Advanced Guard: Strategic Communications and the Dual Agency of the U.S. Armed Forces Chaplaincy Martin Edwin Andersen It is the chaplain’s highest function to stimulate or inspire men through the medium of religion to an idealism which finds its fruition in loyalty, courage and contentment, the very essence of good morale. … His ultimate end and aim should be to help both officers and men to maintain a cheerful and courageous spirit with unshaken faith in the high cause which they serve, through both the monotony of peace and the trying ordeal of war. --- “The Chaplain: His Place and Duties” Training Manual, United States Army (1926)1 The term “strategic communications” refers to those tasks involving goal setting, situational knowledge, communication competence, and anxiety management. 2 A means of persuading others to accept “one’s ideas, policies or courses of action,” the strategic communications discipline has come to be considered as “vitally important” to U.S. military policy as it is a way to convince “the nation’s citizens to support the policies of their leaders so that a national will is forged to accomplish national objectives.” In this context, strategic communication is an “essential element of national leadership” because, as one former Army Chief of Staff noted, “Armies don’t fight wars, nations fight wars.” In addition, strategic communications can be used to convince foreign audiences to support U.S. national strategic goals, such as combating terrorism or enhancing regional cooperation. Strategic communications is particularly valuable in light of the complaint in 2007 by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates that the United States needed to better “communicate to the rest of the world what we are about as a society and as a culture.” 3 This study is designed to shed light on a critical aspect of the chaplains’ work—their ministries as strategic communications platforms from which they both carry out a pastoral role and offer, as a valued member of the military inner circle, religious, moral, spiritual and ethical advice to leadership, both at the strategic and tactical levels. This article will examine the role of the American military chaplaincy as a strategic communications phenomenon that predates the concept itself, tracing the development of the armed forces’ quasi-independent religious corps that nonetheless has at times played a crucial role in the supporting the political orientation and strategic direction of the military. Although “strategic communications”—a buzzword emanating from the 1990s that gained even greater currency in the September 11, 2001 global “war of ideas”—might appear to be new, for centuries military chaplains have labored as strategic communicators in an effort to win support within the armed forces for the nation’s ideas, policies and courses of action.4 1 Page 40, Box 57, Folder: “Military Affairs: Chaplains’ Conference, 1926-1940”; National Catholic Welfare Council General Administration Series, The American Catholic History Research Center and University Archives (hereafter ACUA), The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. 2 See O’Hair, Dan, with Lynda Dee Dixon and Gustav W. Friedrich, Strategic Communications in Business and the Professions (Friedrich & Shaver, 1995). 3 Richard Halloran, “Strategic Communication,” Parameters (U.S. Army War College Quarterly), Autumn 2007, p. 4; Gates, “Landon Lecture” at Kansas State University, November 26, 2007 (found at http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=1199.) 4 Although the phrase “war of ideas” has come to be widely associated with current asymmetric warfare doctrine against global terrorism, in fact it was also used during the Cold War in connection to the role played by military chaplains. In a 1996 article, Mark R. Grandstaff reported that: “Closely related to the ‘war of ideas’ and political indoctrination was the belief that immorality and ‘godlessness’ also subverted democratic ideals: ’The fundamental principles which give our democratic ideas their intellectual and emotional vigor are rooted in the religions that give our democratic faith a very large measure of its strength,’ remarked one (U.S.) committee report on the military  At least until the debacle in Vietnam, the strategic communications role of serving American chaplains, whose job description has in other ways greatly changed over time, was in keeping with the fact that “most of the American churches have often supported United States military policy as the will of God,” thus giving “credence to the claim that the United States (and her armed forces) is the hand of God, building his kingdom on earth”. 5 However, as William J. Hourihan, himself a military historian, has noted, “In many ways the role of the Army chaplain … is one often ignored by most military historians.” 6 The commentary could easily be extended to the unexamined work of other services’ chaplains as well. As members of the armed forces, military chaplains are necessarily dual-hatted. Not only do they attend to the unique spiritual needs of soldiers risking their lives in the line of duty. They have also, as individuals and as members of the military institution, been involved in persuading others to accept ideas, policies or courses of action in support of the national command authority. These secular actions have taken place both inside the military—such as the persuading troops about the need for censorship during wartime and character building exercises—as well as outside the armed forces—helping win the “hearts and minds” of foreign populations, enlisting support for military preparedness, and educating freed slaves. 7 At the same time, as Professor Max Stackhouse of the Princeton Theological Seminary has observed: “The really good chaplains realize that they are truly under God’s command first and under military command second. So this means sometimes they must, with prudence, give tough and delicate critique of the military orders that are given.” 8 Since the earliest beginnings of the American armed forces, at Concord Bridge on April 19, 1775, military chaplains have played an integral role, providing comfort and guidance to military personnel, with primary responsibility—from planning and development to implementation—for assisting combatant commanders in safeguarding “the religious, spiritual, moral, and ethical well being of all personnel in their command.”9 That included an overtly political stance, in favor of one’s comrades. Noted one War Department report nearly 150 years later: When the Revolutionary War came, the same preachers who had been leaders in their communities went to battle with their parishioners. … There was John Martin, who, after praying with the soldiers of Bunker Hill, seized a musket and fought gallantly to the close of the battle. A day or two after he preached to the remnants of his shattered regiment from Nehemiah iv, 14: ‘And I said unto the nobles and to the rulers and to the rest of the people, Be ye not afraid of them .’ 10 (Italics added) Col. (ret.) John W. Brinsfield, the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps historian tells us that Revolutionary General George Washington believed “that the only victorious army [was] going to be, at least, an ethical army if chaplaincy. As communism ‘utterly rejected’ moral law and individual liberty, religious faith represented the ‘antithesis’ of Marxist-Leninist thought.” See Grandstaff, “Making the Military American: Advertising, Reform, and the Demise of an Antistanding Military Tradition, 1945-1955,” The Journal of Military History 60 (April 1996), p. 319. 5 Clarence L. Abercrombie, III. The Military Chaplain, (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1997), pp. 42, 125. In chapters 7 and 8, Abercrombie argues the chaplains’ degree of “militariness” in their attitudes is greater than that of their civilian counterparts because those serving in the armed forces are already so disposed upon at the beginning of their career, and that they are more insulated—because of their role within the institution of the armed forces—from attitudinal trends in civilian life than are the civilian clergy. 6 In Preface to Alan K. Lamm’s Five Black Preachers in Army Blue 1884-1901; The Buffalo Soldier Chaplains, Wales, United Kingdom: The Edwin Mellen Press, Ltd., 1998), p. i. 7 In The Chaplain: His Place and Duties, published in 1926 under the direction of the Army Chief of Chaplains,” the military religious officers were told that “Censorship … [is] to prevent unauthorized information falling into the hand of the enemy … Since such rules are of vital importance and since grave results may follow their infraction … it is the duty of chaplains to not only carry out these rules in their own actions, but to impress upon the men of their units the reasonableness and necessity for complete obedience in matters of this sort, admonishing them that a very small bit of strategic information at a pivotal moment has often determined the results of a campaign,” p. 54, , Box 57, Folder: “Military Affairs: Chaplains’ Conference, 1926-1940”; ACUA. 8 9 U.S. Army Regulation 165-20. 10 Report of the Conference on Moral and Religious Work in the Army, War Department, (Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office, 1923), p. 5., in Box 57, Folder: “Military Affairs: Chaplains’ Conference, 1926-1940”; National Catholic Welfare Council General Administration Series, ACUA 2 not a religious army … Washington thought the only way he could win was with a righteous army, because the odds were so overwhelming against him … Washington wanted [chaplains] to be religious leaders. … But the chaplains were also to visit the wounded, take care of the dead, write letters home for soldiers who couldn’t write, give discourse of a patriotic nature to keep the soldiers from deserting. The chaplain was a very important link between the commander and the troops. 11[Italics added.] The chaplains’ dual role also impacts their search to maintain respectable identities and core values as both a military officer and as the leader of a flock who faces a delicate balancing act in her/his interaction with enlisted personnel. “The chaplain, being both a military officer and a clergyman, must somehow come to grips with the problem of carrying on an effective religious ministry for enlisted personnel and at the same time retaining his status as an officer.” 12 As Dale R. Herspring has pointed out, their roles tending to issues of morale, motivation and political socialization have also been—depending on the time and the nation’s ideology—carried out by political officers and one-party state commissars. 13 The concept of strategic communications as a war-fighting tool, the definition of which is still being debated by U.S. policy and military leaders, has come to the fore in the first decade of the 21 st century, as U.S. forces sought to first overthrow Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, then pacify the ethnically and religiously fractious nation-state by trying to create stable democratic institutions, in a campaign that has proven much more costly and bloody than originally foreseen. Faced with both international criticism and dissent at home, integrating communications is now seen as key to effective military strategy and tactics, with a premium placed on its being inserted at an early state into the policy development process. From there, “stratcomm” is supposed to accompany the policies that are developed as they are translated into concrete action—all the way to the battlefield, and beyond, to post-conflict scenarios such as peacekeeping and stability operations.14 Ironically, strategic communication can be seen as the decanted essence of religious dogma. It has “its roots in the true and classic meaning” of “propaganda,” a word whose etymology is traced to Gregory XV, the Catholic pope who in 1622 created the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith as part of the Roman curia. Its mission was to, in Latin, “propagare” Catholic doctrine, a spreading of the word whose English derivatives include “propagate” and “propaganda.” Unfortunately, with the advent of World War II and the “Big Lie” techniques of the German Nazis, the word propaganda was discredited and no longer meant the mere use of accurate, factual information to buttress one’s case. 15 It is no accident that military chaplains have played the role that is now ascribed to the realm of strategic communications. As one respected communications expert has noted: “Successful strategic communications assumes a defensible policy, a respectable identity, a core value.” 16 Careful examination of the role played by military chaplains in the United States and other countries shows that wartime policies 11 “Military Chaplains: A historian’s view from the American Revolution to Iraq,” The Christian Science Monitor, October 30, 2007, p. 25. In a Revolutionary Order issued from Valley Forge on May 2, 1778, Commander-in-Chief Washington directed: “that divine service be performed every Sunday at eleven o’clock in each brigade which has chaplains. Those brigades who have none will attend the places of worship nearest to them. …While we are duly performing the duty of good soldiers we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the highest duties of religion. … Signal instances of Providential goodness which we have experienced and which have almost crowned our arms with complete success demand from us in a peculiar manner the warmest returns of gratitude and piety to the supreme author of all good.” 12 Waldo W. Burchard, “Role Conflicts of Military Chaplains,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 19, No. 5 (October, 1954), p. 532. 13 Herspring, Soldiers, Commissars, and Chaplains: Civil-Military Relations since Cromwell, (Landham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001). Like that of commissars and political officers, he argues, the institutional role of chaplains also serves to help understand the state of a nation’s civil military relations. 14 See, for example, Chaplain William Sean Lee, Col. Christopher J. Burke, and Col. Zonna M. Crayne, Military Chaplains as Peace Builders; Embracing Indigenous Religions in Stability Operations (Maxwell Air ForceBase: Air University Press, 2004). 15 Halloran, op. cit., p. 2. 16 Halloran, op. cit., p. 3. 3 tend to be seen as more defensible when advocated by people of the cloth, whose very identity is seen by large sectors of the population as both respectable and intrinsically value-laden. Among the issues that will be examined in this paper are a comparative look at the role played by military chaplainry in other countries throughout history, as well as the strategic communications roles played by the U.S. military chaplains in the Civil War; in a major government policy initiative (the establishment of character education in the U.S. Army in the period 1947-1977), and as a result of the relationship between the U.S. military and the Catholic Church during World War I and World War II. The Roads Leading to Military Chaplainry and Strategic Communication Abroad The question about whether military chaplains’ role is in war largely to boost soldiers’ morale—“to fight hard and face death bravely” in the service of king and commander, advancing the cause of victory—or to act as spiritual counselors to men and women, tending to their individual needs, dates almost to the very beginnings of the profession. The Five Books of Moses makes reference to priests joining troops into battle: “And it shall be when you are come nigh unto battle that the priest shall approach and speak unto the people” (Deut. 20:2-4). Although the earliest roots of military chaplainry date to ancient Rome or even before, over time chaplains became “particularly important in combat because the idea of the chaplain is both to bring the blessing of the God or the gods to the cause of the army, but also to strengthen the fighting power, the morale, of individual soldiers and of providing the sacrament to soldiers who were prepared to kill other people. … And also soldiers who are risking being killed themselves—the idea that they go in a blessed state to their death.” Offering legitimacy to the war effort the military chaplains’ country was engaged in is a constant throughout the history of the chaplainry. 17 In classical Rome, rites associated with the state religion were meant to bring victory to Rome’s legions, and the generals who led them did not concern themselves with the spiritual health of individual warriors. “(I)t was usually the military leader who also had religious functions. The idea was that somehow God or the gods were extremely important forces behind military success, but it was usually one and the same person, a general or a military commander, a leader who also had religious responsibilities and duties.”18 From that time to this, a key preoccupation of the military and, if it existed, the ruling civilian political elite, was ensuring soldieries’ basic needs were addressed in order keep morale high. It was not until the 5th century and the Christianization of the enfeebled empire that some Roman armies included clerics offering the solace of faith to address soldiers’ personal worries. 19 The name “chaplain” emerged at the end of the Roman Empire. According legend dating to the fourth century, Martin of Tours, a pagan Roman soldier encountered a beggar shivering from the cold and gave him part of his military cloak. That night he had a vision of Christ dressed in the cloak. As a result, Martin was converted to Christianity. He devoted his life to the church, and after his death was canonized. Martin of Tours later became the patron saint of France and his cloak, now a holy relic, was carried into battle by the Frankish kings. This cloak was called in Latin the "cappa." Its portable shrine was called the "capella" and its caretaker priest, the "cappellanus." Eventually, all clergy affiliated with military were called "capellani," or in French "chapelains," hence chaplains. 20 In the 4th and 5th centuries, the Church required soldiers confessing their sins and receiving penance to leave the military for, as stated by Pope Leo I (d. 261), “it is completely contrary to all the rules of the church for a soldier to return to duty after receiving penance.” However, by the 7 th century, the influence of Irish missionaries helped sweep away the concept of a once-in-a-lifetime penance, replacing it by repeatable atonements that allowed the sinner to return to the Christian community. “This major development in Christian doctrine fundamentally altered the need for and duties of clerics serving with Christian soldiers,” David S. Bachrach noted. “It was now necessary to provide thousands, and in some 17 “Military chaplains: a rich history of more than just blessing the cannons,” an interview with Ret. Col. John W. Brinsfield, U.S. Army Chaplain Corps historian, in The Christian Science Monitor, October 30, 2007, p. 25. 18 “Military chaplains, a rich history,” Christian Science Monitor, op. cit. 19 Doris L. Bergen, The Sword of the Lord, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004), pp. 3,5. 20 Hourihan, “The Military Chaplain” (found at http://www.chaplain.us; accessed December 1, 2007). 4 cases, tens of thousands, of soldiers with the opportunity to confess their sins before they went into battle.”21 In the late eighth century, a Carolingian military chaplain issued a sermon in which he equated the importance of individual soldiers in holding the battle line, and thus keeping the whole force together, with a soldier’s obligations to Christ as a way of maintain the strength of that union. In the ninth century, Benedict the Levite mustered arguments against the improper use by secular authorities of church resources and personnel, and enumerated why chaplains were indispensable to a war effort. The “purpose of providing pastoral care to soldiers, particularly the celebration of the mass and saying prayer for them, was to secure God’s aid in obtaining victory.” In the 12th century, Bishop Ivo of Chartres (1090-1115) set out the canonical duties of military chaplains in the armies of the West, reaffirming their sacramental functions. In the Anglo-Norman campaign in northern England in 1138, army troops were rallied by religious ceremonies conducted by chaplains, whose use of sacred relics was complemented by a plaque that reminded them: “The task of soldiers is to conquer or die.” And, by the 13 th century, Pope Gregory IX (1227-41) was openly advocating that chaplains in the service of the Hungarian ruler provide encouragement to the soldiers, reconciling them with their duty as fighters for a leader in the service of God in the battle against the heretical and schismatic Bulgarians. By that time military chaplains in the crusader army were playing key roles, with the high morale of troops engaged in the 1204 siege of Constantinople attributed in part to the vigorous labors of the priests. 22 The English Civil War resulted in two views of the duty of military chaplains being in conflict with each other, reflecting the larger questions of the struggle: Royalist chaplains held that the monarch was owed absolute obedience, while parliamentary chaplains held it was right to disobey the king. In the English wars of the mid-17th century the press was an important part in the efforts of both sides to win hearts and minds, and chaplains served both as grist for the overall propaganda effort as well as an extension of each side’s own attempts to persuade and maintain loyalties. Chaplains who served the Parliament’s cause “frequently asserted the special place that the Parliament’s army held in God’s eyes.” They were given the task of controlling “the spread of heterodox religious views among the soldiers in the interests of military discipline, a task that became harder as high-ranking officers … joined the common soldiers and noncommissioned officers who preached.” As the fighting continued, “larger political claims were made for the Parliamentary army, often by chaplains. The substance of the chaplains’ political message derived from the idea that God had chosen the Parliament’s army.” The concern about heterodoxy —viewed as corrosive of ideological purity—was seen as a danger that came from lay preachers rather than the chaplains. Nonetheless, the latter were painted as extremists in what one observer called “exceptionally bad press.” In the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (Ireland, Scotland and England): Chaplains’ appointments reflected the political concerns of Parliament. Early in the war, the army command required chaplains who could explain to the troops why it was right to fight and kill their neighbors and disobey their kind. Later, within the Parliament’s army, chaplains had to combat the spread of religious heterodoxy lest the religious justification for war be undermined. In Ireland and Scotland, it was much easier to characterize the enemy as “other.” (Italics added.) In Ireland chaplains who formed part of the English expeditionary force “were never independent of the English government’s desire to promote Protestantism. … Well over half of the chaplains of the expeditionary force and army of occupation stayed on to further the government’s policy of supplying the country with a godly (that is, Protestant) ministry whose chief task was to keep the settlers Protestant rather than to convert Irish Catholics.” However, in Scotland, the English’s co-religionists only casus belli divergence was support for the monarchy. Thus, “Chaplains to English forces … were not engaged in a mission, as those in Ireland were, but in servicing a field army which was transformed into an army of occupation. No attempt was made to alter Scots’ religious sensibilities.” What restraint there was, albeit attenuated over time, during the civil wars was attributed by commentators of the period as due to the influence of religion on the troops’ conduct, although “if the enemy was, or could be, construed as being Roman Catholic, a greater degree of violence was believed to be justifiable, violence supported by chaplains who identified the enemy with the enemies of God.” The different approaches being linked to 21 David S. Bachrach, “The Medieval Military Chaplain and His Duties,” in Bergen, op. cit, p. 75 22 Bachrach, op. cit, pp. 74, 75, 83. 5 chaplaincy appointments evidenced “a high degree of ideological pragmatism.” 23 In the North American British colonies, a chaplain’s religion almost always reflected that of his uniformed spiritual wards as they came from the same towns and villages. In the 18th and 19th centuries European chaplains fully reflected trends towards nationalism, nation-building and imperialism, their work essential to maintaining morale and engagement in combat at a time when limited state resources lagged behind the armies’ growing size. In the case of Prussian/German chaplains, as early as the beginning of the 18 th century a deal cut between King Frederick William I and August Hermann Francke meant that, for a time “The king gained a steady supply of reliable, morale- boosting chaplains.” At the same time, the pietists gained “an eager and often desperately receptive audience among soldiers for its message of salvation and renewal,” a deal that eventually went sour when “nationalistic rhetoric had defeated theological reflection.” At the turn of the century, particularistic nationalism in the Old World eventually appeared to supplant Christian universality. 24 In Canada, the association of the chaplains with “brass hats” who were seen as needlessly sending men to their deaths in Europe in World War I became an article of faith among those who believed the former had served too close to power.25 Meanwhile, in France, where all eligible male citizens could be called into service, some 6,000 clergy out of 30,000 who joined the fighting had died by the time the armistice was signed.26 The fungibility of the strategic communications roles played by chaplains was much in evidence as the Soviet Red Army, which emerged from the ashes of Russian imperial defeat in that war, replaced chaplains with commissars for morale boosting purposes. 27 A model for American chaplains in the run-up to U.S. entry into World War II was offered in 1940, when a U.S. Navy destroyer was named after a naval chaplain, Samuel Livermore, who served during the War of 1812. (A board the frigate Chesapeake in June 1913 as it was being taken over by the British ship HMS Shannon in June 1813, Livermore fired his pistol at the English captain “and in return nearly had his arm hewed off by a stroke from the latter’s broad Toledo blade.”)28 During the Second World War, a Catholic chaplain ran against political convention in Italy, but proved his importance as a strategic communicator, when he condemned Benito Mussolini’s “campaign of hatred” against Great Britain, saying “Hatred is one of the most base feelings and dishonors any uniform. You are already a victor if you give proof of having superior dignity. Your Christian faith tells you that your enemy does not cease to be your brother who is performing, as you do, a duty to his fatherland. … Silence those who speak words of hatred; they bring dishonor to a country. 29 The vital strategic communication role of the chaplaincy can also be seen in the legitimacy offered to governments history has judged as evil. The Catholic field bishop of the German Army expressed his view that his country was “waging a just war,” praising “both the fighting spirit of the German Catholic soldiers as well as their adherence to their religious teachings and the ‘Christian attitude they have maintained on the field of battle.’” According to one writer, the chaplains in Nazi Germany’s Wehrmacht exposed “the disastrous potential of combining a pastoral mission with absolute, unconditional service to the nation,” avoiding even in the most extreme case ethical questions about the justice of their cause. The chaplains showed an “intense loyalty” to the German cause, even in the face of the “hostility they encountered from military, state and [Nazi] party authorities.” Although some chaplains “questioned an individual practice: for example, the murder of the Jewish children in a Ukrainian village in 1941,” they “didn’t question the fundamentals of war itself—they wouldn’t have lasted very long if they’d done so.” Perhaps as a result, West Germany’s chaplains “rather than officers and insiders to the military 23 Anne Lawrence, “Did the Nature of the Enemy Make a Difference?” in Bergen, op. cit, pp. 93, 95-96, 97-101. 24 Bergen, “Introduction,” op. cit., p. 8; Hartmut Lehmann, “In the Service of Two Kings; Protestant Prussian Military Chaplains, 1713-1918,” in Bergen, op. cit., p 131. 25 Duff Crerar, “’Where’s the Padre?’ Canadian Memory and the Great War Chaplains,” in Bergen, op. cit., pp. 141- 163 26 “Priest wins fame with French Army,” The New York Times, Feb. 4, 1940. 27 Herspring, Soldiers, Commissars, and Chaplains, op. cit.; 28 Theodore Roosevelt, The Naval War of 1812, @ http://books.google.com/books? id=D9CtPZ9Lph8C&pg=PA92&lpg=PA92&dq=chesapeake+shannon+war+of+1812+livermore&source=web&ots =KlNP0znFBs&sig=AK6d_aoIJnbtV1kO0ctPGNDqGsI#PPP1,M1, p. 92. 29 “Fascisti seize paper that decries hatred; Catholic Action organ exhorted soldiers to respect enemies,” The New York Times, March 6, 1941, p. 4. 6 establishment … were to be permanent outsiders, not cheerleaders, but critical voices of conscience” reflective of the view of civil society. 30 In Latin America, the role played by some military chaplains foreshadowed justifications for various of the region’s “dirty wars” and offered solace to their practioners as the violence spiraled out of control. As early as 1953, for example, Vicar General Roberto A. Wilkinson, an Argentine lieutenant colonel, not only portrayed the military profession as saviors of Western culture and civilization, but he also blamed political protests dating to the sixteenth century as precursors of the threat of Marxist subversion. Among those he singled out for responsibility for challenging authority and thus threatening the values inherent in discipline, hierarchy and order were the Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment, and nineteenth-century liberalism. 31 Military Chaplains as Strategic Communicators during the U.S. Civil War The Civil War was a “crucial turning point” in the history of the American chaplaincy. Controversy had raged about whether the eighty chaplains who served between 1813 and 1856 incarnated the violation of the principle of separation of church and state. In addition, the grasping manner of some clergy in search of military appointment caused popular rejection “There were many vacancies for chaplains that remained unfilled … and the institution itself fell into disfavor because appointment as a chaplain was considered by many as a political plum, to be held along with a civilian job,” according to one history of the period. “Congressmen complained that they were pestered by itinerant parsons seeking chaplaincy appointments.”32 It was the war that “rescued the chaplaincy from possible extinction and helped establish its identity.” The war “forced the army to professionalize the chaplaincy and improve the standards for the clergymen called into this unique ministry. That meant that future chaplains were of a much higher quality.” 33 In short, they became part of the strategic communications formula--“a defensible policy, a respectable identity, a core value”—that was valued by politicians and military leaders for their potential for contributing to the military’s success. At the time the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter in April 1961, the U.S. Regular Army had only 26 chaplains on duty to minister to a force of 16,000 officers and men. 34 As the war continued, military chaplains served both sides without benefit of belonging to a professional corps of uniformed 30 “Catholic Bishop says Nazis Wage ‘Just War,’” The New York Times, October 5, 1940, p. 4; “Military chaplains: A rich history,” Christian Science Monitor, op. cit. Doris Bergen, “”German Military Chaplains in the Second World War and the Dilemmas of Legitimacy”, in Bergen, op. cit, pp. 175, 173. Both Christian and Jewish chaplains share an ambiguous stance vis-à-vis what appears to be the mutually-exclusive role obligations as military officers and ministers of the gospel, and between military obligations and religious ideology. David de Sola Pool (“Religion’s Answer to a Troubled World,” in The Military Chaplain, the official organ of the Military Chaplains Association of the United States, Inc., Summer, 1951) tells us: “We may with utter sincerity proclaim the purpose of our taking up arms as a righteous one, but the bitter unescapable fact remains that war as an instrument of even man’s noblest purposes is an ever will be irreconcilable with religion.” Or, as Burchard (op. cit., p. 534) expressed it: “For the Christian to deny the relevance of the admonition to turn the other cheek is to question the value of the ethical teachings of Jesus; to admit it makes the Christian in military service a violator of his own moral precepts.” 31 Wilkinson, “Psicología del mando,” Revista de Informaciones, September-October, 1953; See also, Edgar González Ruiz, “La iglesia en el ejército. Prelados castrenses en América Latina,” Agencia de Información Fray Tito para América Latina, http://www.adital.com.br/site/noticia_imp.asp?cod=12534&lang=ES (accessed November 5, 2007); Sergio Rubin, “Los capellanes militares en la dictadura: una deuda pendiente,” Clarin, October 11, 2007, and Emilio F. Mignone, Iglesia y Dictadura, (Buenos Aires: Ediciones de Pensamiento Nacional, 1986). 32 “Second Draft – 7/24/50; Chapter Two, History”, p.6, Box 57, Folder: “Military Affairs: Chaplains: 1945-1950;” National Catholic Welfare Council General Administration Series, ACUA. 33 Lamm, op. cit., pp. 57, 85. He suggests however, p. 64, that questions about the quality and preparation of chaplains persisted throughout the war. Some chaplains, he wrote, “were denounced as cowards and drunks, liars and cheats. … [a] chaplain from Wisconsin boarded in a brothel while his troops were in the field. An army major complained that his chaplain fled upon hearing the first sound of gunfire, which occurred just after the clergyman had delivered a sermon urging the troops to stand fast and firm in battle on the altars of patriotism. An army paymaster reported to a U.S. senator that ‘Chaplains do not hesitate to draw pay for three horses, when it is known that they keep but one.” If successful strategic communications includes “a defensible policy, a respectable identity, a core value,” such cases certainly worked against the latter two requirements being fulfilled. 34 Lamm, op. cit., p. 59. 7 clergy. The military offered little in the way of instruction or guidance; commanding officers could chose their own chaplains, and many of these lacked formal religious training or, in a few cases, were poseurs in search of a meal. (In this the chaplains on both sides differed little from those who had served under George Washington 80 years earlier, for whom “there was no authorized uniform, no supervisory chaplain, no doctrine for chaplains.”35) In order to set down educational requirements, assignment procedures, and other professional standards, a Chaplain Bureau was created by the Union in both the Army and the Navy. In the North, the debate about whether chaplains were either officers or enlisted troops was decided by General Order No. 44, which stated that volunteer chaplains “will in all cases be duly mustered into the service in the same manner prescribed for commissioned officers.” 36 The Union eventually counted on some 2,500 chaplains serving without military rank during the course of the war, including just 40 Catholic priests and, eventually, one Jewish rabbi (in 1862 Congress expanded the law to include all “religious denominations”). Chaplancy designations included that of post chaplain (created by a 1838 law), hospital chaplain (created by law during the conflict) and regimental chaplain, following federal and state laws and customs. 37 At the same time, “several hundred Protestant ministers and the handful of Roman Catholic priests” that enlisted in the service of the Confederacy faced the hostility of the rebel politicians uncomfortable with the idea of state subvention for the chaplaincy. Historian James McPherson holds that the Civil War produced the most religious armies in American history, with military chaplains finding their role reflected an ambiguity in the mission their superiors sought for them, as faith could either reinforce a soldier’s fighting spirit, or weaken it. For the most religious, McPherson found, the belief that God was watching over them on the battlefield meant they entered the deadly frays supported by a “positive religious fatalism,” a phenomenon that kept the Confederate soldier fighting long past a reasonable expectation of victory. 38 Historian of the Confederacy Drew Gilpin Faust, analyzing the phenomena of religious revivals among Confederate troops, found that the “obvious cultural resource” encouraged “the group solidarity that modern military analysts have identified as critical to the maintenance of morale,” cultivating continued resistance even after defeat and instilling a “spirit of discipline and subordination” even among those warriors who fought at a disadvantage.39 In the words of an officer from one New England regiment, cited by the War Department six decades later as “with reference to the influence [the chaplains’ had] over the soldiers as soldiers”: “We count our chaplain as good as a hundred men in a fight.”40 In his study of Union chaplains Warren B. Armstrong found that these “contributed immeasurably to the ultimate success of the war effort” because of the impact they had on soldiers’ attitudes and their conduct at war. The legislative act promulgating the establishment of the chaplaincy showed the innovation was, motivated to a large part by the desire to provide for the “better organization of the military.” To some degree, he noted, the chaplains leapfrogged the early justifications of the Lincoln Administration for the war—the preservation of the Union—by justifying their role in the conflict on anti-slavery grounds. “Almost universally … both chaplains and men evinced a strong antislavery sentiment coupled with a firm conviction that the institution of slavery was at the root” of the conflict. 41 The case of Rev. William Corby, chaplain of the 88 th New York Regiment, or Irish Brigade, is one of the best-known stories of how a chaplain’s personal example was illustrative of religious devotion enhancing the troops’ fighting spirit. Corby, who went on to become president of the University of Notre Dame, became a hero at Gettysburg after exposing himself to enemy fire as he pronounced the absolution of sin of every member of the unit, Catholic and non-Catholic, before they rallied to stanch a Confederate 35 “Military Chaplains: A historian’s view,” The Christian Science Monitor, op. cit. 36 War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies 130 vol. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1880-1901), Series III, Volume 1, p. 327. 37 “Second Draft – 7/24/50; Chapter Two, History,” ACUA, op. cit., p. 7. 38 See James McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 61-76. 39 Drew Gilpin Faust, “Christian Soldiers: The Meaning of Revivalism in the Confederate Army,” Journal of Southern History 53 (1987), pp. 81, 88. 40 Report of the Conference on Moral and Religious Work in the Army, p. 6., in Box 57, Folder: “Military Affairs: Chaplains’ Conference, 1926-1940”; National Catholic Welfare Council General Administration Series, ACUA. 41 Armstrong, For Courageous Fighting and Confident Dying: Union Chaplains in the Civil War, (Lawrence: University of Kansas, 1998), p. 3. 8 assault on Cemetery Ridge and Little Round Top. “In the presence of death,” Corby wrote later, “religion gives hope and strength.”42 A letter written by a Catholic missionary priest from Wisconsin to President Abraham Lincoln, in which the clergyman complains of a lack of Catholic chaplains in the Union army, requesting that he be appointed a visiting chaplain to a brigade with appropriate rank, is also instructive. Rev. Frank Shroudenback, a German immigrant, claimed in his missive that, at the time of his writing (August 8, 1862), even though “more than the 5th yea nearly the 4th part of the soldiers in our army are Catholics, and though there are about 250 non-Catholic chaplains … there are only about 20 priests in our army of the U.S. … Hence it follows: that may Catholics are not so prone to enlisting as heretofore.” In an argument that did not explicitly mention his co-religionists’ belief in the need for the last rights of the Church to be given to the dying, Shroudenback claimed that Catholics “ought to have a chaplain, as the influence of their duly approved-of priest keeps them more moral and content in the camp …” The Catholics ought to have a chaplain, as chiefly the presence of a priest consoles and encourages extremely a fighting soldier. History has shown this fact in all ages. If a Catholic on the eve of battle or at least from time to time has had an opportunity of reconciling himself with God thro’ his priest; peculiarly if the priest accompanies him into the midst of the battle: then he goes into the battle with an excelsior courage and confidence in God, yea often with a religious enthusiasm. When he sees his priest at his side, he fears not death, and rather accepts it as the death of a martyr to die for his country. Thus frequently he has more presence of mind and fights through… 43 [Italics added.] The case of the Father John B. Bannon, immortalized as “the Confederacy’s fighting chaplain” shows the degree to which some rebel battlefield ministers took their temporal commitment to the South seriously. Bannon, a chaplain with the First Missouri Confederate Brigade from 1861 to 1863, recruited Irish immigrants to the Stars and Bars and worked as a secret agent for Jefferson Davis’ government in Ireland, despite the anti-Catholic prejudices of many Protestants, north and south, at the time. Bannon, writes his biographer Phillip Thomas Tucker, “worked an artillery piece like a seasoned veteran” at Vicksburg, helping to raise fellow rebel morale, while seeking “to save his graycoats on earth and in heaven.”44 One historian, Gardiner H. Shattuck, Jr., is careful to point out that the memoirs and other writing of those who participated in the Civil War “suggest that religious assurance and soldierly efficiency did not always work in concert, but sometimes were at cross-purposes. … Christian theology… has never been the ideological servant of the secular state, and few American religious leaders, then or now, have ever suggested that patriotism is simply interchangeable with piety. … Despite their bravery and numerous expressions of patriotism, the most important aspect of their ministry as clergy—strengthening the faith of their men and preparing them spiritually to accept death—may well have undercut the military goals of their nation.”45 Similarly Alan K. Lamm saw the resistance of some officers to the chaplains’ presence as emanating from two sources, one of which directly questioned the political content of the clergyman’s message: The first was the inherent tension between war and religion. War was seen as organized death and destruction. Chaplains, on the other hand, represented a God who said: “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.” This led many to question whether clergy should be in uniform at all. War also involved training and preparation. Many line officers felt that the soldiers’ time would be put to better use drilling, rather than praying. 46 42 William Corby, Memoirs of Chaplain Life: Three Years with the Irish Brigade in the Army of the Potomac, ed. Lawrence Frederick Kohl (New York: Fordham University Press, 1992) p. 6. 43 Rev. Frank Shroudenback to President Abraham Lincoln, August 8, 1862, Box 57, Folder 20, National Catholic Welfare Council General Administration Series, ACUA. 44 Tucker, The Confederacy’s Fighting Chaplain: Father John B. Bannon, (Tuscaloosa, Alabama and London: University of Alabama Press, 1992), p. 128. 45 Gardiner H. Shattuck, Jr., “Faith, Morale, and the Army Chaplain in the American Civil War,” in Bergen, op. cit, pp. 116, 117, 120. 46 Lamm, op. cit., p. 63. 9  Among the 166 U.S. Colored Troop regiments that served the Union cause during the Civil War, there were 13 that had African-American chaplains, while various state regiments also included black preachers as their spiritual guides. 47 According to Lamm, the African American chaplains brought their own strategic communications message, that of divine support for a people’s liberation. “The small number of black chaplains was due to several factors, including the high standards set by the army after the reform of the chaplaincy,” Lamm wrote. These high qualifications, however, ensured that those African Americans who did participate were men who established a solid and respectable reputation. … (B)lacks brought another perspective to the chaplaincy. They saw the redemptive hand of God using the war to free the African American people and they shared this view with their soldiers. They helped to provide a basic education for the troops, which enabled the men to have a better chance for success after their service to the army had ended. They fought racism in the form of segregated officers’ dining hall, and unequal pay for themselves and for their troops. African American chaplains were an important factor in raising morale and hence combat effectiveness. 48 Onward Catholic Soldiers: The Chaplainry, the U.S. military and the Catholic Church during the World Wars My slogan to the chaplains with the troops is ‘Keep them praying.’ In many places chaplains gather together a group of soldiers between attacks and kneel with them in prayer. A rosary around one’s neck for occasional fingering and a rifle in hand is a combination of power that neither Jap nor Devil can resist. -- Chief of Chaplains William Arnold, 194249 The relationship of the U.S. Catholic Church and its military chaplains during the course of the two world wars offers an interesting point of comparison as the chaplains were members of a religion that began the period as an out-group, but by mid-century had achieved a firm place in the American establishment. During this entire period, Catholic chaplains reflected the patriotism, sense of duty and heroism that made them important strategic communicators in times of war and in times of peace. At the beginning of World War I, the Catholic Church in America was viewed by suspicion by the Protestant establishment, including the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Woodrow Wilson, and his State Department. As Church historian Peter D. Agostino noted, “liberal paranoia” about a “subversive Catholic monolith loyal to papal Rome” was tied to a presumption in the liberal press and by Allied statesmen that the Holy See favored the Central Powers, which led them to fear “the disruptive potential of the American Catholic population.” In fact, although Pope Benedict allowed Catholic priests to serve as chaplains in the military of the liberal Italian republic, it is also true that the Holy See was willing to let “governments preoccupied with their internal unity”—i.e., the United States—believe that Rome had such subterranean control, if the suspicion would ultimately favor the Holy See’s own negotiations with the Italian state to resolve the Roman Question on Catholic terms. As a result, “accusations against the Church and defensive Catholic responses strengthened boundaries separating Catholics from other Americans.” In an interesting juxtaposition to the politically-supportive role the U.S. government supposed Catholic and other denominations’ chaplains were to play in the Great War, “(t)he liberal ideology embodied in the international nation-state system had no place for the Church, a strange international institution that Wilson, good liberal that he was, insisted ought to attend to purely spiritual affairs.” 50 The U.S. entry into the war led the American Catholic episcopacy to offer a ringing endorsement of Wilson’s action. “The bishops reminded their people that obedience to civil authorities was a duty, and the National Catholic War Conference, created to mobilize Catholics, became an effective organization in the U.S. war effort,” D’Agostino noted. “American Catholic nationalism grew in response to the insecurity 47 Hourihan in Lamm, op. cit., p. i. 48 Lamm, op. cit., p. 85. 49 February 21, 1942 letter to Rev. Thomas F. McBride, St. Michael’s Rectory, Troy, New York, Box 57, Folder: “Military Affairs: Chaplains, 1942-1945,” National Catholic Welfare Council General Administration Series, ACUA. 50 D’Agostino, Transnational Catholic Ideology from the Risorgimento to Facism,” (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), p. 104-105, 111-112, 116. 10 Catholics felt as their fellow citizens attacked the Holy See and questioned Catholic loyalty.” 51 The National Catholic War Council, forerunner of the National Catholic War Conference (known today as the National Conference of Catholic Bishops), was placed under the control of the fourteen American archbishops. Its mission “was to cooperate with other denominational groups under the general supervision of the government to coordinate Catholic activities ranging from providing military chaplains to financial the work of the Knights of Columbus in the training camps, from supplying religious literature to the armed forces to safeguarding the morals of the Catholic troops.”52 The April 1917 issue of Catholic World, edited by Paulist John J. Burke—who had in addition to organizing the National Catholic War Council also founded the Chaplains' Aid Association—anticipated the support offered by the American bishops to the government and to the mobilization effort. “War has been literally forced upon our country. … Our country did not desire war … and if war comes, Germany will stand guilty before the judgment of men and the judgment of God.” Little over a year later, three American cardinals reiterated that sympathetic stance, telling Catholics that “America battled with unselfish motives for the welfare of men of every nation, that America asked no special indemnities or reprisals. ‘If we fight like heroes,’ the statement read, ‘and pray like saints, soon America will overcome force by greater force and conquer lust of power by the nobler powers of sacrifice and faith.’”53 The endorsement of the war effort by the American Catholic hierarchy was determinative for the fact that 38 percent of the uniformed chaplains during the war were Catholic priests, with commissioned officers wearing regular military uniforms and the 165 Knights of Columbus chaplains in dressed in officially recognized uniforms. (The Knights of Columbus was accepted by the War Department in the summer of 1918 as “the official Catholic organization for war work” and their chaplains “served without commission as civilians paid by funds from the Knights of Columbus, and were solely under the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical authority.”) On November 24, 1917, Bishop Patrick Hayes, Auxiliary of New York, was appointed by the Holy See to be the prelate of the Military Ordinariate, the present-day Archdiocese for the Military Services. Seventeen Catholic chaplains died in the war. 54 The most famous American chaplain during World War I was Fr. Francis Patrick Duffy, the Canadian Irish immigrant and graduate of the Catholic University of America. Ministering to the “The Fighting 69th” (Gen. Robert E. Lee had coined the name during the Civil War) National Guard Regiment of New York, composed largely of Irish immigrants in France, Duffy risked his life to help snatch those wounded at the frontlines within earshot of the enemy, resulting in his winning the Distinguished Service Cross, the Distinguished Service Medal, the Conspicuous Service Cross (from the State of New York), and France’s Legion d’Honneur and the Croix de Guerre. Lionized by the troops for his leadership and bravery, his regimental commander, Lt. Col. William “Wild Bill” Donovan (who became the founder of the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS, in World War II) said later that Duffy played a key role in bolstering morale among the troops. “Father Duffy was one of the great outstanding figures of the war,” he declared. “Without Father Duffy there would be no 69 th Regiment today.” Pvt. Tim Nolan of Bronx, “felt it was Duffy’s courage that inspired the troops to hang on. ‘Wherever things were the hottest there was Father Duffy, crawling around from shell hole to shell hole, telling us it was not as bad as it seemed, to stick it out a while longer.”55 During the inter-war period the number of Catholic chaplains declined somewhat, as the force strength of the Army and Navy was also reduced. Pope Pius XII designated Francis Cardinal Spellman as his military vicar in the United States in 1939 at the head of a new military vicariate under the jurisdiction 51 D’Agostino, op. cit., p. 115. 52 Gerald P. Fogarty, The Vatican and the American Hierarchy from 1870 to 1965 (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1982), p. 214. 53 Elizabeth McKeown, War and Welfare; American Catholics and World War I (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1988), pp. 47, 49 54 “The History of Military Chaplains,” Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA @ http://www.milarch.org/history/index.html; “Eighty-nine Chaplains Appointed,” The Christian Advocate, October 14, 1920, p. 1377; “Chaplains muse on war years: lasting bonds formed under combat stress - four Catholic chaplains talk about three wars – Interview,” National Catholic Reporter, December 15, 1995; Christopher J. Kauffman, Faith and Fraternalism; The History of the Knights of Columbus 1882-1982 (New York: Harper & Row, 1982), pp. 209, 212, 214, 219, 222. See also, George J. Waring, United States Catholic Chaplains in the World War (New York: Ordinariate Army and Navy Chaplains, 1924). 55 “Bronx pays tribute to Father Duffy,” The New York Times, May 11, 1919; Stephen L. Harris, Duffy’s War; Father Francis Duffy, Wild Bill Donovan, and the Irish Fighting 69th in World War I, p. 353 11 of the Archbishop of New York, appointing Father John O’Hara as military delegate. Although the Vatican enjoyed warm ties with Mussolini’s Italy—as opposed to its tense relations with Nazi Germany—a bond that extended to the faithful in the United States, as war approached once again the American Catholic Church was at the forefront of rallying the faithful behind the government, and Catholic chaplains served as the advanced guard. Already in 1936, Catholic chaplains were reported to “feel keenly” about the “frequent agitations” for “peace at any price” being promoted by the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America and the Church Peace Union’s call for withdrawing chaplains from the Navy and Army. On December 31, 1936, Rev. George J. Waring, vicar general of the Military Ordinariate, wrote to Mon. Michael J. Read, general secretary of the National Catholic Welfare Conference that, “While we are opposed to war, we cannot assume that conditions will not arise that will necessitate it. … In the N.C. News releases, you will be able to state the Catholic policy in reference to war and the need for chaplains in the services, both in time of peace and war.” In May 1940, The New York Times reported that at the 15th annual conference of the Army Chaplains of the United States, “Army Chaplains Hear Unity Pleas … Strong Defense is Backed.” Keynote speaker William Arnold, Army chief of chaplains, told the group, “It is not only a privilege and an honor to belong to an army that will save us” from godless totalitarianism “but it is also a religious duty.” Archbishop Francis J. Spellman warned the gathered, who included New York Governor Herbert Lehman and Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, that: “We’ve heard of fifth, sixth and seventh columns in other countries and we know of the existence of them here. We chaplains should concentrate on the second column—love of God and love of country. We in the United States have good will toward all, but we should not be so good-willed as to allow those of bad will to predominate. We should not be so democratic as to allow others to come and destroy our democracy. We should uphold and defend our freedom. Seven months later, on Veterans’ Day, Rev. O’Hara, bishop of the Military Ordinate, addressed 3,500 of the faithful as a mass in St. Patrick’s Cathedral while Spellman looked on, saying, “The greatest service you can do your country and your God in this day is to work and pray for the conversion of the enemy from within—conversion to God and to true Americanism.” Less than two months before Pearl Harbor, in October 1941, the National Catholic Welfare Council was able to report, “Priests now with the armed forces of the United States represent the largest complement of Catholic Chaplains ever to serve in the Army, Navy and Marine Corps during peacetime in the history of the country”. 56 On the eve of U.S. participation in World War II Father Arnold, the chief of Army chaplains, sent out a “My dear Chaplain” letter to those under his command in which he extolled the armed forces whose participation in the conflict was quickly approaching. “The purpose and influence of your religious work extend far beyond mere military training and armed defense,” Arnold wrote. “You are a man of peace … in the midst of warlike surroundings. Your Government, your Army, and the men you face in religious assemblies under tent or in open fields are all for peace. But they are compelled by the belligerent force of moral evil in the world to arm and fight for the preservation of those rights and liberties without which no peace is possible.”57 56 “The History of Military Chaplains,” op., cit.; D’Agostino, op.cit., pp. 159-229, 250.; Box 57, Folder: “Military Affairs: Chaplains 1930-1939,” National Catholic Welfare Council General Administration Series, ACUA. Waring enclosed a September 23, 1933 letter from Linley V. Gordon of the Church Peace Union, that quoted Rev. Peter Ainslie’s book, Some Experiments in Living, that made the case for withdrawing the chaplains from service: “War having been outlawed by the political governments of the world, the logical step was for the denominations to withdraw their chaplains from a world-outlawed institution. This one act would have done more than any other one thing to remove war from consideration among the nations of the world.” In a September 28, 1933 response to Gordon, Waring responded: “Even if war has been outlawed by some of the Governments of the word, I cannot see that that has to do with the maintenance of a national army. An army is to the nation what the police force is to a state or city. No one ever suggested that police forces are organized for the purpose of making war on citizens. Their chief function is to maintain peace and order in their respective communities.”; The New York Times, May 22, 1940, p. 12.; “Enemy Conversion by Prayer Asked,” The New York Times, Nov. 11, 1940, p. 14. “467 priests in service; Record peacetime complement of U.S. Catholic military chaplains,” NCWC News Service release, October 15, 1941, Box 57, Folder: “Military Affairs: Chaplains 1940-1941”; National Catholic Welfare Council General Administration Series, ACUA. 57 NCWC/USCC General Secretary/Executive Department 100-D, “Military Affairs: War Dept.: Chief of Chaplains 1940”, ACUA. 12  Perhaps one of the clearest examples of the strategic communications role played by American chaplains even before the attack on Pearl Harbor can be seen in a speech on “Tolerance and National Defense” by Lt. Commander Maurice S. Sheehy, chaplain of the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, Florida, and a professor of religious education at The Catholic University of America, transmitted by Columbia Broadcasting System radio on August 9, 1941. “The present world conflict is a war not only of Force but of Ideas,” Sheehy declared, in a statement that foreshadowed the “war of ideas” paradigm of the current war on violent extremism worldwide. “Ours is one of the few decent governments left in the world. True, in our past history there have been some ugly pages, our treatment of the Indian and the Negro, our seizure of territory by force almost a century ago, our hasty involvement in the Spanish- American War. But today this country has no plan of territorial thievery, no lust for conquest, no desire to execute the suggestion made recently that we ape Hitler in setting up puppet governments. … We make no pretense of neutrality. … Our youth will give more than years if necessary to protect those freedoms which are dearer than life. … (T)he rank and file of both the leadership and the followership of the Catholic Church is solidly behind our government in its effort to stop the onrushing tide of Nazi tyranny. 58 During the war, stories of heroism by Catholic chaplains helped provide the military services with inspirational material both for the troops as well as for the people back home. (When a Catholic chaplain who ministered to sailors during the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor was mistakenly identified as the author of a popular expression, “Praise the lord, and Pass the Ammunition,” a Presbyterian chaplain quickly acknowledged that he coined the phrase while standing on the deck of a heavy cruiser. As the sailors passed ammunition along a line due the fact a powder hoist lacked power, he said, he went along the line encouraging the men with the phrase, although he emphasized he did not touch the artillery piece.) Cardinal Spellman himself became “a familiar figure during his frequent visits to military bases around the world … endearing him to the hearts of American service personnel everywhere.” During the course of the war, he penned two volumes, Action this Day; Letters from the Fighting Fronts and No Greater Love; The Story of Our Soldiers, books of great humanity that chronicled his travels; the latter work completed the day Franklin Roosevelt died.59 According to Donald F. Crosby, S.J., one of the most poignant gestures made by Allied troops during World War II was conceived in the shipboard cabin of a Jesuit, Fr. Charles F. Suver, who was one of the 19 Catholic chaplains who formed part of the 58-man chaplains corps that attended to the needs of the three U.S. Marine Corps divisions that took Iwo Jima from the Japanese in the war’s bloodiest battle in the Pacific. When the idea to plant the flag atop Mt. Suribachi was offered by a young officer who was one of several colleagues gathered in the room, Suver promised that, “You get it up there and I’ll say Mass under it,” which he did, within earshot of the Japanese. 60 The Catholic chaplains’ alignment with Allied war objectives, reflecting the general tenor of the armed forces’ chaplaincy, was also evidenced by the handful of objections the chaplains raised to racist depictions of Japanese soldiers, the firebombing of German cities, or the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the war. (One powerful voice for caution was that of Cardinal Spellman, who wrote in Action this Day that “Now that the Allies have the preponderance of air power, there may be retribution and retaliation. … But if we use Nazi tactics in their full malice with the full power that we are mustering by indiscriminately obliterating everything in every city, we are bound to suffer ourselves. … Let us win the war without destroying our victory.”) At the same time, Catholic chaplains were known for their zealous vigilance of GI sexual practices, including the use of prophylactics. 61 58 Press release, “Chaplain Sheehy Speaks over CBS on “Tolerance and National Defense,’ Box 57, Folder: “Military Affairs: Chaplains 1940-1941”; National Catholic Welfare Council General Administration Series, ACUA. 59 News clippings, “Navy Chaplain Denies He Said ‘—and Pass the Ammunition,” New York World-Telegram (undated) and “Origin of a Fighting Song Clarified,” November 2, 1942, (provenance unknown), Box 57, Folder: “Military Affairs: Chaplains 1941-1945”; National Catholic Welfare Council General Administration Series, ACUA.; Rev. Daniel Mode, The Grunt Padre, Father Vincent Robert Capodanno Vietnam 1966-1967, (Oak Park, Ill.: CMJ Marion Pubishers, 2000), p. 62; Action this Day (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1943); No Greater Love (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1945). 60 Crosby, Battlefield Chaplains: Catholic Priests in World War II, (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1994). 61 Spellman, op. cit., p. 75. 13  From the time the U.S. was attacked at Pearl Harbor to Japan’s surrender aboard the battleship USS Missouri September 2, 1945, nine percent of the American Catholic clergy served as commissioned chaplains—2,453 in the Army and 817 in the Navy—a number that does not include the nearly 2,000 civilian auxiliary chaplains laboring under the auspices of the Military Ordinate. Seventy-six chaplains died while on active duty and 832 received decorations and citations for bravery. 62 Military Chaplains as Strategic Communicators in U.S. Army Character Education Program (1947-1977) In the U.S. military, character was considered to be the foremost of the “important and manifold” personal qualifications that created leaders. Brig. General Edward L. King, commandant of the General Service Schools in Leavenworth, Kansas, said in a speech in the aftermath of World War I, that character “possesses vigor and strength. And a leader, whether he leads a pack of dogs or a company of men must evidence that he possesses it. A leader who gives orders and allows them to be disobeyed is soon despised by his command, because the command, like a pack of wild dogs, instinctively demands the quality in their leader, which is needed for the safety of the pack or for the well-being of the command … An army is happy under a strong leader, but not under a soviet committee. 63 In the aftermath of World War II, like other Americans, military chaplains sought to adjust to peacetime circumstances even as the chill of the Cold War was beginning to create pallor over the peace. A retired Presbyterian Navy chaplain “who apparently knows hundreds of people in key places in the Government” sounded out the U.S. Catholic Church authorities about setting up an organization to be called the “United Nations Chaplains’ League.” The proposal, which would have taken chaplains down a new strategic communications path, was meant “to weld together the chaplains of all countries into a unit for the exchange of ideas and to combat subversive activities.” Its secular purpose was reflected in its proposal for membership, as the “(b)asis for cooperation is to be merely a belief in the natural law, without any other theological overtones.”64 Closer to home, in 1947, the U.S. Army embarked upon program of character education. The course reflected current thinking about religion and personal morality as key elements of training. Its “national preparedness ideology” formed part of an emerging national security system that took its global responsibility as a shared enterprise between civilian and military spheres of life that was inexorably tied to the United States’ “moral power,” the boundaries between them which appeared increasingly tenuous. 65 The program reflected the view of President Harry S Truman and others that “the spiritual and moral health of the Armed Forces is a vital element in our national security. Together with a universal understanding of the principles of citizenship and American democracy, it constitutes the bedrock on which security and the success of military preparedness depend.”66 The Character Guidance effort grew out of an experiment at Fort Knox, Kentucky, which as part of 40-hour weekly basic military training, moral, religious and citizenship lessons were offered by three chaplains in the form of 50-minute lectures. The program, although a command responsibility, was prepared by the Office of the Chief of Chaplains and administered by Army chaplains. Its intertwined curriculum included religion, citizenship and character building, with a series of lectures reinforcing the idea that the country’s leadership and service in the armed forces reflected God’s will and that atheistic totalitarian ideologies abroad represented a fundamental threat to the United States. “Religion in Our Way of Life” offered the counsel that “service to the nation is most effective only when religion becomes part of 62 http://www.milarch.org/history/index.html; Mode, The Grunt Padre, op. cit. 63 “Leadership: A Resume of a Lecture by General Edward L. King, January 4, 1926,” The Chaplains’ School Class Bulletin, Twelfth Session, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, March Twelfth, 1926.” Box 57, Folder: “Military Affairs: Chaplains’ Conference, 1926-1940;” ACUA, op. cit. 64 Memorandum to Father Kenny, from W.C. Smith, re: “Chaplains of the United Nations,” November 22, 1946;” Box 57, Folder: “Military Affairs: Chaplains, 1945-1950;” ACUA. 65 Loveland, “Character Education in the U.S. Army, 1847-1977,” Journal of Military History, Vol. 64, No. 3 (July, 2000), pp. 801-803. 66 Truman, “Statement by the President Making Public a Report on Moral Safeguards for Selective Service Trainees, September 16, 1948,” p. 488. 14 individual life.” The lecture, “The Nation We Serve,” called the United States a “covenant nation” recognizing “its dependence upon God and its responsibility toward God,” in which “public institutions and official thinking reflect a faith in the existence and the importance of divine providence.” Another, “Our Moral Defenses,” stressed the importance of developing “a desire to live in accordance with moral principles as the best defense against the aggression of a totalitarian philosophy.” 67 The Character Guidance initiative came as the Army also worried about an increasing incident rate of venereal disease among the troops, with Secretary of War Robert Patterson specifically referencing the public health problem, saying it was “higher than at any time in the past thirty years,” in his announcement of the character education initiative to the Army Chief of Chaplains. 68 The Office, Chief of Chaplains helped rewrite Army policy on the issue, which resulted in a new directive on “Discipline and Venereal Disease.” As part of this new directive, chaplains were tasked with delivering “Citizenship-Morality Lectures” prepared by the chaplains’ office. Reportedly, once the new policy was implemented, “VD rates went down, and attitudes and moral improved.”69 Anne C. Loveland explains that the requirements for a standing army in a time of peace, and concern about the possible “corrupting aspects of the military environment” placed a premium on military services’ ability to show that soldiers would be returned to civilian life “in the best possible physical, mental, moral, and spiritual condition,” particularly with the return of peacetime conscription in 1948. As a result of having included moral and civic as well as religious instruction into regular training, “Army leaders were able to offer assurance that their character-building programs would return soldiers to civilian society as virtuous, God-fearing, democratic citizens.”70 Chaplains’ interest in the Character Guidance program was motivated in part by the temporal rewards of corporate interest, the “preoccupation with national preparedness and total mobilization” in the chilliest climes of the Cold War presenting “a momentous opportunity for Army chaplains,” Loveland wrote. “Traditionally, their involvement in military training had been limited to lectures on sexual morality. Perhaps inspired by the appreciation high-ranking military leaders accorded them during World War II, in the immediate postwar period they campaigned for a more central role. …(i)t is clear that chaplains regarded it as a means of raising their status and expanding their influence. … (W)riting about the newly-established Character Guidance program Chief of Chaplains Miller observed: “The Army chaplain is no longer playing guard; he is in the backfield. Commanding officers more and more are making up plays with the chaplain carrying the ball.” 71 The Character Guidance Program faithfully reflected U.S. military values and strategies. It was, Waldo W. Burchard said, “a direct attempt on the part of chaplains to ‘sell’ military life to service men. … The lectures are ‘canned.’ They are prepared by a special Board of chaplains, and prior to being distributed to chaplains in the field, they are approved and pronounced official state policy by the Secretary of Defense.”72 The program’s reduction and eventual demise reflected a lessening of fears of “godless communism,” new theories of military sociologists that added to military commanders’ skepticism of the importance of moral and spiritual instruction to combat motivation, and “an increasing secularization of the public sphere” in which arguments for church-state separation once again rose to the fore. By 1963, the Army Chaplains Office had to reiterate to the chaplain-instructors that the program was “non-religious” and 67 “Religion in Our Way of Life,” in Character Guidance Discussion Topics: Duty, Honor, Country, Series V, Department of the Army Pamphlet 16-9 (Washington: Government Printing Office, April 1952), pp. 79,67; “The Nation We Serve,” Character Guidance Discussion Topics: Duty, Honor, Country, Series 1, Department of the Army Pamphlet 16-5 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1951), p. 29; “Our Moral Defenses,” Character Guidance Discussion Topics: Duty, Honor, Country, Series 1V, Department of the Army Pamphlet 16-8 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1951), p. 49. 68 Patterson quoted in Venzke, Confidence in Battle, Inspiration in Peace: The United States Army Chaplaincy, 1945- 1975 (Washington: Office of the Chief of Chaplains, Department of the Army, 1977), p. 41. 69 Letter to Rev. Paul Tanner from Chaplain Harold O. Prudell, Headquarters Chaplain School, Carlisle Barracks, Pa., December 15, 1947, Box 57, Folder: “Military Affairs: Chaplains, 1945-1950;” ACUA. 70 Loveland, “Character Education in the U.S. Army, 1847-1977,” op. cit., p. 801. 71 Loveland, “Character Education in the U.S. Army, 1847-1977,” op. cit., p. 804. 72 Burchard, op. cit., p. 535. 15 should not be confused with or used for religious instruction. Six years later, a new set of guidelines were issued that clearly set the chaplains task outside the religious domain, saying that they must “recognize fully that their role in the Character Guidance Program is strictly as a staff officer performing a military function.” With the switch to an all-volunteer Army, which did not need public support for a selective service system, the service “sidelined a program designed to inculcate personal and civic values in an army of citizen-soldiers, relying instead on a revitalized military ethic to teach the values and behavior appropriate to professional soldiers.”73 Termination of the chaplain-run program also spelled the end of perhaps the most ambitious strategic communications effort ever undertaken by the chaplains’ corps, one that counted on “a defensible policy, a respectable identity, a core value” for its inspiration and success. Conclusion Military chaplains have conducted the classic tasks of strategic communications—those involving goal setting, situational knowledge, communication competence, and anxiety management—in a variety of situations of peace and war throughout history. The development of an armed forces’ quasi-independent religious corps has at times lent crucial role support, both within the services and in the community at large, for the political orientation and strategic direction—including ideas, policies and courses of action—of the military and its political overseers. The historical record of chaplains as strategic communicators offers a new perspective on how they were able to maintain the respectable identities and core values as military officers and as leaders of a spiritual community. It is no accident that in non-religious states, political officers or one-party state commissars have had to fill the void in areas of morale, motivation and political socialization. Since the end of the 19 th century, there have been several instances where military chaplains have played key roles in post-conflict scenarios such as peacekeeping and stability operations. In the Spanish- American War, Army Gen. John J. Pershing’s chaplain worked as a liaison with both Catholic clergy and Muslim leaders in the Philippines to reduce hostilities. A military chaplain’s religious support to former Nazi war criminals on trial at Nuremberg created a “unique trust” that “facilitated increased cooperation of criminals with authorities.” In turn, the “symbolic and actual success of these trials was crucial to the stability and reconstruction of post-war Europe.” More recently, military chaplains have also established trust relationships with local communities in Saudi Arabia during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, was well as during stability operations in the Balkans conflict. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, an army chaplain’s outreach to local Muslim clerics resulted in a “measurable decrease” in violence against U.S. troops. “(C)haplains have been drawn on by visionary commanders to connect with indigenous religious leaders and communities to increase success and reduce risks in stability operations,” the authors of a recent study on military chaplains as “peace builders” noted. “Religion is best viewed as a force useful in stability operations rather than an issue to disregard or overcome.” 74 Appreciation of the military chaplains’ historic role as strategic communicators can be an important step in the realization of these and other national strategic goals, such as combating terrorism or carrying out successful peacekeeping missions. 73 Loveland, “Character Education in the U.S. Army, 1847-1977,” op. cit., pp. 805-810, 818. 74 Chaplain William Sean Lee, et.al., Military Chaplains as Peace Builders, op. cit., pp. 7, 15-16. 16