Home Page Home Page
Front Page News Digest Cardinal George Observations The Interview MarketPlace
Learn more about our publication and our policies
Send us your comments and requests
Subscribe to our print edition
Advertise in our print edition or on this site
Search past online issues
Link to other Catholic Web sites
Site Map
New World Publications
Periódieo oficial en Español de la Arquidióesis de Chicago
Katolik
Archdiocesan Directory
Order Directory Online
Link to the Archdiocese of Chicago's official Web site.
The Catholic New World
The Cardinal's Column
January 30, 2005

If war is hell, why are there military chaplains?

Pope John Paul II, in his message for the World Day of Peace this year, wrote: “Evil is never defeated by evil. … Peace is a good to be promoted by good … violence is an unacceptable evil.” This makes clear in broad terms that every war is not just between belligerent peoples but between principalities and powers. War is a moral enterprise and has to be judged in the light of the moral law.

While every war is violent, not every war is immoral. War is an evil, yet going to war is not always a moral evil. Self-defense or the defense of those who depend for protection on parents or on the state has been a moral justification for violence and even for warfare. The Church admires the witness of pacifists, for their lives speak of the kingdom of peace preached by the Lord. Warfare, as the Pope has said, always signals a failure for humanity; pacifists remind the world of that truth. But not everyone can ignore the moral obligation to defend those who have a right to protection, and every government has an obligation to protect its citizens from harm. The Holy See, which has established military Ordinariates in almost every country with a significant army, itself asked for military intervention to protect people in Bosnia a few years ago. Just War Theory, as the moralists call it, sets out the conditions that determine when going to war becomes a moral necessity. It also sets out conditions for the moral conduct of war.

A few examples help make this distinction between the right to go to war (jus ad bellum) and the laws for war’s moral conduct (jus in bello). There are few, except those who believe that any violence is always immoral, who would argue that a country’s territory being invaded, as was the United States in 1941, does not justify a violent response. Yet many of those who make the case for the Second World War’s being a just war would also say that the way it was conducted was sometimes immoral. The Nazi use of rockets against London’s civilian population, the carpet bombing of German cities, the use of atomic weapons against civilian targets in Japan, become the stuff of important moral argument. Once you judge that going to war is justified, it doesn’t follow that you can use any means to win the war. The invasion of Iraq was condemned by many, including Pope John Paul II and the U.S. bishops, because the argument for going to war didn’t satisfy the demands of just war theory in their most stringent interpretation. Yet even for those who believe that the invasion was justified, the use of torture against Iraqi prisoners of war is condemned as obviously immoral. It is why the army itself has tried its own soldiers for criminal behavior. Even within the conduct of a justifiable war, moral norms judge combatants’ behavior.

When one uses evil means to combat evil, one succumbs to evil. This is the basis of the argument against using embryonic stem cells, killing innocent human life, in order to combat the evil of disease. If warfare were always morally evil, then it could never be used, even to repel the evil of foreign invasion. St. Augustine, sometimes recognized as the “author” of just war theory, wrote 1,600 years ago: “At times we must take actions that otherwise would be unpalatable because there is evil in the world, and we have to confront evil by putting an end to it somehow.” Wars can destroy not only the vanquished but also the victor. Going to war places everyone at great risk; yet using war to overcome a government that persecutes or enslaves or wants to dominate others sometimes justifies taking that risk.

If the military are part of society’s fulfilling its duty to defend the weak and poor and defenseless, and if there are Catholics in the ranks of the military, then priests should be there to serve them. At present, 25 percent of the active-duty personnel in the Department of Defense are Catholics. Almost all of them are young, and many are from immigrant families. The Church has a special concern for the young and the poor. There are, therefore, about 375 priests on active duty as full-time chaplains with the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard. Another 488 priests serve part-time with the reserve forces and the National Guard. At VA Medical Centers, there are 91 full-time and 41 part-time chaplains.

For the past 20 years, this chaplaincy service has been coordinated by the Archdiocese for Military Services, headed presently by Archbishop Edwin O’Brien. It ministers to the 375,000 Catholic men and women in uniform and to their families, as well as to the 204,000 Catholics in the reserve and the National Guard, to those in VA Medical Centers and those in government service in 134 countries overseas. The chaplains minister also to cadets in the five U.S. military service academies.

The chaplain is a pastor to those Catholics and others for whom he is responsible. Chaplains are, says Archbishop O’Brien, “an extension of the service men and women’s own dioceses and their own parish priests.” Sometimes they are, in fact, priests who were formerly their pastors in civilian life. In recent months, two Chicago priests who were in the reserves have been called to active duty in Iraq: Father John Barkemeyer, pastor of St. Cajetan parish, and Father Waldemar Kilian, pastor of St. Bruno parish. On bases, the chaplain’s ministry is much like it might be in a parish: Sunday and weekday Masses, sacramental formation, religious instruction, the offering of emotional and moral support. In battle situations, however, these religious services take on a heroic quality. The chaplain brings those at war into the life of the Church, into the life of Christ himself who is present to his people under conditions of great stress and danger.

In the larger military community, chaplains act as counselors. They are the only military officials who can guarantee confidentiality to soldiers. Their presence in military installations and especially on the field of battle is highly supportive and helps bring spiritual and moral principles into military life. Chaplains themselves are under enormous pressure, not least from a sense of personal and spiritual isolation.

Catholic Chaplains are badly needed but in short supply. Because the Archdiocese of Chicago is somewhat better supplied with priests than many dioceses in this country, we have been generous in sharing our priests with the military Archdiocese. Besides Fathers Kilian and Barkemeyer, mentioned above, the following priests of the Archdiocese are or have been either active or reserve chaplains: Fathers John Baldwin (ret.), Edwin Bohula (ret.), Richard J. Dempsey (ret.), James Grace (ret.), Mark Greschel, John Kastigar (ret.), David Kloak, Ronald Stake, Kenneth Carlson, Thomas Falkenthal, John Hannigan, James Joslyn, Robert Keener, James Kehoe, Kenneth Kleiber and Brian Simpson. Please support with your prayers these priests and those to whom they minister.

Among Chicago bishops, Bishop Jerome Listecki served in the U.S. Army Reserve for many years, finishing his service with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He retired from the military just in time to be named Bishop of La Crosse. I am sure you will keep him in your prayers as he prepares to leave the Archdiocese which has always been his home in order to serve as a diocesan Ordinary in Wisconsin.

Finally, a word about another Chicago bishop, Wilton Gregory, now the Archbishop of Atlanta. Along with other Chicago bishops, priests and lay people, I took part in the installation ceremony in Atlanta on January 17. (See story, Page 19) Hundreds of men and women and children came up at the beginning of the Mass to greet their new Archbishop. As I watched these gracious people of Georgia, most of them white, kiss the hand of a black man from Chicago because he is their bishop, it struck me forcefully that our faith, if lived profoundly, is truly able to convert us to God’s ways. Despite our faults and sins, some things have changed for the better in recent decades.

I am writing this on January 23, as the Archdiocese of Chicago marks “Dwell in My Love Sunday.” In April, 2001, I issued a pastoral letter calling for the conversion of Catholics from anything that smacks of racism, our country’s original sin. Much has been done to implement that letter in the last four years, and I am grateful to all those engaged in helping Sister Anita Baird and the Office for Racial Justice keep this moral challenge central to our lives as Catholics of the Archdiocese. God bless you all.

 

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Francis Cardinal George, OMI
Archbishop of Chicago

CARDINAL'S COLUMN Archive


Front Page | Digest | Cardinal | Interview | Classifieds | About Us | Write Us | Subscribe | Advertise | Archive | Catholic Sites New World Publications | Católico | Directory Site Map

    
Jan. 30 - Feb. 12, 2005
Jan. 31-Feb. 3: USCCB delegate to the Mixed Commission meeting, Rome.

Saturday, Feb. 5: 5 p.m., Mass at Mother of God, Burnham.

Sunday, Feb. 6: 10:30 a.m., Mass at St. Nicholas of Tolentine.

Wednesday, Feb. 9: 12:10 p.m., Ash Wednesday Mass, Holy Name Cathedral. 4:30 p.m., Mass at Sheil Catholic Center, Northwestern University.

Thursday, Feb. 10: 12 p.m., Northwest Executive Club luncheon, Hoffman Estates.

Friday, Feb. 11: 7:30 a.m., Big Shoulders Fund Executive Committee. 10 a.m., Episcopal Council meeting, Residence.

Saturday, Feb. 12: 9 a.m., Winter Vicariate V and VI meeting, St. Rita High School. 2 p.m., Archdiocesan celebration of Consecrated Life, DePaul University. 7 p.m., Respect Life benefit dinner, Drury Lane, Oak Brook.


His Eminence, Francis Cardinal George announces the following appointments:

Pastor

Rev. Henryk Licznerski, CR, to be the pastor of St. Wenceslaus Parish, North Monticello, effective immediately.

Rev. Theodore Schmitt, from associate pastor of St. James Parish, Arlington Heights, to be pastor of St. Monica Parish, North Mont Clare, effective immediately.

Administrator

Rev. Michael Nacius, to be the administrator of St. Isidore the Farmer Parish, Blue Island, while retaining duties as pastor of St. Lawrence O’Toole Parish, Matteson, and dean of Vicariate VI-D, effective immediately.

Most Rev. Joseph Perry to be the administrator of Seven Holy Founders, Calumet Park, while retaining his duties as vicar of Vicariate VI, effective immediately.

Rev. Richard Prendergast from sabbatical to be the administrator of St. Bruno Parish, South Harding, effective immediately.


Top