comparison has limits. The CDF did not say that every detail of the former penal law remained in effect. The automatic excommunication found in canon 2335 was not carried over into canon 1374. What remained unchanged was the Church’s negative judgment of Freemasonry and the prohibition against Catholics joining it. The specific example had disappeared from the Code, but it was still understood to fall within a broader canonical category. When Pope Francis promulgated a revised Book VI of the Code in 2021, canon 1374 was carried forward substantially unchanged.

No comparable Vatican declaration has been issued concerning clerics and weapons. I am therefore not arguing that the prohibition in canon 138 remains binding in every detail, or that Fr. Ripperger necessarily committed a canonical offense. But the Masonic example demonstrates that removing a particular example from the Code does not, by itself, prove that the Church has reached the opposite judgment. In some cases, the revised Code states the governing principle in broader terms and leaves the older law and canonical tradition to help explain what that principle includes.

Canon 285 still requires clerics to refrain from what is “unbecoming” to their state and to avoid what is “foreign” to it — and §2, unlike §1, is not conditioned on the prescripts of particular law. Canon 138 provides direct evidence of what the Church historically understood that language to include. At the very least, it establishes a longstanding presumption against clerics carrying weapons except when there was a genuine reason for fear.

But the photograph raises a question even more basic than whether Ripperger violated a currently enforceable canon. The question is whether the public celebration of firearms — as gifts, recreational objects, political symbols, and accessories of a priest’s public image — is consistent with the Catholic tradition concerning the clerical state.

The traditionalist contradiction

Fr. Ripperger’s public embrace of firearms presents a striking contradiction to his own extensively documented principles regarding ecclesiastical tradition. The dissonance is especially direct in Ripperger’s case. In a 2001 essay on ecclesiastical tradition, he specifically included “the Church’s disciplinary code as set out in canon law” among the traditions handed down as part of the Church’s patrimony, the product of “the wisdom and labour of the saints and the Church throughout history.” Throughout the essay, Ripperger criticizes “neoconservatives” for looking “at the past through the eyes of the present,” while asserting that an authentic traditionalist holds the epistemological rule that one must look “at the present through the eyes of the past.”

Applied to the question of priests carrying weapons, this rule means a traditionalist cannot simply default to the 1983 Code’s silence on the matter. Ripperger argues that when the modern Magisterium alters or omits a past teaching, it has a moral obligation to explicitly justify the departure; simply ignoring the previous standard leaves the faithful confused and fails the test of prudence.

In a 10-part series of audio lectures on Tradition, Ripperger frequently warns that treating Church laws as expendable erodes the force of the entire tradition. In Part 2, he asserts that it is “against piety to constantly change everything. Why? Because it is a rejection of the work of our forefathers. They labored. They passed the tradition — they passed that on intact, and then they added to the tradition things which would make it easier for us to understand the tradition, accept it, and practice it. And by overhauling it, it is a form of rejection. It is like being disobedient — not exactly — but it shows a lack of reverence for those who went before us and the work that they did.”

In the third episode of the series, Ripperger says of ecclesiastical traditions that “how long they’ve been around determines the will of God regarding them.” According to this premise, surely a principle that was held by the early Church and maintained through the Scholastics into the modern period cannot simply be discarded because it isn’t spelled out explicitly in the 1983 Code of Canon Law. The Church’s tradition on clerical arms-bearing has been remarkably consistent: it is not compatible with the office of priest.

By treating firearms as fitting accessories for a priest, Ripperger effectively adopts the neo-conservative mentality he condemns in his essay. In a March 31 interview on Ryan Grant’s Holy Smokes program, Ripperger addressed criticism of his arms-bearing, appealing to the 1983 Code’s lack of an explicit prohibition to legitimize his behavior. Like the neo-conservatives he condemns, he explicitly defaulted to modern law, arguing that “the current law is the one that’s in force.” Rather than evaluating the present through the eyes of the past, he bypassed the centuries of accumulated wisdom encapsulated in canon 138 by resorting to a semantic dodge, claiming “the prior code didn’t say you couldn’t own a gun, they didn’t even mention a gun.” No, the 1917 Code did not use the word “gun,” the original Latin of canon 138 uses the word arma — arms, or weapons. Ripperger even waved away St. Thomas Aquinas’s theological warnings against clerical arms-bearing, admitting he is “not completely convinced” by the Angelic Doctor’s argument. On Ripperger’s own terms, the historical canonical presumption against clerics carrying arms should retain its authoritative weight. Instead, he treats the older canon as obsolete — without invoking the historical exception of a grave, immediate necessity — breaking the continuity of the very tradition he claims to champion.

Conclusion

The older discipline against priests carrying weapons was not based on the belief that all weapons are evil or that courage is incompatible with the priesthood. Aquinas said precisely the opposite: a priest may enter a battlefield and face the same danger as the soldiers. But he enters it as a priest, prepared to shed his own blood rather than the blood of another.

St. Óscar Romero’s courage did not depend on his ability to answer armed men with a weapon of his own. He walked toward them carrying the Eucharist because that was the form his courage took as a priest. Three years later, he would die a martyr’s death, gunned down in another church sanctuary as he celebrated Mass.

Canon 138 recognized that circumstances might sometimes justify a priest carrying a weapon. It did not present firearms as ornaments of priestly identity, evidence of masculinity, or symbols of Catholic politics.

Granted, the current Code is not explicit on the matter, and since the Vatican has never clarified what is prohibited by canon 285, the question exists in a gray area. But Catholic tradition is clear: firearms are ordinarily unbecoming to the office of priest.

Romero was not an exception to that tradition. He embodied it through his life and martyrdom.

Notes

[1] Ripperger later told John-Henry Westen of LifeSiteNews, “The chapel is not complete, has not been dedicated yet, the high altar was not complete and we are still finishing the construction. It is not a ‘sacred space’ yet as some have asserted.” Although it is a small consolation that these events did not take place in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, most of those who see the image will certainly not know that.

[2] Both translations from the 1917 Code are from Stanislaus Woywod’s 1918 book, New Canon Law: A Commentary and Summary.

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Image: YouTube Screenshot from the Shawn Ryan Show.