Here’s a simple question: If you were hiring someone to provide dental care, would you insist applicants be dentists? It seems reasonable to me, but not, apparently, to some people at Walter Reed National Medical Center. Though, the issue isn’t dentists – perhaps that’s next, but about pastoral care, specifically Catholic pastoral care.

A long time ago, when I was an ensign in the Navy, one aircraft went out on a mission and didn’t come back. It was simply gone. Three of the guys in the airplane (I didn’t know the other aircrew) were friends, Frank and Dave and Mike, really good guys. I can see their faces to this day. They were gone. We learned later that they had flown into the sea, but at the time, all we knew was that they were gone. The man the crew needed that day was the chaplain. He spoke to us of loss and the meaning of our lives and what it means to sacrifice for a right cause. He brought some meaning to what otherwise seemed truly meaningless. And in doing so helped us all continue the mission.

Such is the real role of chaplains in the armed forces.

Truth is, when things are going well, chaplains are often of virtually no value. And in many cases they are viewed as nothing more than social workers, which they are not. But then something happens, something very violent, which is the real business of the armed forces. And then, and in the days after, they are worth their weight in gold.

Chaplains have been around for a while in the US Navy. The 2nd article of Navy Regulations, 1775 reads: “The Commanders of the ships of the thirteen United Colonies, are to take care that divine service be performed twice a day onboard, and a sermon preached on Sundays unless bad weather or other extraordinary accidents prevent.” One of the first three (there is a paperwork discrepancy) Navy Chaplains, Benjamin Balch, served with John Paul Jones.

I have a good friend, a remarkable fellow, who spent most of his career in one of those units that doesn’t exist, and he tells a story of taking an Army chaplain out to a spot in the Afghan Hills where a small team of men were engaged in some very unpleasant, violent business. They were all hard men doing a very hard job. None of them, if asked, would have said: “Oh, and bring a chaplain.” But he did. The chaplain, who was new to Afghanistan, was ready to go, he felt he needed to go out. He spent a number of days with the team. He hiked back into base over more unpleasant terrain. And afterwards every man in the unit quietly recounted how they needed that visit from “Chaps.”

That’s when chaplains count, when the bad things have already happened. And they do some remarkable things, and have for many, many years. I would encourage you to ask anyone who was in Beirut in 1983 about Rabbi Resnicoff or Fr. Pucciarelli. Or search on-line for “The Four Chaplains.”

Military hospitals are places that see a great deal of bad things, and they try to fix them. The vast bulk of any military hospital is about putting the body back together. A smaller part is about putting, strictly speaking, the mind back together. But the only part that tries to put the soul back together is the chaplains’ office.

Sadly, many of our hospitals don’t have fully staffed chaplains offices, because there are not enough priests, ministers and rabbis to fill all the slots that need to be filled. So, they hire civilian priests and ministers and rabbis to staff hospitals and major shore installations and send active duty chaplains to sea and overseas.

Hiring of priests is also not new – John Paul Jones hired a Catholic priest to be chaplain on Bonhomme Richard.

So, returning to Walter Reed, there was a contract for “Catholic Pastoral Care” at Walter Reed. It was being filled, and had been for quite a while, by some Franciscan priests, an order of Catholic priests. But on March 31st the command issued a “cease and desist” order. The Archdiocese for the Military Services issued a letter that explains what happened:

“The Franciscans’ contract for Catholic Pastoral Care was terminated on March 31, 2023, and awarded to a secular defense contracting firm that cannot fulfill the statement of work in the contract. As a result, adequate pastoral care is not available for service members and veterans in the United States’ largest Defense Health Agency medical center either during Holy Week or beyond. There is one Catholic Army chaplain assigned to Walter Reed Medical Center, but he is in the process of separating from the Army.

His Excellency, the Most Reverend Timothy P. Broglio, J.C.D., Archbishop for the Military Services, condemned the move as an encroachment on the First Amendment guarantee of the Free Exercise of Religion. Archbishop Broglio said: “It is incomprehensible that essential pastoral care is taken away from the sick and the aged when it was so readily available. This is a classic case where the adage ‘if it is not broken, do not fix it’ applies. I fear that giving a contract to the lowest bidder overlooked the fact that the bidder cannot provide the necessary service. I earnestly hope that this disdain for the sick will be remedied at once and their First Amendment rights will be respected.”

It should be noted that Archbishop Broglio has been in that office since 2007; he is not a newcomer, he understands very well how the system works, he doesn’t protest in public when he doesn’t need to. He is smart, measured, man.

Looking at whist happened here, there are really on two possibilities. The first is that this was just some foolish administrative event where someone looked at the cost of the contract and without really thinking any further, picked the cheaper answer. If so, then it can be quickly answered.

But there is a much more worrisome possibility, the possibility that the same animus that led at least one FBI field office to label Catholics who attend Latin Mass or carry rosary beads as potential violet extremists has captured other elements of the federal government and that this is nothing less than an initial step in an effort to purge the federal government, beginning with the DOD, of the Catholic Church.

Nor, of course, would it stop there. To a certainty, such a purge would only end with the purging of any trace of religion or God from the services, save the establishment of an official religion, one that worshipped perhaps at the feet of Climate change and Gaia.

What can we do about it?

Write the Secretary of the Navy, his address is below. Or send an email to his office. This is particularly true for those who have not been in the Navy. This is your Navy, you pay for it, it works for you. The Secretary works for you. And he has promised to uphold the Constitution, which protects freedom of religion. He needs to be reminded that it is the American people’s Navy.

His office: secnavpa.fct@navy.mil
The Honorable Carlos del Toro
Office of the Secretary of the Navy
1000 Navy Pentagon, Room 4D652
Washington, DC 20350

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