A little about me… I’m a now retired Army and Navy Officer and Chaplain, as well as a Priest in the Apostolic Catholic Orthodox Church which is a North American expression of the Old Catholic Church and tradition. I retired from the military with 39 years, 4 months and 6 days of unbroken service. I have been a Priest for almost 25 years.
I’ve been married to the love of my life, my extremely long-longsuffering wife Judy for 39 years. If it wasn’t for Judy I would probably be in a lot of trouble, she is the control rods in my nuclear reactor.
I struggle with faith and belief a lot after returning from a tour in Iraq in 2008 with a terrible case of PTSD, and lately diagnosed mild-TBI. I write a lot about those struggles because they are a huge amount of the person I have become. God speaks to me through Baseball and Soccer.
My favorite authors include Father Andrew Greeley, Roger Kahn, David Halberstam, Max Hastings, Timothy Snyder, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, William Shirer, John Toland, Eric Foner, William Manchester, Walter Lord, John Meacham, Barbara Tuchman, Eric Hoffer, Richard Hofstadter, Richard Evans, Michael Sahara, Bernard Fall, T.E. Lawrence, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Bruce Catton, Hannah Arendt, Michael Korda, Jonathan Eig, B.H. Liddell-Hart, Saul Friedlander, Hans Kung, Juergen Moltmann, Iris Chang, Christopher Hitchens, Kurt Vonnegut, Herman Wouk, Joseph Heller, Robert Massie, Deborah Lipstadt, and Last but not least James McPherson.
I could name a lot more but I think that this is a good spectrum. I am a Fan of the San Francisco Giants, Norfolk Tides, Baltimore Orioles and Oakland Athletics. I think that the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees are evil. Saying that I have probably alienated half of Baseball America.
In Soccer I have been a big fan of Bayern Munich in the German Bundesliga since my first tour in Germany in 1985. I spend most Weekend mornings watching the Bundesliga, and evenings catching the Spanish, French, and Italian games. American football has lost its mojo for me. Religiously I am a moderate to liberal Priest belonging to the Apostolic Catholic Orthodox Church which is of the Old Catholic tradition and I am a big fan of the Second Vatican Council. I am progressive but not extreme in terms of both religion and politics, some might even call me a total liberal and they would not be far off.
Despite that I am a patriot, I love my country and have sworn an oath to defend the country and the Constitution, all of it, for almost four decades and my oath as an officer remains central to my ethos and who I am. I am a Navy Brat and grew up on the West Coast where my dad taught me to love the game of baseball. My family hails from Huntington West Virginia, I was the first one born out of the state. I Since joining the Army we have lived all over the place and I have been to much of the world. We have spent the majority of our time stateside in the South.
I’m a graduate of California State University at Northridge, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary where I came our Anglo-Catholic prior to the Fundementalist takeover. I hold a Doctor of Ministry Degree, I completed a second Masters in Military History in 2010. I did a one year Clinical Pastoral Education Residency at Parkland Memorial Hospital, I am a graduate of the Marine Corps Command and Staff College and the Joint Combined Warfighting School at Joint Forces Staff College of the National Defense University. I received my academic rank of Assistant Professor there in 2015.
My friends include conservatives and liberals, Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians and Independents; Christians from across the spectrum, Catholic and Protestant, Orthodox and Evangelical, Social Gospel and Fundamental, Charismatic and anti-Charismatic, Latter Day Saints, Seventh Day Adventists, Oneness Pentecostals, Particular Baptists, Calvinists, Wesleyans, Premillenial Dispensationalists, Amillenialists, Jews, Moslems, Buddhists, Hindus, Pagans and Wiccans. Heterosexuals, Homosexuals, anti-Homosexual activist and Pro-Homosexual activists, pro-Lifers and pro-Choicers, militarists and pacifists, capitalists, socialists, environmentalists, industrialists; progressives, traditionalists, white, black, Asian and Hispanic, people from Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Korea, Japan and China, India, and Central America, Mississippi and Manhattan, California and Carolina, Dallas and Detroit. Doctors, lawyers, priests, rabbis and imams; Protestant ministers, labor leaders, teachers, preachers, pundits, poets, politicians, professors and prosecutors; bureaucrats, technocrats, kleptocrats; geeks, freaks, sailors, jailers, whalers, runners, gunners, fighters, riders, sky divers, scuba divers, truck drivers; guitar players, ball players, naysayers; free thinkers, beer drinkers, thrill seekers and Methodists.
On this site you will find a plethora of pernicious posts on subjects far and wide. I write a lot about the Civil War and the Battle of Gettysburg, as well as Civil Rights in America.
Likewise I write a lot about Weimar and Nazi Germany as well as the various War Crimes Trials. I write about the latter as it was my first major area of study at California State University at Northridge where I studied under Professor Helmut Haeussler who had been a translator and interpreter at the Nuremberg Trials.
At the risk of alienating readers I candidly address many issues dealing with social, political and religious issues. Of course much has to deal with baseball, since the Deity Herself speaks to me through baseball as well as history, religion and a bit of this and a bit of that.
There are over close to 3,000 articles on the site, so take your time, pick a category and have some fun, laugh, cry and ponder the musings of the Inglourious Padre Steve.
Please take the time to browse the site. Make comments and let me know how you found me. Oh and a note on comments…. I pretty much allow comments, even those that I disagree with on this site and try to be respectful of those who make them. I do not accept spam comments. The spam filter is pretty good and I do look through the spam folder just to make sure that a legitimate comment did not end up there. On rare occasion I do not approve a comment that is not spam. This is simply because the comment is so off the chart and the author refuses to contact me when I ask them to clarify that I say the hell with it and disallow the comment. Nor do I allow comments that even give the appearance of promoting, defending antisemitic or Holocaust Denial. Likewise, if someone makes comments that threaten my life or family, not only do I block them but I do my best to figure out who they are and expose them, or if need be report them to law enforcement. I don’t take shit from anyone. As for comments that I disagree with and allow I do try to be respectful even if I think that the person who made the comment is an asshole. Many times I will post a response to such a comment and at that point if I have deemed the commenter a total idiot or asshole might use sarcasm and humor to belittle them as I have on some rare occasions. At the same time there are times where I go high and to the right on someone when a comment hits me wrong. Then I go back and think that I might have been overly harsh and usually both explain my actions and offer an apology.
If you want me to respond personally by e-mail let me know in your comment, otherwise my response will remain in the comment section. So feel free to leave a comment, I am actually honored when someone bothers to drop a note, even if they think that I am a heretical asshole who is bound for Hell. As to being an asshole, I can live with that, same with the title “heretic.”
And a disclaimer: The views presented on this site are purely those of the author. They are personal views and not those of the United States Navy, the Department of Defense, the Apostolic Catholic Orthodox Church, Major League Baseball, the Bundesliga, or anyone else that I associate with the occasional exception of my Papillons Izzy Bella, Pierre, Maddy Lyn, and Sunny Dae. Blessings on you all, Padre Steve+
The Inglorius Padre Steve's World 