“Serving those who serve”

A closer look at the Archdiocese for the Military Services

Reprinted with permission from the National Catholic Community Foundation.

Our front line is global. Our parish is the world. We minister on the combat circuit, and that circuit changes daily, as do the sands in the desert and the waves of the sea.

Our job is clear – it’s “serving those who serve.” Our country is at war and every day the Archdiocese for the Military services supports those on the front lines. As an ecclesiastical entity, not a governmental or military agency, we receive no government funds and have no territorial boundaries. Our mission is to minister to the 1.5 million Catholics in the five military services and in overseas government service.

Our faithful are located throughout the world.

Our flock includes 375,000 Catholic men and women in uniform, 900,000 family members, 29,000 VA hospital patients and 60,000 Catholics in government service overseas as well as 204,000 Catholics in Reserve and National Guard units. We work directly with 375 active-duty priest chaplains in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard; 426 priest chaplains serving part-time with Reserve and National Guard units; as well as 90 full-time and 34 part-time priest chaplains in VA hospitals.

Over 75,000 children participate in our religious education programs, and that number continues to grow as the military rebuilds. Over 4,100 children and 1,100 adults were baptized in our Archdiocese last year. Almost 1,000 couples were married; we confirmed over 2,200. Thousands of adults participate in our RCIA and adult religious education programs. And as our Korea and Vietnam veterans age, demands to serve them with dignity and appropriate end-of-life care in the 172 VA hospitals in our Archdiocese challenge our resources.

Our work has included:

* Bringing 15 active-duty military to Washington, D.C., for Discernment Weekend, seeking a possible vocation in the priesthood – as well as encouraging a chaplain at the Air Force Academy who mentors 22 cadets toward a possible vocation.

* Building an electronic educational program for lay leaders who help minister on ships at sea and tents in the desert—when no chaplain is available.

* Fostering the growth of a worldwide religious education program meeting the needs of children, young singles, parents and families. We are producing a manual for chaplains targeted to military ministry and to deal with issues such as the young person who has moved so much that he or she has missed Confirmation preparation.

Operation Enduring Freedom, America’s fight against terrorist cells, brings airmen and soldiers and chaplains to the far corners of the world. When forces deploy, chaplains are an integral part of the team. Much like a global version of the old circuit riders, today’s military chaplain often rambles from place to place in armored cars or helicopters. Chapel assistants prepare tents for Mass at each stop, meet the Chaplain at the landing zone and whisk him to the battle station in a four-wheel drive vehicle. Sometimes there is a break – a time for a spin on a tank following Confessions and Mass.

These chaplains know their people and how to lift their spirits in war. Chapel assistants find verses in the Koran for Islamic GIs and they get yarmulkes or bibles covered in desert camouflage for others. They access computer files of readings for a deployment’s worth of Sundays. Forces on the ground often applaud when a “Padre” comes to camp.

But our front lines go beyond those drawn by war. They also include include uprooted families and loved ones left behind. Bible studies in military homes in North Carolina, ecumenical discussions at a coffee house in Guantanamo Bay, the Cursillo movement in Germany, Marriage Encounter in Okinawa, weekly homilies in Spanish on our website, getting teenage Catholics to work and play together while Dad or Mom attends War College in Pennsylvania – these, too, are the work of the military archdiocese.

Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien shepherds this far-flung flock. A Vietnam veteran and former chaplain to the 82nd Airborne, he wrote the following during a trip in December 2001 to the Balkans:

“The sacrifices of our several thousand troops in the Balkans, far from home, remain the single most important factor for the continuing peace there. Marines and Sailors serve aboard ships such as the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt with over 5,000 troops who have not had a single shore leave in more than five months at sea; they will likely return home in two more months, ship-bound all the while. Given the structure of such a ship, most sailors rarely even see daylight . . . the average age of all on the TR is 20 years . . . The indescribably primitive surroundings and circumstances encountered by our special operations teams in the craggy and hostile mountains of Afghanistan is a story yet to be told . . . how proud we should be of them all and, surely of our magnificent priest chaplains, whose critical presence and spiritual counsel brings alive daily the Lord’s Beatitude: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’”

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