text: Thank you, Mike Laskey, for this cogent and may I say brilliant article.  I find the notion of an American flag in church  incredibly offensive.  Mind you, I live in England, but I felt the same way when I lived in the USA.  America has legalised abortion and now gay "marriage" and so is clearly an anti-Catholic regime.
  Not to change the subject, but here in the UK, you often find tattered old regimental banners mouldering away in odd corners of C of E churches.  Some of them are very tatty and definitely lower the tone.
  The other thing I don't like in churches is sticking the priest's chair plonk in front of the altar.  You don't see it so much anymore, thank goodness, but after Paul VI imposed his dreadful Novus Ordo on us all many churches did this.  The priest sitting right in front of the altar—Look at me!  Look at me!  Like Captain Kirk on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.
  Anyway, thanks again for this lucid piece.  Ad multos annos!