Looking for a few good men

By Lenore Christopher

Military archbishop urges prayer, support for military chaplains

"We ask that everyone remember the military and VA chaplains in their prayers and that you pray for the safety of all our service men and women. We also ask that you pray for increased vocations so that more of the faithful can be served by a Catholic chaplain on a regular basis."

– Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien

My vocation story will take 30 seconds," declared Archbishop for the Military Services Edwin F. O’Brien. "I grew up in the Bronx in New York. I’m Irish Catholic, where your education, parish and faith become the hub of everything you are. I never remember a day when I didn’t want to be a priest. That’s the story of my vocation."
The archbishop was in supportive company with more than 70 people, including some 30 priests from the Archdiocese of Cincinnati and members of religious orders joining Dayton Serra Club members and guests at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Officers’ Club on June 4.
 

Archbishop O’Brien’s short address at the annual banquet focused on the ministry of chaplains in the Archdiocese for Military Services, USA (or Military Ordinariate). The military archdiocese is commissioned to provide the church’s full range of pastoral and spiritual services for those dedicated to national defense and to federal services overseas.
 

Chaplains serve military personnel and families at 220 installations in 29 countries, patients in 172 Veterans Administration (VA) hospitals, and are responsible for federal employees serving in 134 countries, which comprise more than 1.2 million Catholics. Those served during the past year include: 375,000 Catholic men and women in uniform; 520,000 family members; 204,000 Catholics in the Reserves and National Guard; 29,000 Catholic residents in VA hospitals; and 66,000 Catholics in government service overseas.
Such ministry is extraordinary not only because of the shortage of priests – only 372 as of June 1 – but also because of the locations and conditions under which the chaplains travel to be with their flock.
 

The archdiocese is a non-territorial, trans-national community, the boundaries for which are the free world, extending wherever American military personnel are stations or federal employees serve overseas. The archdiocese is an ecclesiastical entity and not a governmental or military agency. It receives no funds from government sources, and, unlike dioceses, it cannot tax its chapel parishes.
 

Full-time chaplains are on loan from 51 dioceses and religious communities. Assisting Archbishop O’Brien are four bishops.

"I love the work I do with the military," he said. "I work with young idealistic people who put on a uniform and come to serve. They give their lives, not only for friends but for total strangers."

However, admitted the archbishop, the "shrinking number of priests is affecting us," which makes the work of the Serra organization so important. Although there will be some new priests joining the military archdiocese this summer, a large number of retirements is anticipated by the end of the summer.
 

The military archdiocese does sponsor programs, including summer experiences, which support priests, but "we have to pray more and think more about how to attract (priests to military service)," he said.
 

"In order to minister to this segment of the church, you have to become one of them," Archbishop O’Brien said. "The chaplain is the one to approach the soldier in a spiritual perspective. We represent home to them and the new generation has a hunger for God."
The mobility of the people the chaplains serve, he said, presents unique challenges, some of which local pastors in Dayton-area parishes which surround Wright-Patterson are also aware.
 

"It is amazing that there is such continuity," Archbishop O’Brien said in an interview with The Catholic Telegraph on June 5. "There is such willingness on the part of lay people to volunteer themselves almost when they arrive at a new assignment. In many ways it is the ideal – (working with a) motivated, highly disciplined membership."
 

But in some parts of the world, service personnel may go for months without seeing a priest, the archbishop said, which demonstrates the urgent need "to spread enthusiasm" about vocations.
 

"A good chaplain radiates God. It is not so much what we say but that we are here," he said. "It has been my privilege to work with the young priests and we need to support them more generously."
 

Archbishop O’Brien earned degrees at St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers, N.Y., and at Angelicum University in Rome. He was named archbishop for the military services in 1997. He previously served as an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of New York.

Reprinted with permission from The Catholic Telegraph, June 15, 2001.

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