I'll just quote bits and pieces of the text, enough to give you the idea of what I mean here.
Kroll, Karl (1986, Summer). A personal letter from an OPFOR chaplain. Military Chaplains' Review, 56-60.
The hour is late, and I'm tired... All I want to do right now is just sit back in my chair for a few minutes, think about the day, the soldiers, and the ministry, and then to [? .. ?] of these thoughts about ministry to soldiers in this place.
This has been a very difficult year for me with regard to pastoral involvement with soldiers...
Is it possible for a Catholic priest to be an OPFOR battalion chaplain and run a full Catholic program at the same time? This is one of the key questions that concerned me during the first [?] weeks of being assigned to the OPFOR battalion.
The first concept concerns my vision of what being a priest means. Over the years I have never divided my priesthood into what I did for the battalian and what I did for the area Catholic coverage. They are both a part of who I am as a priest, and the call that I received [?] years ago to ministry to people....
The second concept that I have learned over the years is just as important. This is the vision of the Battalion Commander, and how he or she understands the role of the chaplain who is a priest. If the commander's vision is narrow or turned in upon itself, then there will be tension. If the commander's vision is turned out toward the community, then there will be less confusion. In over a year my battalion commander has never expressed the concept that I belong solely to him. He has always stressed to me the concept that I have to minister to soldiers within the larger network...
One of the deeper questions that I have reflected upon is should a Catholic priest be a battalion chaplain? There are many answers to this question - many pros and con points of view. It is a question that I have wrestled with for over five years. I have come to the conclusion that I do not know....
... My .. assignment with an OPFOR battalion has widened my understanding of a priest's ministry within a combat situation more than I could have imagined. I know some will say we only train at ROTC. This is true,. but it is much more for the soldiers and only members of the two OPFOR battalions. The stress and [?] of combat are very real here, and it was best expressed by the commander when he told me: " It is not actual combat here, but it is the closet [sic] we can get to the real thing." This is the environment; and so I have to become more flexible in my approach to ministry, because conditions change on the battle field each day of training rotation. You also come face to face with your own mortality and having to ministrer to soldiers within this area. (p. 56-57)
So that really struck me that he should even question whether a priest should be a battalion chaplain. I don't think he was going so far as to doubt whether there should be chaplains in the military - as in struggling with a church-state separation issue. But I think he saw that because Catholic service men/women were spread around in different battalions and there weren't that many chaplains, so he was having to meet needs in different battalions that didn't have Catholic chaplains, so he didn't know if then it was right to really be assigned to one battalion. Maybe he was thinking it would have been better to just have a floating Catholic chaplain or one that was signed to a region or something. (He doesn't really say this, but that's how I understand where his thinking might be going.)
To me this sounds like real genuine, unadulterated, unmanipulative spiritual ministry. And I just wished that the chaplains/missionary H.R. staff at the Vienna mission had an ounce of this kind of sincerity in their ministry and concern for individual spiritual welfare.
The thing is though, that they didn't. What they did, was they couched their human resources prerogatives in spiritual terms, to make it look like they were concerned in your spiritual welfare, when in truth they weren't really concerned one iota in your spiritual welfare: all they really cared about was the mission. So they were there to make sure the mission succeeded and the mission needed individuals to do the work, but individuals that met certain criteria.
Now, of course, the selection process would have taken care of a lot of that, there are always more surprises at new jobs right? And at new jobs like the military or missions to communist countries there would be more of this kind of thing (think: boot camp), right?
If I ever saw the honest refreshing side of ministry of the chaplains/H.R. staff of the Vienna mission I don't remember it and I highly doubt it, because they were among the ones at the beginning that were giving me the super syrupy over-blown welcome that was so over the top that it seemed unbelievable to me, so you know it had to be pretty over done. I mean, I thought I had something to offer and I felt confident in myself, but I recognized my limits and I didn't see myself as the kind of savoir they made me out to be so I think I really did have a balanced view of myself. If I had believed them and gotten taken up in what they were saying at that time I think my view of myself would have been really overblown, because what they were implying seemed out of proportion to who I was. And then I felt as if it was a set up too, though, because I was told I was coming to be a secretary and the kind of work they were giving me was way below a secretary's usual work (and they were praising me at the same time - at least at the beginning.)
Then all summer I don't really remember a lot of significant interaction with the H.R. department until they decided they wanted to send me back to the U.S.
So the thing is that they never really had an honest ministry approach with me like this author is talking about. It was always, in my opinion, very manipulative and them using Scripture to explain the human resources decision that was being made. So it was a case, in my opinion, of using Scripture to say whatever you want. Basically, they could have found a Scripture passage to support just about anything they wanted to do, and that's how they operated, and it made you feel as if they were treating you Scripturally and they were discipling you or something. But I never accepted it. I have a strong enough Bible background. That doesn't mean I let on that I didn't accept it though, because I didn't.
This chaplain sounds straight on in this cited part of the article, and even later on when he talks about the nitty gritty of his work with the battalion, of taking "the risk to become involved with another's life." He talks about how prayer is an integral part of who he is and all he does, and he ends with the desire to move beyond theological terms and turn to the message of Easter, the Risen, living Christ.
This is a chaplain-priest who wants to live his faith honestly, and seems to have been able to actually done so, where his acts of ministry are true acts, unencumbered by ulterior military h.r. objectives to make his subjects better soldiers (maybe or maybe not unbeknownst to the soldiers). Unfortunately for me, I can't say the same for my h.r. director/chaplain at the Vienna mission, because he was encumbered by ulterior mission h.r. objectives to make his subjects - e.g. me. - better missionaries (maybe or maybe not unbeknownst to the missionaries)
But the thing was, however, that these missionaries already came to Vienna as mature Christians, so they might not have known that they needed such "bettering" or improvement. "Exactly what types of improvement might I be needing, anyway? Is this something that I would work on at home? If you'd just tell me I wouldn't mind working on it in advance and it would make it easier for everyone."
Well, of course, they'd never tell me. If they weren't going to even tell me what software they use - I offered to take a class at the local technical institute if they would tell me what word processor they used (this was the mid/late 80s remember). But they wouldn't tell me, and instead plopped me down with a user's manual with I got to Vienna to teach myself the software when I got there. So - are you kidding? they'd never tell me what kind of qualities they might be going to teach in H.R. You just have to wait and see once you get there
But just don't expect the Chaplain/H.R. director to have the kind of sincere spiritual concern for your welfare because ultimately he's mostly concerned for the mission, which means that he's just trying to get to know you to see how to approach his indoctrinating you into the mission's ways. So, really the only thing he cares about, when it comes down to it, where the rubber meats the road, is what's good for the mission. Otherwise, he doesn't give a rip about you. So just get used to it. He may give the impression that he cares about you, but that's just so that he can get to the place so that he can prep you to fit into the mission;nothing more, nothing less.
And the thing is that if my dad (his work in SDI - star wars) had any affect on my experiences in Vienna, it would most likely have come through the chaplains and their US military connections (although there was at least on mission that took money from the CIA so that was a possibility too), then the chaplain/H.R. director (him especially, more than the other chaplain/H.R. staff) might not ever have had an honest ministry intention towards me. I mean a Scripture-based spiritual approach like that described in this article, apart from machinations of exterior obligations. But he made it look like a pseudo spiritual, pseudo counseling, when it was just a bunch of pseudo garbage.
There's a difference and it is possible to tell the difference, although sometimes it's difficult to describe. They banked on looking like the real deal.
