{"id":222,"date":"2008-08-07T20:06:37","date_gmt":"2008-08-08T03:06:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=222"},"modified":"2008-08-12T20:57:54","modified_gmt":"2008-08-13T03:57:54","slug":"challenge-to-va-chaplains-pastoral-care-denied","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/07\/challenge-to-va-chaplains-pastoral-care-denied\/","title":{"rendered":"Challenge to VA Chaplains&#8217; &#8220;Pastoral Care&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As noted <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alliancealert.org\/2008\/08\/05\/7th-circuit-freedom-from-religion-foundation-lacks-standing-to-challenge-pastoral-care-provided-by-the-vas-chaplain-service\/\">here<\/a>, the 7th Circuit ruled against the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which had challenged the &#8220;pastoral care&#8221; role of the VA Chaplaincy on Constitutional grounds (filed in 2006).\u00a0 While the lower court ruled on the merits of the case (in favor of the VA), the circuit court vacated that decision and found that\u00a0the FFRF did not have standing to sue.<\/p>\n<p>In its <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianfighterpilot.com\/articles\/files\/ffrf.pdf\">ruling<\/a>, the court also included a fairly detailed history of the military Chaplaincy.\u00a0 Even the FRFF legally conceded that chaplains<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>obviously perform religious activities, which they can do to a limited extent to accommodate the constitutional Free Exercise rights of hospitalized patients.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The judges also noted <!--more-->that, contrary to some accusations,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It is undisputed that VA policy prohibits proselytizing&#8230;It is further undisputed that the provision of pastoral care is overtly religious in content only if the patient wishes&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Interestingly, while the FRFF claimed that the situation generated excessive government entanglement with religion, the district court actually wrote that the order sought by the FRFF would <em>itself<\/em> create excessive entanglement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As noted here, the 7th Circuit ruled against the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which had challenged the &#8220;pastoral care&#8221; role of the VA Chaplaincy on Constitutional grounds (filed in 2006).\u00a0 While the lower court ruled on the merits of the case (in favor of the VA), the circuit court vacated that decision and found that\u00a0the FFRF did not have standing [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[4,2],"class_list":["post-222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chaplain","tag-churchandstate","tag-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222","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=222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}