What is the point of the chaplain in the armed forces? Apparently there is none; the role of the chaplain with respect to the firm, well-defined operational mission of the forces is not immediately obvious. Moreover, the presence of the chaplain, the man of peace, in a warlike setting seems at least paradoxical, if not downright contradictory.

Military men themselves sometimes pose the question of the pertinence of the chaplain at their side–but only in peacetime. They never do so when they find themselves involved in a mission which leads them to question, in one way or another, the point of their actions, and even of their lives. It is notable that in the eyes of the soldiers: ‘you don’t see the chaplain when he is there but you see when he is not there!’ The usefulness of the chaplain, like the gendarmerie or the forces in general, is not obvious while the need for his abilities is absent. The problem thus becomes the definition of the chaplain’s particular competence.

In the Service of Man

Pope Paul VI gave an indirect answer to this question by affirming that the Church is ‘expert in humanity’. Military leaders nowadays are accustomed to saying that the forces are a human community, a community of men and women, engaged in a mission which demands the commitment of their whole being including, if necessary, the supreme sacrifice. Everything which concerns people concerns the Church, not in a spirit of reclamation or misplaced proselytism but out of a regard for service, enabling each one to find his place within the human family, including within the military sphere. It is not just a question of philanthropic attention to promote the mutual solidarity necessary but, much more than this, a duty of charity in the sense of a genuine witness through presence, listening, day-to-day accompaniment and worship, and the care that God himself bestows on everyone.

The official presence of the chaplain within the forces constitutes a double recognition: recognition on the part of the Church that men and women committed to the military life are full members of the human family, children of God, with a special mission the exercise of which is not incompatible with the Christian condition; recognition also, on the part of the State, that the Church has its own place in the spiritual domain and that this competence can be useful to man, whose spiritual dimension is thereby exalted. The State and the Church are thus associated in a legally defined partnership, in the service of the individual.

Witness of Transcendence

The role of the chaplain, although sometimes compared to that of a psychologist or of a person trained to listen, can in no way be reduced to just this particular function, for which in any case he does not always have the necessary training. The chaplain is the witness of another dimension, the transcendence which, in a way, his very presence makes manifest and accessible. He is a sign of another world, of something beyond man which makes sense of our terrestrial lives by situating them in the march towards a more fraternal world, already conceived but still to come. This fraternity is not a dream, a utopia, but a reality to be nurtured at the cost of a very real fight against certain forces that would deny it.

The chaplain is, at his level and in league with the Church which sends him into the military world, on the one hand a sign that transcendence is already present at the heart of that world and, on the other hand, that this transcendence has a name, that of God the Father, caring about everyone. Such an approach to God’s identity allows the identity of man to be defined, to present every member of humanity as a son or daughter of God and the human fraternity as a reality, although often lacking in effective visibility. The armed forces’ mission can thus itself be represented as a service to this fraternity in which the chaplain plays a full part.

Combat in a Spirit of Peace

The first struggle which must be conducted to reach this objective is therefore perhaps not so much the implementation of equipment and techniques, however necessary these may be, but rather the internal pacification of each potential combatant by enabling him to situate his person, and hence his action, in its proper place. A true combatant should therefore, in a somewhat paradoxical way, be able to conduct an operation of war with the appropriate means for this particular mission, in a spirit of peace.

As a servant of man within the armed forces, the chaplain therefore corresponds totally to the image that we spontaneously ascribe to him: a man of peace in the service of peace.♦