Cheap shots on religious symbols are Pete Hegseth’s cross to bear | Mulshine

It's a good thing Pete Hegseth didn't go to Bergen Catholic High School.

He'd never get a job in Washington.

Hegseth is the military veteran and Fox News personality who was nominated last week by President-Elect Donald Trump to run the Defense Department.

That nomination, like virtually all Trump nominations, caused great consternation among the chattering classes - none of whom has done any chattering in Latin, apparently.

When they heard that Hegseth has a tattoo saying "Deus Vult" they attached all manner of bad intent to it.

But all it means is "God wills it."

I recall hearing of it often during my years of schooling at what is now Donovan Catholic in Toms River.

I'm sure the kids at Bergen Catholic heard it even more than I did. Their teams are called the Crusaders and their motto is "Deus Vult" – a reproduction of which you can buy online as a car magnet for a mere six bucks.

Don't go driving around with it inside Beltway, however. You might run afoul of military intelligence.

That's a bit of an oxymoron, as this event shows. There was plenty of military involved. But there wasn't much intelligence.

This contretemps began in 2021 when Hegseth, then in the National Guard, was photographed exiting the Hudson River after a charity swim.

According to the Washington Post, "Travis Akers, then a naval intelligence officer, told The Washington Post that he looked further and spotted a close-up image Hegseth posted on his bicep months earlier that clearly showed the Latin words '"Deus Vult.'"

On his chest was tattooed a replica of what is known as the "Jerusalem Cross."

Akers did some research online, where he noticed that the motto, as well the "Jerusalem Cross," had been adopted by some right-wing extremists such as the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters.

But he somehow failed to notice that Bergen Catholic site and the many other sites indicating that both symbols are in regular use with mainstream Catholics.

Instead, as the Post reported, Akers posted his findings on Twitter, the site now known as X, "calling the tattoos 'white supremacist symbols.'"

That's quite a stretch, given that the Catholic Church has 52 million or so adherents in the U.S., while those extremist groups like the Proud Boys have at best a few tens of thousands.

The one Latin scholar I know, my old classmate Peter Stravinskas, said these reports represent a total distortion of reality.

"Deus Vult was the motto of the Crusades, which were a good thing," said Stravinskas, who is now a priest.

"Then there's the crazy thing of the Jerusalem Cross being some sort of symbol of white supremacy," he continued. "It's been the symbol of the Holy Land since the 12th century."

Hegseth, w ho grew up in Minnesota, is 44 and is a Protestant who now produces videos with the Colts Neck Community Church in Monmouth County.

In a recent post, he gave this summation of the tiff:

"I joined the Army in 2001 because I wanted to serve my country. Extremists attacked us on 9/11, and we went to war, Twenty years later, I was deemed an 'extremist' by that very same Army ... the military I loved, I fought for, I revered ... spit me out."

After Hegseth was nominated to run the Defense Department, the brouhaha attracted the attention of Vice President-elect JD Vance, who penned this attack on the Associated Press for its reporting on the issue:

"They're attacking Pete Hegseth for having a Christian motto tattooed on his arm. This is disgusting anti-Christian bigotry from the AP, and the entire organization should be ashamed of itself."

For a while there our liberal friends fell back on their old tactics, as shown by this headline from the Independent, an English news site: ''Christian motto' or nationalist dog whistle? Could a tattoo derail Trump's pick for defense secretary?"

No, it couldn't. When that became obvious, the opposition reverted to that old reliable tactic, a sex scandal.

It seems that in 2017 Hegseth broke that cardinal rule of politics that states a politician should never go to the bar after an appearance at a hotel.

Had Hegseth observed it, he would not have had the sort of encounter with a woman that ends with an undisclosed settlement. Even though no charges were filed, that "he said/she said" argument makes for lively reading.

But the real knock on Hegseth is that he has indicated he will follow Trump's lead in pulling back from the various war zones the U.S. always seems to be involved in.

On Fox News, he has declared himself "a recovering neocon and Pentagon critic" who wants to cut down on foreign involvements

Will he and The Donald be able to turn the war machine into a peace machine?

Stay tuned.

In the meantime, if you come across something in Latin that you can't translate, don't translate it.