Candace Owens and the Army of the Dead

Breaking Oaths is a Mortal Sin and a Professed Catholic Should Know Better

For the record, Candace Owens is not someone I hate. I've seen her work and she normally does solid research on her podcast and presents her work well. I feel much of the hate she receives is unearned and generally I think, like most people, her opinions range from insightful to mundane.

But in a recent episode of her podcast she gave the worst possible advice when she recommended active duty service members abandon their duty should the US ever engage in a hot war against Iran.

From the national perspective, this is tantamount to playing Tokyo Rose of the 21st century, with her well meaning advice carrying the same demoralizing effect of those pointed "you go home now, Joe" radio missives.

She's welcome to her opinion, whatever it is, but to push disloyalty in the ranks of our military under the guise of principle or virtue is a line more prudent thinkers would care to avoid. It emasculates an already besieged citizenry because it calls for our fighting men and women to exchange duty for cowardice. Her viewpoint is spiritual poison.

Responding to a viewer’s comment, Owens advises an active duty service member to seek a dishonorable discharge in the event of war.

"Get dishonorably discharged," she said. "Who cares? Who cares? Why should you go die in a foreign land? You now have the benefit of 2020. You can see. Think about those men and those women who died because they were pitched they were serving their country because there were weapons of mass destruction. Right? They were serving their country because of the Taliban, they were serving their country and whatever and these people gave up their lives. And ask yourselves: For what? And the answer for that question is: For the elites. They're like toy soldiers."

She intones that Trump has betrayed his base by flying planes and says that, "things are going nuclear."

Then comes the kicker. "And I am comfortable with people being dishonorably discharged because the dishonor comes from our politicians. The dishonor comes from our politicians who routinely lie in our faces and are willing to let us die to serve their financial interests."

Owens' cynicism regarding the military industrial complex and congressional war hawks being indifferent to the sacrifice of American lives echoes my own.

But her callousness towards the importance of duty and the attendant lifelong ramifications faced by military members carrying a dishonorable discharge is borderline sadistic. She may be "comfortable" with it, but I guarantee you the dishonorably discharged will be facing a life far less comfortable than her own.

As fellow J6er Shawn Farash said a "Dishonorable Discharge from the US military will literally ruin a person's life."

In many senses it's a stigma similar to carrying a felony on your record.

Why?

Because it means you are incapable of living up to your word. Not in the civilian sense of living up to your word. Most people make and break promises all the time. It's part of the unpredictability and compromise of daily life in the modern world.

The key difference here is that this is not one of those types of promises. It's easy to consider yourself a man of your word in civilian life, but when you sign that enlistment oath you're not promising to make your kid's soccer game on Saturday morning. You're making a promise that you must hold even if it ends in your death.

Not a pretty peaceful civilian death, either. You might expire while horrifically bleeding out from a blown off leg, or being torn apart as a piece of shrapnel careens straight through your brain, or choking on toxic gases, being trapped in a tiny space and immolating while you drown, or being mercilessly tortured at the hands of the enemy. Maybe you'll be holding your entrails in your arms or carrying half a battle buddy up a hill. Maybe you'll be standing there talking to someone and the last thing you see is how his body turned to soup when he took a direct mortar round.

The promise service members make when they join the military cannot be broken lightly because it is so hard to keep. War isn't the domain of people who only persist as long as they feel like it.

It has nothing to do with your feelings. Once you sign on the dotted line, your emotions are completely irrelevant to your duty to follow lawful orders.

It is frankly shocking that this has to be explained to a conservative in the first place. Conservatism is all about preserving those habits and customs which have been proven to work towards the betterment of society and the promotion of human flourishing. A big part of that is the shared trust and responsibility between the people of that society and those who volunteer to defend them.

Those oaths of service sworn by first line responders as well as our military members serve a vital role in maintaining our social cohesion as well as protecting the lives of every man, woman, and child within our borders. A nation of people incapable of living up to the oaths they swear is no nation at all. It will fall apart at the first sign of existential trouble as its protectors abandon their posts after coming down with a bad case of the "feels."

And therein lies their power: keeping oaths makes us a free people, able to withstand whatever life throws at us. Referring to the sanctity of marriage vows, theologian Scott Hahn explains that oaths have a peculiarly liberating power because they have a force enhancing effect. He writes that such covenant agreements are an “encumbrance that paradoxically yields freedom” (Scott Hahn, A Father Who Keeps His Promises) because they enlarge us morally and spiritually.

This is not the extent of the lunacy, however. Candace Owens is a Catholic reportedly. In Catholicism, oaths sworn to God (as enlistment oaths are) cannot be broken. They are the real world analog to JK Rowling's "unbreakable vow" spell. Only in the Harry Potter series do you die if you break the unbreakable vow; in our world, you don’t die, but in a crucial sense, you cease to be.

The unbreakable vow spell from Harry Potter

Catholicism teaches that if you break a vow, you go to Hell. For eternity.

Considerably worse than just living with a social stigma.

Yes, Candace, Catholics aren't allowed to break holy oaths without incurring the stain of a mortal sin. That's why we're not allowed to get divorced -- a fact that, as a woman, one would think you would have developed an appreciation for.

Yes, there is a process called annulment but that's not the same thing, and it can only be granted if it can be proven that at least one of the two parties entering into the marriage did not understand the irrevocability of the vows of matrimony.

According to Catholic theology, the whole reason we can call ourselves Christians in the first place is because God “oathed” Himself to us through the blood sacrifice of His Son Jesus. In Hebrews 6:13-16 it even says “God swore by himself.”

In other words, God is bound to us by the same power of oaths that Owens is so glibly "comfortable" flicking away.

So important is this binding power of oaths in Catholicism that it actually resulted in the splitting off of the Anglican church from Rome. The Church was so adamant that vows cannot be licitly broken it ended up spawning a whole new religion.

The concept is even expressed in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. The character Aragorn is able to summon an entire army of the dead to his cause. Not because he's a necromancer, but because the army in question had forsaken their oaths and abandoned his ancestor in a time of need.

The Dunharrow Army of the Dead from Lord of the Rings

So even though their bodies died, their everlasting souls were forever bound to the Earth until they could fulfill their duty to Isildur's heir.

Tolkien was not just a writer. Like the Dead Men of Dunharrow, he was a soldier. He understood that oaths which invoke the name of God are not merely contractual nor are they an exchange of blood for blood or flesh for flesh. Oaths bind souls.

The image of noncorporeal forms cursed to exist in a world they cannot physically interact with is a fitting image of what happens to a man who chooses to betray his oath. He is forever a shadow of what he could have become. Like a phantom, he is unreliable as any form of support or protection.

Owens would have us lift up these ghosts as objects of adoration and praise. Her advice violates treasured tradition, encourages needless lawlessness, and rejects Divine law. What's worse is that those who would be most impacted are those dumb enough to heed her words.

I pray that she repents and recants her vile position.

Matt da Silva once worked at the highest levels of government trust as a Japanese and Mandarin Navy linguist. In addition to working at the tip of the intel spear, he also has the distinction of having served 18 months in federal prison for his involvement in Jan 6. Now he's pardoned and using his intel analysis and writing skills in defense of the 21st century civil rights movement known as the MAGA movement. You can find more of his writings at his substack (which is free). You may also want to give him a follow on X and TruthSocial or watch his videos on his Rumble channel, J6 Matt Cast. Please subscribe!

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