{"id":2574,"date":"2009-12-14T00:30:20","date_gmt":"2009-12-14T08:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=2574"},"modified":"2015-06-27T19:16:26","modified_gmt":"2015-06-27T22:16:26","slug":"chaplain-foley-motivational-speaker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/14\/chaplain-foley-motivational-speaker\/","title":{"rendered":"Chaplain Foley, Motivational Speaker"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>US Army Chaplain (Capt) Matt Foley has an odd claim to fame.\u00a0 Yes, he is <em>that<\/em> &#8220;Matt Foley:&#8221; the <em>Saturday Night Live<\/em> motivational speaker played by Chris Farley.\u00a0 He and Farley played rugby together in college, and Farley would ultimately promise to use Foley&#8217;s name when he acted out the character.<\/p>\n<p>A <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jsonline.com\/news\/wisconsin\/78488012.html\">local news article<\/a> relates Foley&#8217;s motivation and history in becoming a Catholic priest and military Chaplain. As has been noted before, there is a <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2009\/07\/10\/air-force-chaplaincy-scholarships\/\">shortage of Catholic Chaplains<\/a> in the US military, a problem that has Foley &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/13\/fob-hopping-chaplain-ministers-in-iraq\/\">FOB-hopping<\/a>&#8221; around Afghanistan serving the needs of Catholic (and other) soldiers.<\/p>\n<p>Foley&#8217;s reputation at Bagram is <!--more-->evident:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;He&#8217;s a good guy, he comes on missions all the time,&#8221; Culshaw said.<\/p>\n<p>First Sgt. Shawn Roberts of Norwalk, Conn., is sometimes too busy to go to church services so &#8220;it&#8217;s always good to see a chaplain. He&#8217;s pretty personable and makes the rounds around the battalion.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The article also notes that he carries a &#8220;Mass kit,&#8221; which contains the necessary items for performing Catholic rituals:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The kit includes wine, holy oil, a cross, a container of hosts, Sunday missal, monthly missals, prayer books and his white stole and alb made from camouflage material.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Chaplains of every faith often have such &#8220;kits&#8221; of sectarian supplies\u00a0for serving their faith adherents&#8211;<a href=\"http:\/\/buddhistmilitarysangha.blogspot.com\/2009\/07\/hello-to-all.html\">including Buddhists<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>A caution to the easily offended: The article does show a photo of the uniformed\u00a0Captain in front of a crucifix, a type of photo which one organization incorrectly claims is &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2009\/09\/23\/non-profits-fundraising-and-support-our-troops\/#comment-7008\">tantamount to a [prohibited] religious endorsement by the officer<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>US Army Chaplain (Capt) Matt Foley has an odd claim to fame.\u00a0 Yes, he is that &#8220;Matt Foley:&#8221; the Saturday Night Live motivational speaker played by Chris Farley.\u00a0 He and Farley played rugby together in college, and Farley would ultimately promise to use Foley&#8217;s name when he acted out the character. A local news article relates Foley&#8217;s motivation and history [&#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":[58,37,4,2,5218,7,11,17,10],"class_list":["post-2574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chaplain","tag-afghanistan","tag-buddhism","tag-churchandstate","tag-military","tag-military-religious-freedom-foundation","tag-mrff","tag-prayer","tag-religious-expression","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2574","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=2574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2574\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}