Ann Arbor Catholic priest Ed Fride is in the news today for encouraging his parishioners at Christ the King Catholic Church to arm themselves. In a letter sent out this past weekend to his flock, Fride explained why he carried a weapon, and why the church would likely be hosting more CPL classes on their property at 4000 Ave Maria Drive. Pointing to an incident three years ago in which two individuals with a gun were apprehended outside Father Gabriel Richard High School in Ann Arbor, Fride urged his flock to accept that they were no longer living in “Mayberry,” and arm themselves accordingly.
“The fact that two active shooters got within yards of Father Gabriel Richard before they were taken down by SWAT demonstrates that the threat is real,” said Fride in his letter to parishioners. “This druggie couple from Detroit stole a car and it broke down at Plymouth and Dixboro. They went through the woods and had almost reached the high school when they were stopped… There is zero security at the high school. Had the shooters got in, we would have had our own Columbine.”
Fride then went on to address the concerns of those in the parish who said that they were afraid of carrying weapons. “Several people have said to me, I’m afraid of guns,” said Fride. “My response to one woman was, ‘Well, how do you feel about rape?’”
Leaving aside for a moment just how offensive and manipulative that is, and how laughably stupid it is to base one’s argument on the fact that two “druggies,” who just happened to have been in the area in 2012 due to the breakdown of a car, might have wanted to enter a high school and pull off a Columbine-type attack, I’m curious to know how this willingness to dole our lethal force jives with the notoriously pro-life church’s stance on the so-called “sanctity of life.” Maybe when they say “all life is precious” they just mean when it’s inside the womb. Or maybe “druggies” aren’t really alive in the same way that you and I are, and therefore deserving of God’s love. Regardless, I think, as a man of the cloth, I’d be particularly sensitive to the risks of playing God, but maybe Fride can differentiate, in a split second, those who are deserving of God’s forgiveness, from those who are better suited for the garbage heap.
And, for what it’s worth, it’s not just hyperbole when I pain tty picture of the good father gunning down perps. Fride has said in the past that, in the right situation, he would kill. “There were situations in which I would actively intervene,” Fide has said, “even to a lethal level if necessary.”
[note: Prior to being known as Christ the King, this charismatic Catholic church, long supported by Ypsilanti’s Tom Monaghan, was known as Word of God. The name change happened sometime after the church was investigated for the “cult-like” power it held over its conservative parishioners.]
FROM THE ANN ARBOR NEWS:
If I’m understanding his logic, Fride seems to believe that, with more people arming themselves in Detroit, the criminal element residing there is having to venture further from home in order to find attractive targets, and, as demonstrated by a pair of “druggies” whose car broke down here in 2012, they seem to have settled upon Ann Arbor as their new hunting ground. And we need to be prepared to kill them before they kill us, just like Jesus taught. [He said in his letter that killing people under the right circumstances is not against Biblical doctrine.]
Here, with more background on Fride is a clip from the Detroit Free Press.
Fride’s friend, Jay McNally, said the priest is a beloved pastor, a martial arts practitioner whose sermons bring parishioners to tears.
“It is a rare day that one finds a priest so well-loved by parishioners at every level – the old folks, the young folks,” said McNally, a former editor of the Detroit archdiocese’s Michigan Catholic newspaper and conservative Catholic activist who is the director of the Ypsilanti-based Citizens Alliance for Life and Liberty.
McNally said Fride has served at the parish for about 20 years, and also was the chaplain for young men considering the priesthood at Ave Maria College, when the college started by Domino’s Pizza founder and traditional Catholic activist Tom Monaghan was located in Ann Arbor. Christ the King Parish has strong ties to traditional, conservative Catholics.
“He’s a priest factory,” said McNally, describing Fride’s service as an inspiration to many young men considering the priesthood.
“Father Ed quite frequently travels around the country and to be the chaplain for people in the military who die in service,” said McNally. “He’s in high demand for that.”
“This whole gun thing is kind of new. He has become very vocal about it,” said McNally. “There isn’t a phony bone in him.
In his letter, Fride explained how he grew up a Pacifist and was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. He converted to Catholicism. He wrote that he veered away from pacifism when he asked himself questions of “what would Jesus do” were he to come across women and children being harmed.
“I eventually concluded that I was certainly no longer a pacifist absolutist,” wrote Fride. “There were situations in which I would actively intervene, even to a lethal level if necessary.”
As an aside, it’s kind of funny how people “veer away from pacifism” when they’re no longer in danger of being drafted to fight in Vietnam, isn’t it?
And one more thing, if you didn’t already dislike this man for coercing his congregation into arming themselves by pointing to the existence of Detroit “druggies” who want to carry out Columbine-like attacks against their kids, and telling them that they’d likely be raped if they didn’t buy weapons, here’s one more thing to consider. He started his letter to parishioners with the following… “We’re not in Mayberry Anymore, Toto.” As terrible as guns are, I think we can all agree that mixed metaphors are worse, right?
UPDATE: The following came in from a reader of this site early this morning.
My family still actively attends Christ the King parish, and father Ed was the priest who baptized me. But I’m fairly certain that he’s cracked, and a lot of the stuff I hear about him is pretty disturbing.
In his original sermon, before he wrote the mass email, he specifically mentioned the fact that Dearborn was only a few minutes away, and dropped the term “jihadist” as a reason to be armed. His parish is not a territorial parish, it’s like a “satellite” parish, so everyone who goes there makes a conscious decision to do so, rather than just attending because it’s close by. He has a lot of influence over the parishioners there. It is, like you made note of, very cultish. They also have the highest percentage of men of any Catholic church in the US who become priests. They single-handedly keep the diocese of Lansing afloat with clergy. And you probably won’t be surprised that the public school open carry guy Josh Wade is a life-long member of this parish. The news didn’t pick up on that fact. Another interesting tidbit about this story — the cop who is actually teaching these CPL class that fr. Ed is encouraging, well he was in that video of the Detroit man being subdued and beaten by Inkster police. That specifically aggravates me, because that’s the cop who gave him all the stats on crime spilling into Ypsi from Detroit.
Anyway, the whole story has been upsetting because it’s affected and divided a lot of people I know, so I wanted to put the truth out there. Undoubtedly we’ll be seeing more Josh Wades in the future, ready at a moment’s notice to escalate a situation with deadly force.
Hopefully folks in the local press do some digging into what’s going on at Christ the King.