{"id":15280,"date":"2012-01-19T01:27:51","date_gmt":"2012-01-19T04:27:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=15280"},"modified":"2012-01-19T01:27:51","modified_gmt":"2012-01-19T04:27:51","slug":"military-faces-catholic-chaplain-shortage-and-surge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2012\/01\/19\/military-faces-catholic-chaplain-shortage-and-surge\/","title":{"rendered":"Military Faces Catholic Chaplain Shortage, and Surge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Chris Carroll at the <em>Stars and Stripes <\/em>notes the importance of Catholic chaplains to a large majority of the US military population &#8212; and yet the marked <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stripes.com\/catholics-seek-to-boost-number-of-priests-serving-as-chaplains-1.164918\">shortage of priests in the military<\/a> as a whole.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Searching for bombs day in and day out, [US Army SPC Joe] Murphy needed the reassuring hand of his faith more than ever, but because of a worsening shortage of Catholic chaplains in Afghanistan and throughout the military, it had never been more difficult to practice it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe only time in Afghanistan I ever saw a priest was <!--more-->on large bases, and I wasn\u2019t on large bases very often,\u201d\u00a0Murphy said. He estimated he attended Mass three times during his nine-month deployment in 2010 and 2011.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>With a shortage of priests, some adherents may simply make do.\u00a0 Local priests may help, if they&#8217;re available.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In war zones, the more abundant Protestant chaplains often shoulder the load, said Army [Chaplain] Capt. Joel Panzer&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Though some have insinuated ulterior motives to the Protestant chaplains, Chaplain Panzer never saw it.\u00a0 In fact, he was impressed by the opposite:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Panzer said he doesn\u2019t worry about proselytization of his Catholic troops; chaplains take seriously their obligation to help troops practice their own religions, regardless of creed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve heard that a few years ago there were some Bible fundamentalists who were working a little too aggressively to pull people into their fold,\u201d he said. \u201cI have not witnessed that myself. They really amaze me with the concern they show &#8230; that Catholic soldiers have support in practicing their faith.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>A surge of volunteers has been <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/10\/27\/the-courage-of-us-military-chaplains\/\">experienced in Catholic seminary<\/a>, however, portending a possible reversal in fortune in the shortage of Catholic chaplains.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chris Carroll at the Stars and Stripes notes the importance of Catholic chaplains to a large majority of the US military population &#8212; and yet the marked shortage of priests in the military as a whole. Searching for bombs day in and day out, [US Army SPC Joe] Murphy needed the reassuring hand of his faith more than ever, but [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[58,54,5284,70,2733,2734,2,10,171],"class_list":["post-15280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chaplain","tag-afghanistan","tag-catholic","tag-chaplain","tag-evangelism","tag-joe-murphy","tag-joel-panzer","tag-military","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}