Tag Archives: chaplain corps

December 17, 2020 · 02:18

Thoughts After My Retirement Ceremony: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and Thanking all Who Were there for Me

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Sorry not to have written anything the past few days but I was exhausted after dealing with medical and dental issues, getting no sleep and being stressed out getting ready for my retirement ceremony. When it was done I was happy and so tired that I had a hard time doing anything.

Monday I had my COVID-19 Era retirement ceremony. It very special. Unfortunately the live stream video got deleted by the Chapel were it was held, but I heard from a number of people that a lot of it could not be heard on the livestream. Even so the people I wanted there were there and it was an appropriate coda to my career. One of our friends present with his wife is an active Staff Sergeant in the Virginia Army National Guard’s 29th Infantry Division in which I served after I became an Army Chaplain in 1995.

I had my Command Master Chief from Norfolk Naval Shipyard as well the Chief Bos’ns Mate from the Shipyard to sound the bells and pipe me ashore. Having two Chiefs was awesome, as the Command Master Chief read the traditional reading The Watch, something I wanted because my late father was a Chief Petty Officer. For me that was a huge honor. Seldom do Chief’s or Senior Non-Commissioned Officers get leading roles at an officer’s retirement, especially like in reading the The Watch in the Navy. If you have never heard it read this is how it goes, only the number of years of service change.

 Like the Chiefs, few Chaplains have their RPs or Chaplain Assistants speak at their retirement ceremonies. I don’t know why? In the Army we are Unit Ministry Teams, and the Navy Religious Ministry Teams, the key word being teams. I was talking to a friend today, the only other Chaplain that I have seen have one of his enlisted men speak. He noted that during his time in the Navy that most Religious Program Specialists at the Rank of Petty Officer First Class, had worked for at least one Chaplain who treated them in such a way that they lost faith in God, other Chaplains and the church or religious institutions in general. Nelson fricking nailed it. God bless him and his wonderful daughter.

I had two former Commanding Officers who had a huge impact in my Navy speak with prerecorded remarks. Retired Medical Corps Rear Admiral David Lane who was my commanding officer at Naval Hospital Camp LeJeune during one of the darkest points of my life. He was there for they then and in 2015 when due to the maltreatment and abuse I was getting from staff members of the Mental Health Department of the Naval Medical Center, interceded with the Admiral commanding it. That Admiral called me, spoke to me for an hour, got me the appropriate referrals and got some things changed, because I wondered if a senior officer was being treated the way I was, how were junior sailors, marines, soldiers and airmen being treated. I was suicidal, but Admiral Lane helped keep me from it. Monday, he honored me, and my wife Judy with his remarks. He is one of the good guys, he sees people not in light of their rank or job, but as human beings. His words brought tears to my eyes too.

The other was Captain Rick Hoffman, my Skipper aboard USS HUE CITY on her first combat deployment having been a test ship for new combat systems for five years. That was shortly after the attacks of September 11th 2001, and he helped put my service aboard the ship in context. He is an amazing man. He lost his wife to Cancer not long after he retired. He offered to turn down command of the ship   when she was diagnosed, but she wouldn’t let him. She survived the first bout but not the second. The Admiral who presided over the ceremony, Rear Admiral Charles Rock said that when he was a young Lieutenant Commander that Captain Hoffman was a legend. He didn’t know that he had been my Skipper on HUE CITY. Likewise, he had worked with Admiral Lane not long before Admiral Lane retired in Washington DC.

Captain Hoffman’s children are great people, and since retiring he has continued to look after his sailors and our national security. He provided me chances to do things chaplains never get to do. His comments were so good, and brought back many fond memories of my shipmates, including the ones who removed me from breaking up a fight between a disgruntled crewman and Master of a ship impounded under the UN Oil Sanctions on Iraq, for which the crew gave me the nickname “Battle Chaps.” Not only was I unarmed, but because of a shortage of Kevlar armor plates for our combat floatation vests, I was also going into danger without any protection except that of my shipmates. Thankfully, I had great shipmates. That was good living, difficult, arduous, but what you live for if you sign up to serve as a Navy Chaplain. It was such an honor to have Captain Hoffman there, even as like Admiral Lane had to do, he did so virtually.

I also had Mikey Weinstein, President of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, who defended me when I was facing potential Court Martial. Since then he and I have become fast friends and allies in the defense of the civil and religious rights of military personnel and their families. He echoed the words of Nelson, Admiral Lane, and Captain Hoffman said about me, and he never had met them. All understand that a Chaplain’s job is far more than preaching his or her faith, it is about caring for military personnel, their families, and our Department of Defense and Department of the Navy civilian personnel, and protecting their Constitutional rights.

As Admiral Lane noted, to preach at stateside chaplains we could hire contractors, but we needed chaplains who could be there for our military personnel and their families, regardless of their faith or lack thereof. There really are no other places someone in the military can go with complete confidentiality to reveal their hurts, pains, anxiety, worries, and even sins in complete confidence without fear of reprisal, or punishment. In some ways, good military Chaplains are to use the words of James Spader’s character in The Blacklist, are sin eaters. This is not saying that we cover up crimes, but that we are a safe place for people to cast their cares and get sound counsel on how to get whatever help they need and if need be go with them to get that help be it medical, psychological, legal, administrative, or the help best given by their chain of command. One finds as a chaplain that most of our flock’s needs are not necessarily spiritual and that they don’t need to only person with absolute confidentiality they can go to shove religion down their throats.

Mikey understands this much more than his critics give him credit. He understands the needs and religious rights of military personnel as only one who has had his life threatened by Christian theocrats, and Anti-Semites can only understand. He spoke very personal and inspiring words about my service.

My regular readers understand my understanding of religious liberty, government, and citizenship. One of my inspirations is the great Virginia Baptist, John Leland who advised Thomas Jefferson in the Virginia Declaration of Religious Liberties and James Madison on the First Amendment wrote, and which I quoted Monday in my remarks:

“Is conformity of sentiments in matters of religion essential to the happiness of civil government? Not at all. Government has no more to do with the religious opinions of men than it has with the principles of mathematics. Let every man speak freely without fear–maintain the principles that he believes–worship according to his own faith, either one God, three Gods, no God, or twenty Gods; and let government protect him in so doing, i.e., see that he meets with no personal abuse or loss of property for his religious opinions. Instead of discouraging him with proscriptions, fines, confiscation or death, let him be  encouraged, as a free man, to bring forth his arguments and maintain his points with all boldness; then if his doctrine is false it will be confuted, and if it is true (though ever so novel) let others credit it. When every man has this liberty what can he wish for more? A liberal man asks for nothing more of government.”

I also quoted James Madison said, “Every new & successful example therefore of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance. And I have no doubt that every new example, will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Govt. will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.”

Sadly, in our country today many people, including the church leaders of a majority leader of many military Chaplains hold an opposite doctrine, that of the very doctrines of a supposedly “Christian” Religious theocracy that the Framers of our Constitution so opposed. I opposed those opinions and had someone try to get me tried by Court Martial for preaching a Biblical and Christian sermon on social justice and the the racist policies of the outgoing administration. Some people think that they can use their position to condemn people whose religious and beliefs in our Constitutional rights disagree with theirs. Thank God, whatever God’s there may be or just dumb luck and fate for men like Mikey. I look forward to working with him after my official retirement date.

I also brought up my understanding of leadership which included my devotion to the West Point motto Duty, Honor, Country. I received my commission as an Army ROTC cadet, and I was not an Academy graduate. However those words  have served as a compass to my career. For me the first duty has always been to the truth be it as a Medical Service Corps officer commanding a company and later dealing with the Army’s response to soldiers infected with HIV or dying of AIDS, where I helped write the Army’s personnel policies and because no other personnel officer at the Academy of Health Sciences wanted to be in the same room with an HIV infected soldier, I became CINC AIDS. I got to be the person who dealt with men and women dealing with a disease that at the time was certain to kill them, and how they could still serve. That brought me a whole new perspective on life, and a great deal of compassion for those who received news that they did not have much longer to live.

The same was true when I was an Armor Officer and Battalion S-1 in a Texas Army National Guard Armor battalion and saw how racism still permeated the National Guard in Texas. As a non-Texan and former Active Officer I found that I was a foreigner, something that I experienced transferring from Texas to Virginia. It is funny how the same prejudices that permeated the Armies of the Confederate States were still existent in the 1980s and 1990s.

Likewise, honor, is about my sacred honor to my Oath of Office and my sacred vows as a husband, and Priest, and finally my Country in good times as bad.

Captain Jean Luc Picard, played by Sir Patrick Stewart in Star Trek the Next Generation said: “the first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, whether it’s scientific truth, historical truth or personnel truth…” I am not a Starfleet Officer but as an officer nonetheless I have always believed that the truth matters, but sadly I, like so many of us have turned the other way and not spoken out. But the older I get the more I realize that I cannot be silent about subjects that at one time I turned a blind eye to because they were uncomfortable, unpopular or might hurt my career either in the church or in the military. That really didn’t take that long. It began when I was an Army Second Lieutenant and has continued until today.

Likewise I have been guided by the words of General Ludwig Beck who resigned his office rather than obey Hitler’s plan to invade Czechoslovakia, and then gave up his life in the attempt to kill Hitler on 20 July 1944. Beck said:

“It is a lack of character and insight, when a soldier in high command sees his duty and mission only in the context of his military orders without realizing that the highest responsibility is to the people of his country.”

I reminded those present or watching online that those words were especially important in our conflicted and divided country. While I did not say it directly I implied that Officers cannot simply dedicate themselves to purely military matters when their Chief Executive violates the Constitution they swore to defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic. 

While it was in the script since we were running late and I didn’t want to get any more political than I had I left out. Beck also said:

“Final decisions about the nation’s existence are at stake here; history will incriminate these leaders with bloodguilt if they do not act in accordance with their specialist political knowledge and conscience. Their soldierly obedience reaches its limit when their knowledge, their conscience, and their responsibility forbid carrying out an order.” 

That is exactly what I believe. I wish time had allowed me to say it, but I digress…

Then there was my dear friend and colleague, retired Navy Chaplain Vince Miller who served as both the Chaplain and Master of Ceremonies for my retirement due to COVID-19 restrictions on how many people could attend. Vince and I have had so many similar experiences, endured similar treatment in the Chaplain Corps, but hold so many values about the rights of people, their faith, and those who served under our supervision sought to uphold, regardless of their beliefs. Both of us ended up getting off-ramped from promotion because of things that happened to us or family considerations. He is a fast friend, a man of integrity and honor who like William Tecumseh Sherman understood the value of friendship. Sherman was a friend of Ulysses S. Grant. Sherman said of their friendship:

“Grant stood by me when I was crazy, I stood by him when he was drunk. Now we stand together.”

That my friends is friendship.

Finally, the ceremony was maybe more about the selfless love and devotion of my wife Judy. One cannot imagine what it is to spend almost 40 years in the military with someone who remains as faithful and devoted for so long despite the separations, deployments, and everything else associated with military marriage.

My God she has been through so much and not just because of deployments, separations, and the hassles of moves, and not seeing family. But also because Chaplains spouses don’t have much support, especially from other Chaplains or their spouses, especially if they suffer from a physical disability, like being profoundly deaf while having speech as good as any hearing person. But even with the best hearing aids around which have improved her hearing and life tremendously, there are times that our facilities are not built with the disabled, especially the deaf in mind. The acoustics were so poor where we had the retirement ceremony that with the exception of me and Admiral Rock Judy had a difficult time understanding the ceremony. She was hoping to try to watch it Tuesday with her Bluetooth hearing aids synced to her iPad but the livestream had been deleted, again reminding her of how little the military values people with disabilities. At least I have the speeches of the three men who spoke saved and she will be able to listen to them when we get the chance, but it hurt.

Likewise, it used to be that when a Chaplain retired the Chief of Chaplains at least sent a “thank you” note or acknowledged their retirement regardless of their rank. A few months ago I saw an email from our current Navy Chief of Chaplains and his Deputy acknowledging the Chaplains retiring in the rank of Captains and the Religious Program Specialists retiring as Master Chief Petty Officers by name but not acknowledging anyone below those ranks. I wondered to myself what the fuck? Is it all about climbing the highest ranks of the Chaplain Corps, or about caring for those we serve and lead? Of course for me it is about those that we serve, especially those who serve under us.

Then I realized that of all people, Senior Chaplains serving as Admirals or who would crush anyone to bet their Star, don’t give a damn about those who serve and have stomped over to achieve their positions. They don’t give a damn about anyone except themselves and their power.

During my remarks I quoted Joseph Heller in his novel Catch-22 about the Chaplain. There is something about secular power in religious matters that transforms otherwise decent people and ministers into monsters. No wonder my ceremony disappeared off of the Chapel’s Facebook video archive. Heller wrote:

“The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.”

That being said, we were blessed by those who attended, what they did and what they said. It meant the world to us, as do the wonderful words, thoughts, prayers, and actions of people who have been there for us to be there in person or by whatever virtual means available.

I am not bitter because I leave the service knowing that I have given all that I can and that the people that matter the most to me still care, regardless of rank or station. I would rather have the well wishes of a man or women I helped when they were an E-3 or E-4 rather than the platitudes of Clergymen wearing stars or eagles who didn’t care. But what I experienced is not uncommon, but most people will never speak as openly as I do, because from the earliest days of my service I believed in telling the truth whether it pissed people off, or harmed my upward mobility.

So despite being worn out and having to deal with more medical and dental issues than I thought I would ever see in the final days of my career I am still blessed and one of the luckiest men in the world, to paraphrase Lou Gehrig when he had to retire from baseball due to ALS. I am, at least to my knowledge not dying of anything, but it doesn’t take away my sentiments towards those people who have been there for me the past 39 plus years in the military, and even those before I signed my name on the dotted line.

When I am actually completely retired at 2359 hours on 31 December I can truly embrace my inner Smedley Butler, and embrace the fullness of truth and patriotism.

So until tomorrow,

Peace and thank you,

Padtre Steve+

 

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November 28, 2020 · 03:37

“ I pray to you to help me, and every day I get worse. Are you deaf, too?“ Thoughts of a Washed up Priest and Chaplain at the End of a Military Career


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

A few nights ago I watched the final episode of the television series M*A*S*H “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen.” As I mentioned in my last blog both the series and the film have been important and long lasting parts of my life. It is interesting because when I was first commissioned as an Army Second Lieutenant on 19 June 1983 in the Medical Service Corps, and September 1992 became a Chaplain in the Texas Army National Guard, subsequently serving in the Virginia Army National Guard and Army Reserve as a Chaplain. I also served as a Armor Officer in Texas during seminary. On 9 February 1999 I turned in my Gold Oak Leaf as a Major in the Army for the two Silver Bars of a Navy Chaplain Corps Lieutenant.

Now, 21 years after that move I am a washed up Chaplain and Navy Commander mostly abandoned by fellow Chaplains for openly and honesty dealing with the ravages of PTSD, abandonment which created moral injury that I have never recovered from, no matter how hard I prayed the Daily Office, or studied scripture and theology. Without going into such detail that it would harm me even more in much current fragile emotional state, I can only say that I was abandoned, ghosted, and off revamped by the senior Chaplains who sent me to war, of course I was a very willing volunteer, and then ensured that every subsequent assignment would be harmful to my career, while certain senior chaplains treated me in the most malicious and evil manner knowing I needed a continuity of psychiatric, psychological, and spiritual care, ripped me away from it sending me on a three year geographic bachelor tour, away from home and those supports.

I also continue to suffer physical and neurological disorders related to combat. One is a combination of serene Tinnitus, and abnormal degraded speech comprehension without corresponding hearing loss. The neurologist thought it was due damage to my auditory nerves and auditory processing center related to PTSD. My speech comprehension was rated in the third percentile, meaning that 97% of people process speech better than me. In order to understand speech in individual conversations or in large groups I have to be completely focused and not have any cross talk or background noise. This makes it difficult to function. Basically, I am functionally deaf unless I am completely focused on whoever is talking and they are speaking clearly enough for me to understand. Judy is really deaf, and she understands speech better than me much of the time.

During Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen the 4077th’s Chaplain, Father Francis Mulcahy is exposed to a mortar blast and suffers Tinnitus and hearing loss, which continue to get worse despite his prayers.

In one of his prayers to God, one which resonates much with me, he cries out:

“Dear Lord, I know there must be a reason for this, but what is it? I answered the call to do your work. I’ve devoted my life to it, and now, how am I supposed to do it? What good am I now? What good is a deaf priest? I pray to you to help me, and every day I get worse. Are you deaf, too?“ 

My situation doesn’t simply involve my inability to understand speech but the residual effects of PTSD: hyper vigilance, anxiety, severe depression, sleep disorders, nightmare and night terror disorders that have resulted in injuries including a broken nose when battling the phantom like images of assailants in my dreams.And most recently under the stress I feel, horrible angry outbursts that are so unlike me. They make me feel horrible, but a decade of death threats, internet stalking, being called an “enemy of America”, and for supporting the rights of Blacks a “nigger lover” and “wigger,” and condemnation by Christians for caring about the rights, safety, and decent treatment of LGBTQ as enabling sin against God, but I never saw Jesus turn anyone away. The greatest hurt I experience is when Christian friends attack, condemn, and abandon me, especially over the past five years as so many became members of the Trump Dictatorship Cult. It took a while but I don’t take it anymore and after slicing and dicing their arguments leave things in their hands as where to they want to go with our relationship. Some cut me off and others make sure I know how rotten I am before they cut things off. Back in the early days after returning from Iraq while melting down and being thrown out of my former Church I culled a lot of them preemptively from my social contacts. A few have since renewed and reconciled but not all.

No amount of praying ever changed anything. I still believe in God, but I struggle every day. Sometimes I don’t feel that I am of any use, but too many people tell me that I do. Even so the fourth verse of the M*A*S*H them song, Suicide is Painless rings true for me now. I don’t have the answers. That verse says: A brave man once requested me to answer questions questions that are key, “Is it to be or not to be” and I replied “oh, why ask me?” 

Something that Colonel Potter said to Father Mulcahy and Mulcahy’s reply seems a pretty good place to end this before I sign off from this post:

Col. Potter: Well, Francis, you’ve been a godsend.
Father Mulcahy: Look on the bright side: When they tell us to serve our time in Purgatory, we can say, “No thanks, I’ve done mine.”

So here I am, an old, broken, washed-up Chaplain and priest who is a better historian than many looking to the next phase of my life, with Judy and the puppies, but even so, without a Parish, without an institutional Chaplain position, or any formal place of ministry, I will still be a Priest, and serve whoever comes into my life, even when I struggle and doubt.

Since I am going to have to get a bit of work done  house and do my damnedest to finish the illustration section of my book so I can send it to my agent and publisher tomorrow, which means whenever I wake up, I wish you all peace and safety.

Blessings and Peace,

Padre Steve+

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November 26, 2020 · 02:07

An Emotional Roller Coaster: Medical Problems, IT Issues, Hating Religious Theocrats, and Remembering those I Have Lost Through the Lens of M*A*S*H

 

Me as a young Medical Service Officer Second Lieutenant, Neubrucke Germany, 1984

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I started this article Tuesday night but couldn’t yesterday I was on emotional roller coaster, dealing with continued medical issues due to my jaw infection that began a month ago when a lower rear molar, cracked, the nerve abscessed, died, and infected the and more. I tried to finish it Wednesday night but couldn’t. I finally finished it dark and early after midnight Friday. Well, I thought I had, but for whatever reason what I wrote didn’t save correctly. So I just add this to let you know that as I revise it and put in the tags and topics represented in it. “That is All.” 

I am finishing my last two weeks on active duty before taking 20 days of job hunting and house hunting leave. I honestly cannot believe the emotions that I am feeling.

The Original Opening to the Film M*A*S*H

Tuesday morning I went in to work still suffering some of the effects of my tooth extraction and jaw infection still persist. Migraine like headaches, swelling in the jaw, lymph nodes and Parotid gland still persisted. I went to the Endontist who extracted my tooth and prescribed more antibiotics after the tooth extraction and he recommended that I get an appointment with my primary care doctor. I was glad he dad that because he realized that he didn’t have an answer.

My regular primary care physician who I really like wasn’t available, and he is an outstanding physician who listens and cares. But the physician I was assigned in his place was incredible. Our initial appointment on Monday was over the telephone and after taking time to listen to all that happened to me she made sure I got an appointment to see her in person Tuesday.

Unlike so many physicians bound by the time limits of insurance, including the business model of Navy Medicine she and her nurse took the time to listen to me, to do a thorough examination, to explore the what antibiotics might treat all my different symptoms. The appointment took a long time but it was worth it. I received medicines to treat the lower jaw, upper jaw, sinus and ear infections caused by that damned tooth, as well as an order to get a CT scan to see what is actually going on.

That fact made a difference because even as that was going on I was experiencing problems with an Navy personnel site. That followed a NMCI Microsoft 10 update that will not allow me to access it in order to make sure that my DD-214 is correct. No matter what I do online and no matter how many times the Navy says my access is fixed I still cannot access the site, which mattes for all of my  my retirement and veterans benefits.

Because I had a low grade fever due to the infection and needed needed lab tests and another medical appointment today so I won’t be able to go in to fix ot until Monday.

Truthful I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore. I am too old for this shit I am going to vent my spleen. Before the update I never had an issue getting into the website. I really get frustrated and angry with the contractors whose programs don’t interface with the multiplicity of other hardware and software so that when one makes a change there is a cascade effect that fucks everything else up, like the simple fact of trying to access a site to check the one document everything in my post military career depends on. That pisses me off and I hate the damned Navy and military System for allowing this to happen.

I am really a fine with some of contractors, as I have noted, not all of them, not all of them, because there are quite a few who provide outstanding products and support, and have the integrity to back up their work. My friend David owns one of the highest ranked IT hardware firms that deals with DOD and many other government agencies. I have also encountered some very fine contractors for some of these IT firms who take the time to walk with you through the problem and fix it. There are also others who hire good people to provide services that the Navy can no longer due because those functions were added following wars our uniformed and GS systems were not prepared to deal with because of a never ending war. I might end up working as an educator for one using my experience to help personnel and their family members get the help they need and prepare to leave the service.

However, I get the feeling that I could be dying and it wouldn’t matter the damned corporate war and defense profiteers who the Navy hired to replace sailors that used to do these jobs. The thing is that a lot of these corporations have the backing of some of the leading politicians of both parties and are marketed and lobbied for by former high ranking military and DOD civilian officials. They are doing it for corporate profit but selling their services saying they will reduce cost and make things more efficient. But that is most often a lie, because we end up paying more for less, and harm readiness in the process.

Between them, and the former corporate defense and business executives who run much of DOD, they cut the active duty force in the name of “efficiency” and deprive Sailors (Also Soldiers, Marines and Airmen) from other active duty or DOD civilians who can fix their problems. I hate them, these corporations, with a passion. I miss the days when Yeomen and Personelmen, working with civilian GS personnel specialists, who we called the Little old ladies in tennis shoes would look at you in the face and fix what was wrong or what needed attention. Now that isn’t the case. All is handed online and you get an email response saying your problem has been resolved even when you still can not access their damned website. I want to say Duckmäuser them to hell, and I honestly doubt that the majority of senior Navy and military  leadership cares.

The Navy decided long ago that regardless of its technical ineptness and reliance on for profit defense profiteers that sailors who have full time jobs have to also manage and perform tasks that used to be handed by people they knew who were trained to do them. I don’t want any part of such a bastardized impersonal “personnel” system that doesn’t value sailors  and their families as people but “Human Resources” who can be expended without consequences because they really don’t matter. The same applies to training as well. These things take up so much of sailors time that they scarcely have time to do their real jobs. No wonder readiness rates are crap, ships can’t deploy, and aircraft cannot fly.

I read an article this week that a Navy official downplayed those rates and suggested the metrics showing how unready our Navy is for a major war were wrong and needed to be changed. That’s like lowering academic requirements to make sure students pass so their failure doesn’t harm the overall rating of Schools, school, districts, or universities. The only problem in the military are that such actions lead to defeat in in battle, massive losses of American lives and the inevitable after effects of losing a major war against a peer competitor. We have really never experienced that, but many others have, and we should learn from them before it happens to us.

Our humiliation will be greater than that of Imperial Germany, Imperial Russian, France in 1870 and 1940, Nazi Germany, Napoleonic France, Rome, Byzantium, the Holy Roman Empire, the Austro Hungarian Empire in the First World War, and so many others. Military defeat combined with economic collapse, loss of territory, and great political and social calamities that In many cases are still being felt even centuries later. If we don’t take decisive actions to protect our democracy from all enemies, foreign and domestic, including the profiteers the coming collapse will make the division of the Trump years feel like the good old days. I personally wouldn’t doubt if Trump is actually hoping for that since he doesn’t give a damn about his oath, the people of the United States, including those who support him, or what happens to this country so long as he can line his pockets with unearned riches.

Marine Corps Major General and two time Medal of Honor recipient Smedley Butler realized that at the end of his illustrious career as a Marine when he wrote his classic anti-war book War is a Racket. If you haven’t read it you better well need to before you ever mindlessly thank a veteran for his or her service in wars that only weaken our defense and diminish our standing as a bastion of Liberty in the world. Most of the corporations Butler condemns in his book are still profiting from the business of war and “defense” today. Mind you I am an old anti-Soviet and Chinese Communist Cold Warrior. I fucking hate their systems, and while the Chicoms combine a nationalist bastardization of Capitalism with a desire for world domination at the expense of freedom at home and abroad; and while the former KGB Officer Vladimir Putin leads Russian which is nothing more than a rebranded Soviet Union, President Trump looked the other way and weakened us in more ways than anyone cannot imagine until the hell he created destroys our country long after he leaves office.

Iraq near the Syrian Border with Advisors and Bedouin Family, Christmas Eve 2007 

Don’t get me wrong. I am proud of my service in war and peace, but I cannot fathom treason or abandoning military personnel to IT systems run by for profit contractors that have so many problems that they cannot be successfully navigated even by experts much less than the people who have full time jobs who need that specialized support. And yes it is treason when one looks at the billions of dollars paid to big defense contractors for the chump change that it would cost to pay military personnel and civilians to do things the old fashioned way using pen and paper while looking people in the eye to make sure that it was done right. This is a scandal for the ages that harms veterans and their families, undercuts combat readiness, and enriches defenses profiteers.

 

A Montage of Characters from the Series with the Original Score

I hate to say this but those in various Presidential administrations, Senators and Representatives of both parties, and high ranking Military Officers and Senior Executive Leaders in the Defense Department are all guilty as charged when it comes to sacrificing the well being of the volunteers who serve this nation in uniform in unending wars to enrich war and defense profiteers are all traitors. If it was up to me I would have them tried and after a fair trial s tan ever them and have them hanged until dead.

If I have to take up the mantel of men like Smedley Butler, David Hackworth, and Hal Moore, and countless number of men and women who remain unknown because they were crushed by the system or died through its uncaring incompetence, especially in the area of mental and spiritual  health. In retirement I will be a prophetic voice. Since while I was on active duty I had  member of my  congregation try to have by tried by Court Martial for preaching prophetically fro the pulpit and was exonerated after an investigation, I no loner give a damn who I offend.

With my Beloved Second Platoon, 557th Medical Company Ambulance, in the Taunus Mountains, Hessen, West Germany, 1985

 

By the latter I do not mean the fake spirituality of memorizing Bible verses or reciting The unbiblical and unchristian mantras of modern American Christianity. I don’t promote feel good Christian jibber-jabber but walking with people though The Valley of the shadow of Death, without abandoning them, or condemning them when they show weakness. Personally, I would rather have a caring Atheist or Agnostic at my side than a supposed Christian shoving a bastardized version of the Christian faith down my throat in my time of crisis.

We don’t need that. We  authentic Christian ministers and Priests who admit that they don’t know the answers. We need  ministers and Priests who are Un afraid to admit that they struggle with faith and yet still believe. Men and women who are transparent servants of a God that they only known through the Crucified God, not the opaque, impenetrable and unbiblical theology of Christian nationalism and Dominionism. Those are not theologies of faith in the Crucified God, but arbitrary, authoritarian systems to reconcile Christian beliefs to ungodly, nationalist, often racist, and exploitive systems of government which destroy the liberties of all, but even worse make Christians isolators of anti-Christian leaders and systems. It started with Constantine and has never stopped.

George Truett, the great Southern Baptist Pastor who served as President of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary wrote in his book Baptists and Religious Liberty in 1920 about the decidedly negative effect of when the Church became the State religion:

“Constantine, the Emperor, saw something in the religion of Christ’s people which awakened his interest, and now we see him uniting religion to the state and marching up the marble steps of the Emperor’s palace, with the church robed in purple. Thus and there was begun the most baneful misalliance that ever fettered and cursed a suffering world…. When … Constantine crowned the union of church and state, the church was stamped with the spirit of the Caesars…. The long blighting record of the medieval ages is simply the working out of that idea.”

The late Senator Mark Hatfield a strongly committed Evangelical Christian before it became popular in Washington made this comment concerning those that are now driving this spurious debate:

“As a Christian, there is no other part of the New Right ideology that concerns me more than its self-serving misuse of religious faith. What is at stake here is the very integrity of biblical truth. The New Right, in many cases, is doing nothing less than placing a heretical claim on Christian faith that distorts, confuses, and destroys the opportunity for a biblical understanding of Jesus Christ and of his gospel for millions of people.”  quoted in the pamphlet “Christian Reconstruction: God’s Glorious Millennium?” by Paul Thibodeau

Barry Goldwater, the man who inspired Ronald Reagan to run for President and who was the conservative bulwark for many years in Washington DC warned what would happen when the Religious Right took over the Republican Party. Goldwater said of the types of people that currently dominate the conservative movement, if it can be still called that:

“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.” November, 1994, in John Dean, Conservatives Without Conscience.

Well those that Truett and Goldwater warmed us about got what they wanted. They got control of a political party by prostituting themselves to a man whose heart is evil, and could not care less about Christians so long as they vote for him and his amoral, unchristian, and anti-freedom ideas which rip up the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and shred the Sacred protections of our Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Amendments to the Constitution.

Contemporary Conservative Christian Teachings have become hollowed out, unbiblical, unchristian, and untenable politically driven apologetics of Unfreedom which spit on the face of God on the Cross, just as much as did his Roman executioners.

Anyway I couldn’t finish this Tuesday night because I was too busy crying my way the final episode of the television show M*A*S*H, “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen.” The sobbing, tears, and overwhelming emotions made me put down my  iPad. I was using it as the basis for my final message to my Shipyard friends, family, and coworkers who mean so much to me now. They helped me recover my sense of faith, belief, calling, and belief in good people. As I watched the show I remembered all the men and women I have served with over the years, those still alive and those who passed away to natural causes, were killed in combat, or died by their own hand after coming home from war. People who like me suffered from the terrible effects of war; wounds to body, mind and spirit, which were so bad for some that they killed themselves. Believe me there were so many times that I could have done the same. I actually planned out how I would do it in a number of different ways, but some were so violent that just the image of me doing it in a public setting among other military personnel would have traumatized them in ways I could not bear, and the many nights I thought about driving into a tree while serving at Camp LeJeune Naval Hospital from 2010 to 2013 I could not imagine what my dog Molly who was with me would think when daddy never came home.

I am doing better now, I want to live and bear witness for those who no longer can. I certainly don’t have the answers. I can only be there for others. The words of the theme song to M*A*S*H  are unknown to those who only watched the series and never saw the film. The song’s music was written by Johnny Mandel, the lyrics written by his teenage son. The song was performed by an uncredited group of musicians and simple called MASH. It was played on AM music stations after its release in 1970. It is haunting and I certainly do not agree with the message of the chorus “Suicide is painless, it brings on many changes, and I can take or leave it if I please…” I have found that life matters too much and I grieve for my friends and comrades who committed suicide, many far more brave, heroic, and selfless than me. Men and women who I wished I could have helped keep alive had I been there in their time of crisis.

But the lyrics of the verses all have an element of truth in them. The first said:

Through early morning fog I see, visions of the things to be, the pains that are withheld for me, I realize and I can see… (Chorus)

The game of life is hard to play, I’m going to lose it anyway, the losing card I’ll someday lay, so this is all I’ve got to say… (Chorus)

The sword of  time will pierce our skin, it doesn’t hurt when it begins, but as it works its way within, the pain grows stronger watch it grin… (Chorus)

A brave man once requested me, to answer questions that are key, “Is it to be or not to be?” And I replied “oh, way ask me?” (Chorus)

The faked suicide and salvation of Dr. Walt “the Painless Pole” Waldoski In the Film M*A*S*H

The song was sung in the film during a fake suicide and funeral for the 4077th’s Dentist Dr. “Painless Pole Waldoski” (John Schuck)  sung by Private Seidman (Ken Prymus) accompanied by Captain Bandini (Corey Fisher) on the guitar. Out of context the scene is one of the saddest in film history, with the doctors sitting at a table in a film rendition of Leonardo DaVinci’s The Last Supper as “Painless” takes what he thinks is a cyanide capsule and lays down in a coffin. He wanted help to die because he thought he was impotent. Hawkeye, Trapper, and even Father Mulcahy decided to play into his fantasy but save the life of Painless. So they recruited a nurse, Lieutenant Dish, played by the beautiful actress Jo Ann Pflug, who was to return to the States the next morning to make love to painless. The next morning Painless is alive, and Dish flies away. They lied to a suicidal man to stage a fake death in order to save his life. Yes, the ethics are completely convoluted, but in the end life was affirmed, and suicide ruled out. One interesting thing about the song is the faked suicide is a different verse which said “The only way to win is cheat, and lay it down before I’m beat, and to another give my seat, for that’s the only painless feat…”  (Chorus)

I thought I would finish this by midnight but so many things intruded. It is now officially Thanksgiving on the East Coast and I have much to be thankful for, even though we will celebrate the holiday in a very private and personal way, just us, our pups, and our friend Stephanie. We are making a fresh homemaker chicken pot pie with bone in chicken breast cooked for over 15 hours on low heat in our crock pot seasoned with fresh garlic, Black pepper corns, rubbed sage, bay leaves, poultry seasoning, garlic powder, and a dash of salt which will be baked minus the chicken bones with sliced carrots, sweet peas, whole kernel corn, and small broccoli florets and yellow onions. It will be the first time since Iraq that we have not had a large number of guests over for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. That will be strange, but it is better to adjust and protect the lives of others than keep traditions that can be continued after the COVID-19 Pandemic has passed.

Suicide and willingly subjecting others to a deadly virus are little different. The first is the murder of yourself, which I like the German word better than our word suicide. The German word is Selbstmord, or the murder of yourself. However, ignoring all the science and clinical evidence that indoor social gatherings of people traveling across state lines is potentially deadly, is the participation in mass murder. The choice to do that is like playing Russian Roulette with more than one chamber loaded, and the virus being spread to many more people than it should be if we weren’t so damned selfish and narcissistic. By they way, most of the people I know to be doing this are Christians, but sorry, your Holy Spirit Lungs won’t protect you from COVID-19 anymore than they did the Great Influenza or the Plagues of the Middle Ages, Yellow or Dengue Fever, Ebola, AIDS, or any other infectious disease. If you think your spiritually will protect you and others, you are fools who are not to be pitied, though the people you infect should be.

I am tired of death. After being present at over 700 I stopped counting. Many of the faces, lives, and stories of those people are forever seared into my conscience.

So anyway, this post that began some 54 hours ago, or 76 hours if you count this update, is at an end. It has meandered from my medical problems, my frustration with the Navy’s fucked up computer systems, national security, religious liberty, and freedom from religious tyranny, the issue of suicide, veterans who commit suicide, and the film and television series M*A*S*H, including the behind the scenes lyrics to its theme song Suicide is Painless.

It is kind of ironic that I was commissioned as a Medical Service Corps Officer in the Army on 19 June 1983, and that when I graduated from the Medical Department Officer Basic Course the theme song of the Army Medical Department, minus the words was the Theme Song of M*A*S*H, “Suicide is Painless.” 

So I hope you had a happy and safe Thanksgiving. Please do not put others at risk, and by all means please do your best to remain alive and healthy so we can properly celebrate Thanksgiving in 2021. Maybe I will be in a more celebratory mood by then.

Pray for me a miserable and useless has been Chaplain and sinner.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

 

 

 

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September 26, 2020 · 02:08

A Quick Note in the Midst of Life, Nightmares, Night Terrors, and Editing my Book

 

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

It has been a strange but good day. I was off from work because our military personnel Were given the gift of time off because over the past year we have had no sailors charged or convicted of Driving While Intoxicated or Driving Under the Influence. That being said I went to bed late last night because I was doing my editing. When I went to bed and got to sleep I had a number of vivid and violent nightmares related to war, PTSD and betrayal. I got up so tired that after a couple of errands and appointments with Judy I took a nap, and the violent nightmares continued. Between last night and the time I got up from my afternoon nap I ended up throwing myself out of bed onto the floor four times to not just to defend myself from attackers but be an agent of vengeance against them. Thankfully my rearrangement of furniture prevented serious injury.

The nightmares were vivid. They included people I did and didn’t know, one strangely who never figured in any violence against me, but a retired Chaplain who I once considered a friend who used my knowledge to help his advancement in the Chaplain Corps. However, he and his wife had used my wife to care for their kids for more than a decade and a half when they were too busy, only to toss her away, and me when we were no longer profitable to them and their kids no longer needed the rides to school provided by Judy without charge regardless of the time, effort and gas money expended, or career advice given by me that helped him get promoted.

But he was in the nightmares, in them didn’t seem to do anything than pay me scant attention and walk away in doctors office waiting room just before people tried to kill me.

Somehow his presence in those nightmares alerted me to danger, and thus armed I was able to defend in my nightmare myself using guns and arrows against assailants who I injured but did kille because they proved the truth to me. I let them live because they were not the real threat, and I had maimed them for life. In fact we gained each other’s respect and friendship despite our differences, but my former friend was another matter. He didn’t appear again in those nightmares but he might again. Maybe he is simply a metaphor in my dreams.

I haven’t had anything to do with him years, and I cannot remember the last time I saw him. Even though he lives a few miles from me we don’t run in the same circles, I think that is because he wants to retain the respectability of his large mainline Protestant denomination, and to keep his complicit silence on so much of what he knows to be true of the secret dark heart of the Chaplain Corps. Likewise, people like me are becoming every more in  military Chaplains, remaining  true to our Ordination vows, and ours Oath to the Constitution to provide for all the rights to their religious beliefs without prejudice. Even so I speak the truth, at least as I have seen and experienced it and am not afraid to do so.

I am fascinated by the violent nightmares and in my former friends role in them, for those who betray us are not usually open opponents, but those that we once opened up to because we thought we were on the same side. But when such a person ghosts you, and then shows up prominently in your nightmares you have to think of their motivations. At this time I think it is because he is a spineless weasel under the thumb of his shrew of a wife, but I could be wrong, and since only Judy would know the details their identity remains safely concealed, as it should.

So anyway, until tonight’s sleep, be it pleasant or terrifying I wish you the best.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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March 29, 2020 · 02:24

Coronavirus and the Unthinkable: The Coming Need for Combat Mass Casually Triage

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

We live in a vastly different world than we lived in just a few weeks ago. The President persists in repeating the mantra that nobody saw the novel Coronavirus coming, when in fact there were such creditable reports coming from China that even the Texas based H.E.B. Grocery chain began to prepare for it in January. The interesting fact is that we’re simply paying attention to unclassified, publicly available reports about it, and not the classified information being provided to the President by U.S. Intelligence agencies in January and February; information the President either paid no attention to or willingly ignored. Thus, unlike the people of H.E.B., the Federal government made no preparations for the coming pandemic. No wonder he persists in saying that no one saw it coming, it lets him off the hook, a victim of his own willful ignorance.

Because of this civilian hospitals are without enough room, ICU beds, isolation rooms, effective medications, respiratory ventilators, and Personal Protective Equipment, all known by the acronym PPE. Part of this is because we run a profit based medical system. ICUs are very expensive to maintain, if a hospital maintains a large surge capacity, it loses money.

They are not your general purpose hospital rooms; the really well equipped ones have  individual rooms, often equipped with negative pressure so infections cannot get into the rest of the ICU from being infected when the door is opened. they have to be staffed by highly trained physicians: Since most people in ICUs are dependent on some form of respiratory support, the Attending Physicians are usually Pulmonologists, or to put it simply, doctors who deal with the complexities of the human respiratory system. Depending on the patient they work with Cardiologists who deal with the heart, Neuro-surgeons, and Neurologists, who deal with the Brain and Central Nervous System; Cardio-thoracic surgeons, Gastroenterologists, Cancer Specialists, Rheumatologists, Renal Specialists, Trauma Surgeons, Burn Specialists, ENTs, Entomologists, Virologists, Radiologists, and host of other speciality disciplines. The nurses are not your ordinary nurses. They are RNs with certifications in critical care, cardiology. Neurology, and like the doctors a host of other disciplines, many have Masters and Doctorates, and nurses generally are assigned to work with one or two patients, where on a general medical or surgical ward that ratio might be one for every seven or eight patients. Then there are the respiratory therapist who run and maintain the ventilators and other breathing machines, the X-Ray techs, the phlebotomists, the lab techs, as well as LPNs, Nurse’s Aides, and Medical techs, and unit clerks who do the unglamorous work in the ICU. In really well equipped Medical Centers there are portable X-Rays, CT scanners, and Dialysis machines in the ICU. This doesn’t count the highly complex ICU beds, Cardiac monitors, IV pumps, and so much else to make them work. Let’s not mention the Chaplains, Social Workers and others who work with the patients, families, and treatment team in caring for each patient. I have spent a number of years as an ICU chaplain in major medical centers that are also teaching hospitals. I have seen my fair share of suffering and death, as well as the heroics of ICU staff members.

In normal times there are just enough ICU units and beds to treat those that require them, as well as all the equipment and personnel to keep them going. But many smaller hospitals lack this capacity, they are dependent on major medical centers, and local specialists and practices to supply what they need. The fact is that this pandemic has revealed just how unprepared we were for it.

This places doctors in a terrible conundrum. These physicians, nurses, and techs are devoted to saving lives, and most of the time the work heroically to saves the lives of men and women with multiple morbidity factors, or what some of us called “medical disaster areas,” because they were so sick that even heroics could not keep them alive. Statistically most Americans will spend a month or more of their final year alive in an ICU, when palliative care would be more human. ICUs are incredible, but too many people, influenced by television medical dramas believe that they are miracle centers, when they are not. As modern Americans we have forgotten the lessons of our ancestors, we no longer value life enough to make our dying loved ones comfortable, surround them with love, remember their lives, and let them to tell their stories and say goodbye. Instead we try to keep people alive without considering the pain and suffering that the treatments of their maladies cause  them, We have institutionalized death, and made very caring strangers responsible for the deaths of our loved ones, in sterile, mechanical, and unfamiliar places. I have seen too many of these deaths and remember so many of them. That my friends is just in normal times. These are not normal times.

Since we failed to prepare for it in the eight or so weeks that we had a chance to prepare for it, the novel Coronavirus, or COVID-19, has infected over 600,000 people worldwide and killed over 30,000, is now straining even the most prepared healthcare systems to the brink. Despite the quality of our care, our government, medical systems, businesses, and population were completely unprepared for this, except for those like H.E.B. and me who began to follow it early.

This pandemic is in the process of making providers have to upend normal triage. In normal times we treat the sickest and most likely to die first, those serious but not in a life and death battle second, and those healthiest and likely to survive their injuries or infections last. I remember on one horrible night back in 1994 at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, our ICUs we’re slammed and I was the on call chaplain for the entire 900 bed hospital. All six trauma bays were full, with people suffering gunshot wounds, burns, and injuries from motor vehicle crashes. The same was tru in our Medical ER where all three critical rooms were occupied, with two in the process of full code from contaminated crack cocaine overdoses. As I made my rounds in the ER, preparing myself to be with doctors as they got ready to tell family members that their loved ones were dead, a young man, on an overflow bed, being monitored every 20-30 minutes, with a flesh wound cause by a small caliber weapon in his thigh pulled me aside. He pleaded with me. “You’re the Chaplain, I’ve been shot, get me treated!” I told the young man, “I’ll be glad to do so if you want me to tell the doctors that are trying to keep people from dying that you need to be seen before the man with the gunshot wound in the head that just died, or the woman with massive crush injuries from a car crash who is trying to die, or the man with 70% of his body burned Who is unlikely to live, or any of the others we are trying to keep from dying, for you? You are stable and being monitored, you’ll get treated and walk out of here by tomorrow. So who do you choose?”  The young man was stunned by my bluntness. He then stammered out, “someone just died and others might?” I nodded my head and said, ”what do you want me to tell the doctors?” My words must have struck a nerve and revealed that he still had a conscience. He replied, “No sir, help them and pray for me, I’m sorry.” I said, “getting shot isn’t normal,  and it is scary, but I will pray for you and these doctors will take care of you.” He simply thanked me and grasped my hand. I said a brief prayer for him and moved on in a night that would have me deal with eight deaths, and doing my best to care for the dead, their loved ones, and our staff.

In the Coronavirus era, the young man might be treated first and the dying placed on an overflow bed in the ER. This is not about choosing what life matters more, but the hard fact that no matter how hard we try we cannot save the lives of some people regardless of how many resources we employ.

I learned these hard facts as a Medical Service Corps Officer in Germany at the height of the Cold War. In a NBC (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical) mass casualty event, or even an overwhelming conventional mass casualty event the triage of casualties is upended. In normal times we try to treat the most seriously injured or ill first. But in an environment where the ill or injured are infected by a biological agent that we cannot treat, or a chemical agent that will kill them anyway, or enough radiation exposure to kill them, or we are completely overwhelmed with casualties, we provide palliative care to the dying or most likely to die while minimizing their pain and suffering. instead we concentrate on saving the lives of those who have the best chance of living. As long as we have the resources and personnel we aggressively try to save the lives of people infected by Coronavirus, but if we don’t we need to issue “do not resuscitate“ or DNR orders in order to protect medical providers and to ensure that we save the maximum number of people regardless of their status in society.

In a combat environment, which I hate to say we are now in, a soldier with an otherwise treatable wound who has been exposed to a biological or chemical agent, is given palliative care. Likewise, you cannot run a full code on a person infected with Coronavirus because you risk infecting the treatment team, and other patients in the adjoining beds. That may sound heartless, but it is the most humane course of action. At the rate of expansion of COVID 19, more and more doctors and hospitals will be forced to make this choice.  Chaplains and nurses can care for the dying, so long as they use appropriate personal protective equipment in order to not become infected and pose a risk to others. No one likes this, but if resources and personnel cannot handle the numbers of those infected, then such measures are necessary, and I do not say this lightly. I have been through two pandemics, and combat. I value all life, but there are times when care has to be rationed. That is something I know from history, as well as my education and training. Every life might be sacred, but you cannot save everyone, and whether we like it or not, everybody dies.

That is what we are rapidly approaching now. In the past two days the number of deaths from novel Coronavirus-19 have doubled from 1,000 to 2,000. Since 8 March we have gone from 516 confirmed cases and 21 deaths to 123,750 infections and 2,227 deaths. That my friends is in 20 days. The rate of infection is increasing exponentially as the nation, led by a President who will not lead or take responsibility for his actions and that of his administration, desperately tries to contain it. The state governors who speak out asking for help for their citizens are demonized by the President and his cult like followers.  This isn’t about politics, it is about life and preserving it.

Mark my words, with a week hospitals in many major urban centers, and the understaffed, underfunded, hospitals throughout America’s Red State heartland will be having to make these terrible decisions about who lives and who dies. Sadly, the trail of guilt can be traced not just to Trump and his administration, but to leaders in both political parties, who refused to speak the truth when it was most needed.

I refuse to be one of them. I will speak truth to those in power as long as I can and provide my pastoral care to those who most need it, and I will not reject anyone, Christians, other believers, or those who struggle with belief or reject the entire concept of a Supreme Being. For me all that matters is that they are flesh and blood human beings in need of empathy and care, regardless of their beliefs.

So, that being said, I wish you peace, health, and the blessing of not having to make such decisions, unless you have to speak for a loved one who cannot speak for themselves.

We are in a war against an unseen enemy as well as others who want to destroy us. More often than not the President sides with those who want to destroy all of us regardless of party, race, religion, or ideology. Like it or not we are now dealing with a combat situation and  everything we knew before is  obsolete.

I have been preaching this for years, but because I deal with combat induced PTSD and other issues I have been sidelined by the Navy Chaplain Corps. But I won’t stop preaching to truth to power and caring for everyone in my care. Twenty-four years ago when I was ordained as a Priest in my former church, the Archdeacon made a prophecy that like Saint Stephen I would accept martyrdom joyfully.

Mind you, I am not one to take such utterances literally, and want to live as long and and happily as I can. Nor do I seek martyrdom be abuse I believe that God, whoever he or she may be is not a fan of such actions. That being said,  I want everyone I know to live through this and produce antibodies in their blood cells that will help others live. Likewise I will speak as long as I live against political, business, financial, military, or religious leaders who would use this crisis to consolidate and expand their powers at the expense of all over us, regardless of our race, ethnicity, religion, political or ideological beliefs may be.

But I am tired, so until tomorrow, please be careful out there.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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October 30, 2019 · 20:29

Waiting for First Light at Slaughterhouse Five: PTSD and a Coda to te end of a Military Career


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I am checking out of my current command to finish my career attached to Norfolk Naval Shipyard, in Portsmouth Virginia. I am struggling. Not feeling appreciated and feeling like a cast off. This isn’t new, shortly after I was promoted to Commander, the newly appointed Deputy Chief of Chaplains treated me like a potted plant while making her rounds of the Generals and Major Commands. As Kurt Vonnegut noted in Slaughterhouse Five “and so it goes.”  My Problems in the Navy Chaplain Corps began when I went public with my struggles with PTSD. Somehow it seems that Chaplains can care for the wounded and those traumatized by war but if we admit that we are wounded we are expendable.

I read General Romeo Dallaire’s latest book, Waiting for First Light: My Ongoing Struggle with PTSD a couple of years ago. General Dallaire had been the commander of the UN Peacekeepers in Rwanda, men and women who were prevented from stopping genocide, and people who have been forever haunted by what they witnessed.

General Dallaire recounts a story of horror that never ended for him, and he details how difficult and traumatic coming home that neither appreciate nor understood what he had been through, including people in the military. I found so much in his story that was analogous to my own and in light of that I am going to begin writing my PTSD memoir.

It will be hard because I will have to write about things that are deeply traumatic and upsetting, especially how I was received and continue to be received by most of my fellow chaplains. Because I came and publicly discussed my issues with PTSD, the shattering of my faith in so many things, my wilderness experience of being an agnostic for two years, and the change in my faith since then, I experienced the rejection of my former church and many of my peers.

To many of my peers and Chaplain Corps superiors I am simply a broken Chaplain; and broken chaplains or for that matter broken ministers have no place and very few people who they can talk with. I remember my old Commodore at EOD Group Two, the late Captain Tom Sitsch ask me bluntly “Where does a chaplain go for help?”My answer to him was “not to other chaplains.” Sadly, he too was going through his own personal PTSD hell and with his life falling apart he committed suicide in January 2014.

General Dallaire recounts a similar experience, as like Chaplains, Generals and other senior leaders have no place to go, they like us are not supposed to break. General Dallaire wrote: “I received little support from my colleagues and peers; I received only a few messages from my sixty or so fellow generals – a couple of phone calls, and an e-mail from one old friend. The others appeared to be in two camps: those who were too busy to get in touch, and those who didn’t know what to say.” But I would also add, that there are those that do not want to know and others who actually turn their backs on men and women whose injury lies inside their brain, as well as some chaplains and ministers who seem to take a certain perverse joy in inflicting pain.

I still struggle with nightmares, night terrors, insomnia, and hyper-vigilance. After more than a decade I cannot imagine life without them. Like General Dallaire, I still wait for first light.

So pray for me if you do that, if not send some positive thoughts my direction.

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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December 30, 2018 · 08:05

“The Future Ain’t What It Used to Be” Thoughts on the Eve Of New Year’s Eve

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

T. S. Elliott wrote:

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language and next year’s words await another voice.”

It is the eve of New Year’s Eve and I have been reflecting on the year past and thinking about the future, and trying to put the past year into words. The good thing is that I write a decent amount about my experiences as they occur on this site, so in addition to it being a wealth of historical, biographical, religious, and political thinking, it also serves as kind of a public diary.

I have to admit, 2018 was an difficult year for me personally as well as for Judy, even little Pierre had a brush with death. The difficulties have been many but we have survived and are preparing for a new chapter in our lives as I finally after over 37 years in the military am preparing to retire.

The year began fairly well but in April we had a water leak from our air conditioning drain pan while we were out of town. It was the first heat wave of the year and our AC unit is really good, it sucked out the humidity from the air like a beast. Unfortunately, the drain pipes had been clogged with blown in insulation which had solidified during the winter when the AC was not in use. The result was a flood on our second floor which damaged walls, floors, ceilings, and furnishings. It was a bitch to get fixed, in fact we still have some work to do, mostly painting, but a few other things, but those were delayed by other events.

I am grateful that we had insurance and some other resources otherwise it would have been much worse, even so it did cost us money and time, and I had to spend a couple weeks of leave that I could have used for other things. But it was stressful, and physically exhausting. The work, including having a professional water damage company drying out the place, getting a contractor, having contractors doing repairs and renovations, getting materials, and doing much work ourselves took us into September when we took a break for our pilgrimage to Germany.

That would be enough, but in the midst of it I had a threat to my career and freedom when military retiree member of my Protestant Chapel Congregation complained to my command about a sermon and attempted to have me tried by Court Martial. His complaint was political, my sermon which was solidly based on scripture and history conflicted with his Fox News and Donald Trump version of Christianity.

That took place at the end of June and I first part of July preparing for and being investigated by the command. The investigation exonerated me, but I did have to hire a lawyer who represents many high profile military and government personnel in religious liberty cases. That cost a decent amount of money but it was far better than trusting my freedom and career to a brand new Navy defense attorney. Even some emotional and spiritual toll that it took convinced me to retire. I came to realize that there is no place for who tries to stand for truth in front of politicized right wing chapel congregations.

That coupled with an insufferable amount of other chapel bullshit and bullying by military retirees in my chapel congregations at me and my staff made up my mind. My junior Chaplains have asked if I would be willing to preach again in the chapel, but I had to be honest, I don’t feel safe with and don’t trust and good number of people in the Protestant congregation.

The fact that I am neither Protestant or Roman Catholic has kind of made me a man without a country in the Navy Chaplain Corps. Members of Religious minorities who don’t tow the line to the powerful are not tolerated. After 26 years of championing religious liberties for people of all faiths regardless of their beliefs or social-political stances as an Army and now Navy Chaplain, I found out that some people don’t give a damn and would use their religious rights to attempt to destroy me.

I say, fuck that, I don’t need it. So I am retiring before I am required to do and before the end of this tour of duty. That being said, I appreciate my staff who stood by me, and I am proud to have been able to serve this country in peace and war in so many different ways, in so many places, and with so many great people; the people who did this can’t take that away from me. But I cannot be silent and I will still speak the truth. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:

 “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

Then there were the medical challenges. During August after work, and more work at home I was called by a former shipmate going through a very difficult time. I was on the phone with him until about 2:30 AM. When I went upstairs I realized that I had Judy’s car keys in my pocket, so I trudged back down the stairs but took my eyes off the stairs and didn’t keep my hand on the railing. I slipped and fell, spraining my left ankle, the ACLs of both knees, and my right hip. After a long period of getting examined, x-rays, physical therapy, and MRIs I will be getting arthroscopic surgery to repair a torn meniscus in my left knee and PRP (Platelet Rich Plasma) treatment on my right knee. In the next month or so. I can only echo the words of Mickey Mantle who said “I always loved the game, but when my legs weren’t hurting it was a lot easier to love.” I haven’t been able to run and even walking is not without pain, and considering that even earlier this year I was running thee to five miles or walking and running six to ten miles a day, this really sucks.

Then Judy had her right knee, which she thought was her good knee go out. She thought, and the ER docs thought it was a sprain, but it turned out that the knee, like her left knee needed replacement. She went through that on November 9th and has been recovering and rehabbing ever since. She will have to have the left knee replaced next year.

The scariest thing was when our little Papillon, Pierre ingested something toxic, probably from a mushroom, that caused him to have severe bleeding ulcers in his stomach which turned into a life threatening situation. He had to have emergency surgery, but came through it well. He had completely recovered but it was scary because he is my little shadow, daddy’s boy, and still so young.

But there were good things. We celebrated our 35th marriage anniversary, we have good friends, we made it through, or are making it through the difficult times. We also made a trip to Germany where we saw German friends, visited Munich, Berlin, Karlsruhe, Wittenberg, and other locations, and I was able to visit a good number of historical locations dealing with the Holocaust and the resistance to the Hitler regime.

Despite everything that we went through I am grateful for family, friends, and my staff at work who helped us get through everything. We are alive, we are making it through our medical and physical issues, the house is getting fixed and I am getting ready to retire from the Navy and transition to hopefully teaching history, writing, and working with veterans.

In the movie Star Trek: Generations, Captain Jean Luc Picard tells Commander William Riker:

“Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. But I rather believe than time is a companion who goes with us on the journey, and reminds us to cherish every moment because they’ll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important how we lived. After all, Number One, we’re only mortal.” 

So as I close out the old year I wish you my readers all the best. May the coming year be good for all of us.

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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August 12, 2018 · 00:56

All Good Things: My Decision to Retiree from the Military

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

In the Star Trek Film Generations Captain Jean Luc Picard told Commander William Riker:

“Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. But I rather believe than time is a companion who goes with us on the journey, and reminds us to cherish every moment because they’ll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important how we lived. After all, Number One, we’re only mortal.” 

Today was like any other Saturday for me except that I made the decision to put in my retirement papers from the Navy. Lord willing about this time next year I will be “piped ashore” in a retirement ceremony.

When that day comes it will be the end of a thirty-eight year military career in which I have served as an enlisted man, then an officer. I have served in the active duty Army, the Army Reserve, and California, Texas, and Virginia Army National Guard. Then in February of 1999 after 17 1/2 years in the Army I declared free agency so to speak and joined the Navy.  On February 8th I was a Major in the Army Reserve and on the 9th I was taking the oath of office as a Navy Lieutenant. My wife and my paternal grandmother were there when I took the oath in a humble, and now abandoned Naval Reserve Center in Huntington West Virginia.

So now, some 19 years and 8 months later I have made the decision to put in my retirement papers. For me it is a time for reflecting and realizing that it is the right time to do this. The last number of months in my assignment have been difficult and brought me little joy. I have sought to serve my congregations and to mentor, help, and protect the personnel assigned to me.

I have grown weary of the frustrations of dealing with a moribund bureaucracy, decaying facilities with no money to fix them, the prospect of losing most of my experienced enlisted personnel with no experienced personnel coming in, and dealing with Protestant and Catholic congregations that try my very soul. When one of my Protestant parishioners attempted to have me tried by court martial because he disagreed with my sermon content and then wrote a lying letter to my commander forcing an investigation in which I had to spend money on a lawyer to defend myself I crossed the Rubicon. I knew that I was going to retire at the end of my current tour.

Then this week I hit the culminating point when the faith group leader of my Catholic congregation and my new contract Priest raised such a ruckus and problems for my enlisted personnel and one of my Chaplains that I had to intervene despite being on leave and in the middle of massive work on my house. I spent Friday evening texting that lay leader and it only made me more upset. I realized that no matter what I did that had done to keep them going in the absence of a priest and how I fought for them that they had no loyalty of concern for me or my personnel. Gratefulness to others is not a virtue for most American Christians today, I knew that but learned it again.

This morning I read a Navy Message announcing a Selective Early Retirement Board for Captains and Commanders. I am in the zone and if chosen to be retired I would have little lead time to plan my retirement and do all the things that I would need to do medically, administratively, and personally to retire and have a decent chance of landing on me feet. Honestly, I would have rather spent the last year in a combat zone in Iraq like I did in 2007 and 2008 than deal with the bullshit that I have been dealing with lately.

I know that did the best that I could and I can say that the team of chaplains and Religious Program Specialists whose work I help direct and support are some of the finest people I have ever served with. Their honesty and likewise their care for me has been about the only thing that got me through. Honestly, I am so grateful for them and I treasure them all, just as I have so many of my other soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, and civilians employed by the military for the last thirty-seven years.

I am at peace, and I am going to spent the time leading up to my retirement to cherish every moment. Now I know that my situation at work is not going to change but I am going to cherish the moments with the people that I care for and do my best to serve without getting to stressed out because I know now that I my future is only beginning. “Second star to the right and straight on till morning.”

Peace

Padre Steve+

 

 

 

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June 8, 2018 · 01:52

What Have We Done? Moral Injury and Our Unending Wars

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

It is not every day that one reads about himself in a book by a Pulitzer Prize winning war correspondent and author. I did that this week. Back in 2014 I was interviewed by David Wood for his book What Have We Done: The Moral Injury of Our Longest Wars. After the interview I kept going with life struggling with the daily effects of PTSD, TBI, and Moral Injury in my life. The book came out in late 2016 or early 2017 but I didn’t know that it had until Sunday when I read some comments by Army Chaplains in a Facebook Group that I am fortunate to be a member.

When I found out the book had been published I immediately purchased it on Amazon Kindle and will get a hard cover copy as well. Of course I search for my name and went to the chapter in which David told my story. It was very good, so I began reading the book from the beginning. David is an exceptional writer and having spent many years in combat zones and embedded in American combat units at war he has earned his stripes, and what he writes is so vivid and real that to me it brought back too many memories, painful memories of the war and what I experienced when I came home flooded me. I again recalled the words of the great Union General and hero of Little Round Top, Gouverneur Warren that he wrote his wife in 1867:

“I wish I did not dream so much. They make me sometimes to dread to go to sleep. Scenes from the war, are so constantly recalled, with bitter feelings I wish never to experience again. Lies, vanity, treachery, and carnage.”

It was not reading my story that got me, it was reading the stories of Marines, soldiers, and other Chaplains that got me. I knew that I wasn’t alone. I have seen carnage. I have been shot at, and I have been in danger many times, always unarmed; that I would do again. In fact in my FITREP debrief from my commanding officer and executive officer both noted that where I stood out the most was in crisis situations dealing with death and trauma. Truthfully, that is how I am wired and it has always been that way. Sadly my current billet, which will certainly unless everything goes to shit will be the one that I will retire from is more suited to men or women who do well in the bureaucracy and management. Outside of crises and trauma situations I do best teaching and writing, but I digress…

David’s book triggered memories. I had to make a note not to read it before bedtime because on Sunday night when I finished the second chapter I took my sleep meds, put on my CPAP, and had my therapy puppy Izzy snuggled around my head. I closed my eyes and the flashbacks began. When I finally went to sleep the nightmares began. They have not ended. The Alsatian German Soldier, Guy Sajer wrote in his book The Forgotten Soldier:

“Only happy people have nightmares, from overeating. For those who live a nightmare reality, sleep is a black hole, lost in time, like death.”

While I write about my private war with PTSD and Moral Injury I say little or nothing about it now to superiors, in fact after serving with me for over a year my Commander didn’t know how I struggle. I admitted it to him during the debrief and he was surprised. I guess that is a good thing because since “coming out” with PTSD in 2009 having already dealt with it for a year discovered that I had become one of the untouchables. Though I was selected for promotion to Commander in 2010 I was shunted off into billets that made me noncompetitive for promotion to Captain. I realized that in 2011 when the newly promoted deputy Chief of Chaplains treated me as if I was a nonentity when she made her tour of the commands at the base I was then serving. In 2014 when the Washington Times published an article on their front page about my story it went completely unacknowledged by the Chief of Chaplains office in Washington DC. I didn’t even get a call from a staff member asking if I was okay.

I can understand how Gouverneur Warren felt when he was cast off at the end of the Civil War, but then I also remember how a Comcast seasoned EOD Master Chief Petty Officer told me that “you can admit and get help for PTSD but you will never again get assigned to the billets that get you promoted.” He was right and truthfully I am okay with that, I can say that I am happy where I am now, not to say that if given the chance I wouldn’t hesitate to go in harms way again. My nightmares this week seem to lead me to believe that that may happen before I retire from the military, but again I digress…

I highly recommend David’s book to you. It is probably the best account of the war and its unintended consequences that I have ever read. Please read it if you really care about those of us who have been to war in Iraq, Afghanistan, or to go back further Vietnam have experienced. When you are done with it you too may ask What have we done?

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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February 3, 2018 · 02:19

“As Men Can Die Heroically as Brothers so Should They Live Together in Mutual Faith and Goodwill” The Four Chaplains in the Age of Trump

four chaplains

The Four Chaplains

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Today I am writing a brief remembrance of four men who I never met but whose lives helped guide me into my vocation as a Priest and Chaplain. I think I first read about them in junior high school and at that time I had never thought about becoming a minister, priest, or chaplain. To be sure, ever since I was in early grade school I wanted to be in the military but it would not be until my senior year of high school that I felt a call to become a Navy Chaplain. I’ll come back to that in a moment, but first a brief op-ed on religion in the United states.

In this day and age where fanatical religious extremists of many faiths seek to divide society, launch wars of religion, discriminate against non-believers or even people who believe differently than them, or hold different philosophical or political beliefs, it is important as Americans to find something that holds us together. The fact that our founders were profoundly against establishing or favoring any particular faith or denomination, there are those today who militantly fight to establish an Evangelical Christian theocracy that has no basis for existence based on the testimony of the Founders, and the earliest proponents of religious liberty in the United States including Virginia Baptist John Leland who helped influence James Madison in crafting the First Amendment of the Constitution wrote:

“The notion of a Christian commonwealth should be exploded forever. … Government should protect every man in thinking and speaking freely, and see that one does not abuse another. The liberty I contend for is more than toleration. The very idea of toleration is despicable; it supposes that some have a pre-eminence above the rest to grant indulgence, whereas all should be equally free, Jews, Turks, Pagans and Christians.”

Sadly, men like Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell Jr., Robert Jeffress, and a host of others use their theocratic political judgments to condemn people of good faith in this life and the next. Aided by men like the President they stand in opposition to Leland and the others like him who understood that the American experiment in religious liberty could not be tied to fixed dogma, nor the Apostle Paul who wrote to the Church in Corinth: “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself,[a] not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.” (2 Cor. 5:19)

But I digress, you can read previous articles on this site in which I quoted Leland and other defenders of real religious freedom. For me it’s a matter of my Christian faith. So back to the story…

The four men that I never met were Army Chaplains.

George Lansing Fox was a 42 year old Methodist minister from Lewiston, Pennsylvania who had served as a medic in the First World War in which he was awarded the Silver Star, the Purple Heart, and the French Croix De Guerre. Thirty-one year old Reformed Rabbi Alexander Goode of Brooklyn, New York was the son of a Rabbi who before the war had applied but not been accepted as a Navy Chaplain. After Pearl Harbor he volunteered and was commissioned as an Army Chaplain. Clark V. Poling was a Baptist minister serving as pastor of a Reformed Church when the war broke out. His father had served as a Chaplain in the First World War and Poling, the married father of one child became an Army Chaplain in 1941. Father John Patrick Washington of Newark New Jersey was a Roman Catholic Priest who entered active duty in May 1942. The four men attended the Army Chaplain’s School, then at Harvard and were united for the journey across the Atlantic aboard the transport ship SS Dorchester.

On the night of February 3rd 1943 the Dorchester was torpedoed by the German submarine U-223. She went down in 20 minutes, of the 904 men aboard the ship only 230 survived. Despite the fact that the ship’s captain had ordered a high state of readiness and that all hands wear life jackets at all time, “Many soldiers sleeping deep in the ship’s hold disregarded the order because of the engine’s heat. Others ignored it because the life jackets were uncomfortable.”

When the ship was hit by a torpedo power went out and the four chaplains worked amid the chaos to calm the situation and assisted the soldiers, sailors, and merchant mariners aboard the ship as they tried to abandon ship. The four chaplains handed out life jackets until the supply ran out and then gave their own life jackets to soldiers that had none.

In doing so they signed their own death sentence, the water temperature was just 34 degrees, the air temperature was 36 degrees, many who survived the sinking died of exposure within minutes of the sinking, rescue ships found hundreds of bodies floating in the water. As the ship went down they died together, praying with arms linked after giving away their life jackets as the troop transport that they were on sank beneath the waves into the icy depths of the North Atlantic. A survivor wrote:

“As I swam away from the ship, I looked back. The flares had lighted everything. The bow came up high and she slid under. The last thing I saw, the Four Chaplains were up there praying for the safety of the men. They had done everything they could. I did not see them again. They themselves did not have a chance without their life jackets.”

Other survivors reported hearing the prayers of the chaplains in English, Latin, and Hebrew as the ship went down. Their bodies were never recovered. They have been remembered as heroes. In 1960 Congress named February 3rd as Four Chaplains Day. The U.S. Post Office commissioned a stamp in their honor in 1948. The Chapel of the Four Chaplains was dedicated in the basement of Grace Baptist Church in Philadelphia in 1951. President Harry Truman spoke at its dedication noting:

“This interfaith shrine… will stand through long generations to teach Americans that as men can die heroically as brothers so should they live together in mutual faith and goodwill.”

The chapel was moved to Temple University in 1953 and to the former Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in 2001.

 

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Father John Patrick Washington (Top Left), Reverend Clark V. Poling (Top Right), Rabbi Alexander Goode (Bottom Left), and Reverend George Lansing Fox

Of course my journey in finding that call and answering it had a number of detours in which I first rejecting following the call. Instead, when I was in college I simply enlisted in the Army National Guard, entered ROTC and then was commissioned as an Army officer. After a number of incidents on active duty which renewed that sense of call I left active duty to go to seminary, went back into the National Guard and in September of 1992 became an Army National Guard and civilian hospital chaplain.  On February 9th 1999 I resigned my commission as a Major in the Army Chaplain Corps to become a Navy Chaplain, and in the process accepting a reduction in rank.

In the nearly 37 years that I have served in the military of which almost 26 have been spent as a chaplain I have had the privilege of serving with many fine ministers of many denominations, priests, rabbis, and even an imam.  Of course I have served alongside some chaplains who regardless of their faith or denomination were simply assholes, but that being said I truly do appreciate those men and women from so many faiths and denominations who have cared for me. I do think that any of them could have linked arms with me and prayed after doing the last best things that we could do for the soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen who entrust themselves to our care.

Despite what some senior chaplains in both the Army and Navy had done to me at different points; when I think of those men and women who regardless of their beliefs or the beliefs of the religious organizations that endorse them for the chaplaincy, I realize just how blessed that I am.

In the day that we live I can still stand with Harry Truman when he praised these chaplains. Now I am sure that there are quite few people who would say that either Goode, Fox, Poling, or Washington are already in Hell; but I don’t believe that. I understand from Scripture and the teachings of Jesus that God looks on the heart, and that the most important commandments are to love God and love our neighbors. I think that Jesus said that in doing those things that people fulfill the entire law.

Thus I thank God for the Chaplains of various denominations, Mainline Protestants, Evangelicals, Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Anglicans, Mormons, Jews, and Muslims who I would be blessed to link arms with to care for those in our care.

So today, I ask my readers to share this message with others.

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

 

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