HuffPost published a report claiming the Pentagon "invited more than 3,500 employees to attend a Good Friday service at its in-house chapel," but that "it's only for Protestants, not Catholics." The outlet's senior politics reporter, Jennifer Bendery, cited a memo from Air Force leadership that read: "Just a friendly reminder: There will be a Protestant Service (No Catholic Mass) for Good Friday today at the Pentagon Chapel."
The implication was clear. The Pentagon, under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, had deliberately excluded Catholics from worship on one of the holiest days of the Christian calendar. Bendery wrote that Hegseth, whom she called "a far-right evangelical Christian, has tried to infuse his religious views into Pentagon activities.
There was just one problem. Catholics don't celebrate Mass on Good Friday. They never have.
The correction came swiftly, and from every direction. Washington Examiner reporter Salena Zito addressed Bendery directly:
"Catholic here ... we do not celebrate Mass on Good Friday. It is the only day of the year without a Mass, as the church commemorates Jesus' death."
National Review senior editor Charles C.W. Cook was less patient:
"Yes. It says that there is no Catholic Mass on Good Friday because Catholics do not do Catholic Mass on Good Friday. Is there literally nobody you could have asked? Not one person? Not even Google?"
"Fox & Friends Weekend" co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy offered a more detailed explanation of what actually happens in Catholic churches on Good Friday. Catholics hold a service, not a Mass, because there is no consecration of the Eucharist on that day. Communion is distributed using hosts consecrated the day before, on Holy Thursday. Worshippers read the Gospel of the Passion of Christ and venerate the cross, as Fox News reports.
Hot Air managing editor Ed Morrissey made the same point, noting that what HuffPost framed as exclusion was simply a matter of terminology:
"FYI: Catholics do not have Mass on Good Friday. It's a service, as there is no transubstantiation. Where communion is offered, it's with previously consecrated hosts. This sounds like a misunderstanding of terms by the sources or the reporters."
"Misunderstanding" may be generous.
A Department of War official told Fox News Digital that Catholic Masses are held on a daily basis at the Pentagon and that religious services are open to all Pentagon employees. In other words, the Pentagon wasn't excluding Catholics from anything. The memo simply noted that the Good Friday service would be Protestant in form, which is exactly what you'd expect when the Catholic Church itself does not hold Mass on that day.
The phrase "No Catholic Mass" wasn't a prohibition. It was a description.
But HuffPost ran with it anyway, constructing an entire narrative around the idea that Hegseth was weaponizing religion inside the Defense Department. The framing required its audience to know nothing about Catholic liturgical practice, and apparently required the same of its reporters and editors.
Conservative radio host Erick Erickson pointed to a pattern:
"This person continues to write about Christianity and keeps proving to be completely ignorant of Christianity. Catholics do not celebrate Mass on Good Friday."
Townhall editor Larry O'Connor widened the lens beyond Bendery herself:
"Anybody here surprised that Jennifer doesn't have a good working understanding of Catholicism? Me neither. But, It IS extraordinary that not one person in the editorial chain has even the slightest knowledge of Catholics."
That's the real indictment. This wasn't a tweet fired off in haste. It was a published report from a senior politics reporter at a national outlet, presumably reviewed by at least one editor. Not a single person in that chain caught the error or bothered to check. A ten-second search would have killed the story before it was written.
RedState writer Bonchie cut to the political motive:
"Catholics do not do Mass on Good Friday. It would be offensive to them to try to hold one. Just incredible how hard the left is trying to cause divisions that don't actually exist."
What followed was arguably worse than the original mistake. Daily Wire reporter Megan Basham noted that despite being corrected by thousands of Catholics online, Bendery refused to acknowledge the error:
"What's wild about the hubris of journalists like this lady at @HuffPost is she has literally THOUSANDS of Catholics correcting her that there is no Catholic mass on Good Friday."
Basham added that Bendery continued to suggest Catholics would be barred from attending the Pentagon's Good Friday service entirely, a claim Basham said she was "quite certain is not true."
HuffPost's parent company BuzzFeed did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This episode is small in scale but revealing in kind. It shows what happens when a newsroom's animating purpose is opposition rather than information. If your goal is to catch the Defense Secretary doing something sinister, you'll find sinister things everywhere, including in a routine chapel memo describing a liturgical reality that predates the Pentagon by roughly two thousand years.
The irony is thick. A story meant to expose religious intolerance inside the military was built entirely on religious illiteracy inside a newsroom. The reporters who positioned themselves as defenders of Catholic inclusion didn't understand the first thing about Catholic worship.
Every Catholic in America who has ever attended a Good Friday service knew immediately that this story was nonsense. Every editor at HuffPost apparently did not. The gap between those two groups tells you everything about who these outlets are actually writing for, and it isn't the faithful.
