Until recently, I didn’t know the outcome of that blackly comic incident in the 1980s when a bishop tried to persuade the US Navy not to name their latest submarine after Our Lord. Now I know. They came to a compromise.
This was during the time that the US was naming all their new Los Angeles class submarines after American cities, who usually jostled for the honour. When the next available name on the commissioning list turned out to be that of Corpus Christi TX, the Bishop of Corpus Christi – who the dates suggest was the Irish-born octogenerian Thomas Joseph Drury – objected to the proposed names on the grounds that a warship could not be called after The Body of Christ.
Nobody seems to have spotted the difficulty before and many citizens were angry, not at the Navy but at the bishop. Eventually it was agreed that SSN-705 should be named City of Corpus Christi. It is still in service, manned by those who “go down to the sea in ships, and occupy their business in great waters” (Psalm 107:23) and God is not mocked. Details in Wikipedia.
USS City of Corpus Christi
