Of Character and Good Shepherds

The Catholic Thing

By Fr. Benedict Kiely
On June 4, 1940, the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (currently undergoing character assassination from the poorly educated Right) addressed the House of Commons. He had supposed, just a week before, that he would have to announce the most serious loss of Allied Forces in the war so far, and, perhaps, the imminent German invasion of Britain.
In the event, because of the extraordinary evacuation of troops from Dunkirk in France, codenamed 'Operation Dynamo,' which began on May 6, 1940, using, in conjunction with the Royal Navy, hundreds of civilian boats and ships, more than 338,000 troops were evacuated, including many French soldiers.
Churchill was very clear in his speech to the Commons that, despite this miraculous number of those saved, it was still a "colossal military disaster." "Wars," he said, "are not won by evacuations, but there was victory in this deliverance."
My Uncle Dick, a Private in the British Army, was one of the brave few, not remembered much, who stayed behind to defend the retreating troops. He was captured by the Germans and spent the next five years in a prisoner-of-war camp in Silesia. Another Uncle, Tommy, was shot by the Germans and carried the bullet in his body for the rest of his life. Finally my father, the baby of the family, and the first to be commissioned as an officer, just missed the D-Day landings, because he broke his ankle in motorcycle training. He went on to serve with his regiment in Palestine and Kenya.
I think of my father's "band of brothers," when I re-watch the magnificent HBO mini-series, 'Band of Brothers,' based on the book by Stephen Ambrose. Detailing the exploits of Easy Company of the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Army, it takes the viewer from their parachute training in America, all the way through the invasion of Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge, to finally capturing Hitler's 'Wolf's Lair.'
I cannot recommend it enough. Among the most powerful moments are the interviews, at the beginning of each episode, with actual soldiers portrayed. Only in the final episode are they identified. The term 'hero' is easily used today; much is claimed to be heroic that is merely the fulfillment of duty, but many of these men were, indeed, heroes, part of the "greatest generation."
The figure at the center of the series is the Commander of Easy Company, Captain, later Major, Richard 'Dick' Winters. He is, and was, the ideal officer, close to his troops, yet with a discernible distance, a man of the utmost integrity and probity, yet willing to bend the rules when their absurdity is apparent.
He was clearly loved by his men; in one interview, one of his soldiers declares they would have followed him anywhere. Initially, they feel a certain wariness about him; he does not drink - they fear he is a Puritan, or even worse, a Quaker. In battle, however, he reveals his true colors, and, in fact, the leadership qualities of a good shepherd of the flock, a bishop or pastor.
Winters leads by example, and he leads - at the front of the battle, not eating in the frozen woods of Bastogne, so that his men can. And critically, he defends his men from weak and incompetent superiors.
Dick Winters exhibited the two key attributes of what is needed in a good shepherd in the Church, as in a good officer. In the first place, he was willing to lay down his life for his men - or his sheep. The sheep are, in fact, his vocation. He does not run away at the approach of the wolf: that is the work of the hireling, military or episcopal.
Winters reminds me of the great Archbishop of Canterbury, St. Anselm, a man with all the attributes of the Good Shepherd.
Monsignor Ronald Knox once wrote that only three Archbishops of the See of Canterbury had been canonized since the Norman invasion in 1066: St. Edmund, St. Thomas (Becket), and the great St. Anselm.
In a sermon for St. Anselm's Feast, Knox draws a fascinating conclusion about how each of the three men came to be canonized...