390. Mlitary Chaplaincy, Pt. 8 (Dept. of the Army, pt. 5)

We're still in Chapter 3: "The Chaplain Program," but now we're in Section III: "Pastora Care and Counseling."

42. Privileged Communication

"a. AR-165-15 defines the official protection the chaplain enjoys in privileged communications. The Manual of Courts-Martial provides that any communication made to a chaplain in his cpacity as a clergyman or spiritual confideant, or as a formal act of religion, by a person subject to military law, will be recognized as a privileged communication." (p. 13; word unitalicized was italicized in original)

It's a good thing, I think that at least in the military legal setting soldier-chaplain communications are confidential, although only when the chaplain is in his religious role.  So this is a vary narrow context and guarantee of privileged communication.

This is a situation where it might be especially necessary to have this right spelled out in writing and actually have and Army statute guaranteeing it (so that one's lawyer would have something to stick his teeth into, if need be).  

I'll be curious as to whether this right is upheld in more mundane situations in the Army.  Maybe it will be if it is in this case.

If this were the case, however, the Army would be heads and shoulders above the Vienna mission, which would point again to the mission being more like a spy mission.  I'm not sure if places like the CIA have chaplains, but if they do, I'd be surprised if they would honor "priviliged communication."  I highly doubt that my communication with the H.R. director/military chaplain was anything like privileged communication.  Of course, he was playing the role of H.R. director when I knew him.

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44. "Counseling"
"... Some chaplains develop greater counseling abilities than others, but all chaplains acquire, and are called upon to use, some skill in this important aspect of the pastoral ministry." (p. 13)

I think there are other articles that discuss this kind of thing and how chaplains can deal with the milder cases of mental issues but have to refer the more serious cases to professional psychologists.  (I do remember some things even from not reading these articles for so many years!) 

The Army really expected the chaplain to be able to play a significant role in this area.  I'll just leave it at that for now, without further comment.

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Section IV. "Character Guidance"  This is one place I think we're really going to have some issues.

Starting with paragraph 45. "General."

"The Character Guidance Program is outlined in AR 600-30... The theme of the program DUTY-HONOR-COUNTRY is enshrined in the military tradition of the United States...
The Commanding Officer is primarily responsible for the Character Guidance Program.  However, the chaplain should enthusiastically accept his responsibility as staff adviser in areas of religion and morality and should make his instruction effective." (p. 14)

 Well, the Army is free to practice civil religion if it wants.  It's a free country.  And, actually, the chaplains and their denominations can also practice it too if they want.  But they should acknowledge up front that civil religion is basically a secular religion, although churches have taken it and made it Christian. 

Well, okay, there's another possible take on that.  There's the take that America is a Christian nation.  However, the denominations that hold that view are not the ecumenical ones you're most likely to find in the chaplaincy, I think.  There could be exceptions, I suppose, though.  That's a more fundamentalist view (although not all fundamentalist Christians hold that view either.)

Or there is the America-is-the-Second-Israel view which a small remnant of dispensationalists hold to. I think some others espouse it to more or less without really thinking it through necessarily.  It's the idea that America is the new promised land.

It's clear here, however, that Army just wants to instill these values in the soldiers.  There's a vew of "spirituality" that dumps all kinds of morality into spirituality.  In some religions maybe that is appropriate (I'm not all that versed in them, but maybe some Eastern religions this would work in), but not in the vast majority of the kinds of religions that populate the U.S. Army. In the old Soviet Union when you read something about spirituality in the press or wherever (not the church) it meant this kind of thing -  but they were atheists, for Pete's sake!  (I lived in Russia and this carried over even after the putsch.)

So what you have here is the following:

1. a program created by the Army
2. a program in the national interest
3. a program with doubtful religious origin
4. a program with doubtful religious intentions
5. the chaplain must back the program
6. the chaplain must enthusiastically play a supporting role to the Commander's leadership in the program

For the chaplain to play a supporting role, he would have to, it seems to me, be at peace with the idea that his leadership in the program means that he is sending to the soldiers the signal that the values in the program either might be spiritual or at the very least have the approval of the spiritual establishment.  This, of course, is the kind of thing the Army might way, because it might give extra clout to their efforts at transformation among its soldiers.  But that is, after all, what the chaplain enlisted for, so that's all in a day's work, right?  I suppose.

So the thing is, though, that this is the kind of thing you'd expect in the military chaplaincy, right? Well, maybe, although you may or may not like it.  But in a mission, like the Vienna mission?  Maybe not so much, right?  But that's exactly what I'm trying to get at... that these people brought these kinds of things with them to the Vienna mission.  And here I'm not just talking about one or two people, I'm talking about virtually a whole mission gone awry.

But this issue here about the Character Guidance Program might not actually be that significant.  Still, we're starting to deal with a few issues, although to many they'd be non-issues, I know.

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47. "Character Guidance Instruction"

"Character guidance instruction is a training responsibility in the Army and is scheduled at regular intervals.  The chaplain normally is the principal instructor in the command character guidance program of instruction." (p. 14)

The rest of this paragraph deals with instruction techniques and also mentions that evidently a particular instructional topic is assigned.  So here again we have the chaplain in the Army's nanny position, in that he's involved in the upbringining of the soldiers according to the specifications of the Army.  This, of course, is not necessarily in accordance with the chaplain's denomination.  I have no idea what the topics are, although I can use already mentioned topics (e.g., duty, honor, country) as possible guides.

So the thing is that the chaplain was used to sort of conforming to the world here and compromising: a little bit of church stuff, a little bit of Army, and before you know it, he's a new breed, a military chaplain.  That sort of compromise of world & faith is exactly what happened in the Vienna mission when they tried to meld their secrutiy and their ministry.  That's why they were so intent on new members trusting them completely before moving on, because there was that compromise going on that they didn't want others to know about.  But I don't know the extent of it, because I never actually took the full jump, thankfully, or I wouldn't be here to tell this.

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 I'm ending here, but we'll pick up where we left off in the next post.