These Last Days News - September 2, 2025
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From Doorkeepers to Defenders: Catholic Men Step Up to Guard Parishes...

EXAMPLE OF ST. JOSEPH
Veronica - "Now Saint Joseph is still standing. He's a very meek-looking man. He's smiling. And I can see that he has a great feeling--oh, I can see he's looking over to Our Lady, and there's such an expression of love. It's--I can't explain it. It's beautiful; it's such a beautiful expression that--oh, my! I'm sure that Saint Joseph should be an inspiration to all fathers in the homes." – March 15, 1978

BEND YOUR KNEES IN PRAYER
"The heads of all households--mothers, fathers will bend your knee now in prayer with your children. You must now appear to your God with a humble heart, do penance, make atonement and many sacrifices.” – St. Michael, June 18, 1975

The above Messages from Our Lady were given to Veronica Lueken at Bayside, New York. Read more

NCRegister.com reported on August 28, 2025:

By Matthew McDonald, Jonah McKeown

Do Catholic churches need to provide more security?

That question is on many minds in the aftermath of a mass shooting of schoolchildren during a Mass at a parish church in Minneapolis on Wednesday.

One group in Arizona has been training Catholic men to provide security for their parishes for about five years.

“Unfortunately, today is an example of why it’s needed,” said Brian Eaton, the founder of Porters of St. Joseph, an apostolate of volunteer men who, according to its website, seek “to imitate St. Joseph as the Protector of the Holy Church, Pillar of Families, and Terror of Demons.”

“We don’t live in the world that I grew up in. That world has gone away. The Church is always changing and adapting to the challenges, spiritually and physically, in any moment in time,” Eaton told the Register in a telephone interview on Wednesday.

Eaton, 45, a police officer in Arizona, said he was surprised when he entered the Catholic Church in June 2020 how little security he saw.

When he was an evangelical Christian, Eaton used his experience in the U.S. Army and in law enforcement to assist in providing security for his church, something he said is common among other religious groups.

“As a law enforcement professional, the Catholic Church is light years behind other faith communities as far as protecting our parishes,” Eaton told the Register. While security at Catholic churches varies, it isn’t a priority in most parishes.

Catholic schools across the country routinely run lockdown drills and some have security officers on hand. But that isn’t the case at most Catholic churches during Mass and other church events.

Russell Moker, 73, a board member of Porters of St. Joseph, said that during his decades of churchgoing (before joining the organization) he has occasionally seen ushers providing some sort of order, or armed members of law enforcement or other parishioners who happen to be attending Mass, or members of a local council of the Knights of Columbus providing a formal-looking presence.

“Other than that, nothing. Nothing at all,” said Moker, a retired attorney who lives in Cornville, Arizona. “It’s a problem. And it’s regrettable that we have to address it. But we do.”

Shootings at Catholic Masses in the United States are rare. The last one that resulted in death took place more than two decades ago.

But less serious incidents are more common.

Many dioceses have developed their own security protocols, often in partnership with local law enforcement, or using guidance from Catholic risk-management groups such as Catholic Mutual. Several dioceses, such as Fort Worth and Dallas, train parishioners for volunteer “security teams.” Some parishes elsewhere have hired security guards or work with local police to patrol during services.

The mass shooting in Minneapolis on Wednesday highlights the vulnerability of Catholic churches. According to authorities, a 23-year-old man who identified as a woman was able to drive up to the church, park, get out with a rifle, a shotgun and a pistol, walk to the side of the church, and fire dozens of rounds through church windows, killing two children and wounding 14 other children plus three adults. The attack took about two minutes. The gunman then shot himself to death.

Thomas Mynsberge, founder and president of Critical Incident Management Inc., a company in Grand Haven, Michigan, that provides security plans for religious groups and schools, among other clients, said Catholic bishops ought to consider implementing uniform security standards for churches in their dioceses, including locking the doors of the church after the first reading begins, with ushers trained to size up latecomers before letting them in, and installing a film on windows that would stop bullets from a handgun from penetrating and at least slow down the velocity of bullets fired by a rifle.

“I think the Church needs to look at it, have a plan in place if something does happen — what do we respond with?” Mynsberge said. “I hope this is a catalyst for somebody taking this kind of training on.”

Ushers ought to be trained to immediately direct churchgoers where to go and what to do in the event of an attack, he said.

“It’s all about having a plan of action, mentally rehearsing what you’re doing,” Mynsberge said. “This is what law enforcement, fire and military use for survival. They’ve always got a plan that ‘If this happens, what do I do next?’”

Mynsberge, 70, a lifelong Catholic and former longtime member of the Michigan State Police’s SWAT team who works with two Catholic parishes in Michigan, told the Register that ushers can provide an important layer of security if they are trained to spot trouble before it occurs and deal with it.

He said he understands that the Catholic Church is meant to be open to all comers and that too much security can get in the way of that.

“I understand the goal of the Church to be welcoming and all, but I sort of work in the background, without being too overt to scare people away,” he said.

Quiet Security Presence

The summer he became a Catholic, Eaton, seeing a need to be filled in his newfound Church, founded the Porters of St. Joseph, which combines spiritual practices — including prayer and fasting — with practical training to try to prevent incidents and respond if they occur.

A “porter,” or doorkeeper, was one of the minor holy orders in the early Church, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1912. St. Romanus Ostiarius — the surname means “porter” — was baptized by the Roman deacon St. Lawrence and martyred with him in 258.

Moker, one of the first members to join the organization, said Porters of St. Joseph includes a serious approach to prayer. Members of the Porters of St. Joseph in his parish, Immaculate Conception in Cottonwood, lead the Rosary before the 5:30 p.m. Mass on the second Wednesday of the month. Some make an act of consecration to St. Joseph around his solemnity on March 19 or near the feast of St. Joseph the Worker on May 1.

“It’s more than a group of security guys, and that’s the thing that I have to emphasize. It’s got a really strong spiritual component to it. It’s a men’s fellowship,” Moker said. “We are protectors of the family, protectors of women and children, and the priests.”

Eaton sees the organization as a call to authentic Catholic masculinity.

“We need to return to our spiritual heritage of men, when we are first and foremost standing as guardians to our families and our community. That extends to the physical world we live in,” Eaton said.

“It’s not acceptable as Catholic men of faith to stand by and do nothing,” he said. Today, Porters of St. Joseph are in 17 parishes in Arizona and have about 300 members, Eaton said.

The men undergo training in deescalation, active-shooter response and basic first aid, as well as “stress inoculation,” so in case of a stressful emergency, they are familiar with how it feels. They also provide basic emergency care, including defibrillators, in the event of a cardiac emergency.

Members don’t divulge certain details of their operations in order to keep security preparations private. But one approach is to station a man at the main entrance of a church to greet people, which enables him to size up people as they come in and sends a message that there is a security presence in the building.

Asked if members are armed, Eaton declined to comment. In some parishes, members wear a black polo shirt with the Porters of St. Joseph ministry logo and the word “Security” on it. In others, they wear plain clothes. “Just by simply being there, it deters a lot of people,” said Joey Gonzales, 54, a Phoenix firefighter, Porters of St. Joseph board member, and parishioner at Sts. Simon and Jude Cathedral in Phoenix.

He said volunteers provide security so their families and parishioners can focus on the message of God, without having to worry about what’s going on around them.

“It doesn’t matter what neighborhood you’re in anymore — the risks and the threats are there,” Gonzales told the Register. “Our objective is to protect our parishioners, and the Eucharist, and our priests, so that they can serve,” Gonzales said.

Would such a presence have made a difference during the 8:15 a.m. Mass on Wednesday at Annunciation Church in Minneapolis?

“I don’t know enough about this particular situation,” Eaton said. “What I do know is that we have intercepted incidents within our parishes.”

At least four times, members of the Porters of St. Joseph have dealt with people who rushed the altar during Mass, Eaton said. In another incident, a security volunteer stopped a man who was trying to bring a gun into church. Another time, Eaton said, a man sitting near the back of the audience grumbling to himself during a pro-life talk produced a large knife and started spinning it, and security team members hustled him out of the event.

Eaton noted that police and firefighters are often at least five minutes away when called to an emergency.

“A lot can happen in five minutes. We need to be immediate responders,” Eaton said.

“What the program does is it trains the men of our parishes to make an impactful difference if, God forbid, something were to happen,” he said.

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"The judgment of your God is not akin to the judgment of man. The Eternal Father will only judge by the heart. Your rank, your accumulation of worldly goods does not set you up before another. Many have sold their souls within the holy House of God. Better that you strip yourself and remove all worldly interests now while you have the time to make amends to your God, for many mitres will fall into hell." - St. Thomas Aquinas, August 21, 1972

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