Duh! If you commission a Chaplain to be a Chaplain, you grant him a right to something like a professional conscience. The ambivalence of the military toward its chaplaincy corps is embarrassing. In requiring them, we admit that there is a service they provide to specifically noögenic or categorical needs that are distinct from physical or cognitive functional needs. The mark of a chaplain is the soldiers courage to stand side by side to meet those needs while in harms way. The ministrations of public worship, discipleship, and soul nurture belong to those whove entered into the search about such things and who have come back with words for those in the secular city. Soldiers stand in special need of whatever they may find since the horrors of war take a specifically horrendous toll, not only on the body and brain, but also on the mind as a creative intender and on the character as a disposition to flourish, the neglect of either having a detrimental impact on military performance and the re-integration into civilian life. In particular, soldiers need to have some hope of understanding enemies that are driven by religious motivations. Its in particular incumbent on a voluntary military force that makes the rational consent of contract the principle justification for demanding service to military authority. If so, that service affirms the soldiers existence as an agent that governed by reasons and foresight and not just instinct and conditioning. In that case, the military organization needs to provide beyond beyond the physical and cognitive. It has to provide for the existential sphere of responsibility, conscience, virtue, and faith. This is the noölogical and religious sphere and its provision is in the chaplaincy. Therefore let chaplains be chaplains or disband the troops. Otherwise, face the untenable choice of reducing the soldiers to combat robots or pretending the government has no business in defending its citizens.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 23:40:33 +0000