Fall
Ministries - Chaplains Learning what it is to be Father in the Navy
By PATRICIA LEFEVERE
Special Report Writer
About two miles onto the Autostrada
in Italy, Lt. Cmdr. Thomas P. Hall noticed a fire truck and a hearse. He had
just eaten dinner with a few other military chaplains and a couple of
visiting padres on the Island of Sicily one night this summer.
Hed wanted to drive up Mount Etna to reach his quarters, but a festival
was blocking the traffic.
I was ticked having to change routes. Seconds later he
was reaching into his glove compartment for his oils, rehearsing in his head
how to do the Sacrament of the Infirm in Italian. When the Sicilian police
found out that Hall was a priest and the chaplain at the U.S. Naval Station in
Sicily, they ushered him to the victim -- a sailor, age 19, from Nebraska
whod been thrown from his jeep. No seat belt.
It was the most gruesome accident Hall had seen in his 23 years as
a Paulist priest, including the last decade as a Navy chaplain. When he
anointed the sailors hands, they were still warm. As I touched his
back during the prayer of final committal, I thought of his parents in Nebraska
who would soon learn of their sons fate.
When the authorities went to remove the body, the other sailors
present -- mostly guys in their late teens and early 20s -- formed a human wall
to block the site from gawking motorists. Hall called it a noble effort
to preserve a bit of personal dignity, as the victims injuries were
so severe that the head had fallen off the corpse.
Hall returned to base to do a Critical Incident Stress Debrief
with the witnesses, the first stage in the process of integrating such an
experience into ones memory bank without being paralyzed by the process.
He got to bed at 2 a.m.
Early the next day during his indoctrination talk to the newly
arrived sailors on Sicily, Hall looked into their young faces and realized it
was no accident that hed ended up on the Autostrada. The previous night
had taught him what it means to be called Father, he said. That
poor sailors dad would have wanted to be with him in that most critical
moment of his short life. But, he was not. Instead, I was there to anoint his
body and to touch his back and to pray: May the angels lead you to
paradise; may the martyrs come to welcome you and take you to the holy city,
the new and eternal Jerusalem.
Not every day is as dramatic as that night. But being a Navy
chaplain brings with it the most demanding schedule of all the
services, Hall wrote in numerous e-mails from Sicily and onboard ship
with the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, where he serves as deputy force chaplain off
the coast of Saudi Arabia.
Sailors and deployable Marines frequently draw lengthy assignments
in remote settings away from their families. These assignments take a toll on
family life and on the spirit of the young sailor that is unrivaled
in U.S. society, he said. To be effective, the chaplain must be wherever
the sailor or marine is in pain.
Sometimes sailors are called to a task for which theyve
received no training, as happened last April when the crew of the USNS
Saturn retrieved 32 corpses and two additional partial remains from waters
in the Gulf of Aden. The badly decomposed bodies were some of the 180
passengers who had perished when a Somali refugee ship had capsized a week
earlier, leaving just eight survivors. As it was thought that most of the
victims were Muslims, Hall arranged to have two Yemeni imams from Aden go with
him to the ship.
The State Department ordered Saturns crew to provide
burial rights appropriate to the victims. Hall found that the world press gave
scant coverage to the incident. Still, he said, he will never
forget the men and women aboard Saturn and the dignity with which
they executed the task before them.
The next two weeks found Hall riding three different ships through
the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden and observing sailors as they celebrated Passover,
Good Friday and Easter. Each night as I went onto the bridge-wing to
pray, I would remember the thousands of families who take to the sea as
refugees
searching for promised lands. It is sobering to learn that most
dont survive.
In port at Bahrain in July, the pastor of Bahrains only
Catholic church asked Hall to join him on a mission of mercy to 60 Filipino
women and youngsters who do not feel welcome at the parish church. For an hour
in two small bedrooms of a dirty, crowded apartment, the priests heard the
confessions of penitents while their companions prayed the rosary, the Litany
of Loretto and the Novena to Our Mother of Perpetual Help in the hall.
Later the two said Mass while an older woman recited for 15
minutes in Spanish and Tagalog the names of the many deceased people for whom
the Mass was being offered. Hall later learned why only a few took Communion.
He was told that most of the women, having fled the Philippines because of the
exigencies of survival and having few employment skills, work as mistresses to
Bahraini men.
When the priests left, they were showered with expensive floral
bouquets and enough food to feed 50 people. The women took the priests
hands and pressed them to their foreheads and lips. I will remember the
flowers, the food and the kisses to my hands. I will remember what they did to
feed their children
and that they were too humble to receive the Body of
Christ or to enter the big church downtown.
Hall enrolled as a Navy ROTC midshipman at Marquette University in
Milwaukee in 1966, but deferred his commission as a naval officer to attend
seminary. I did so with the hope that I would someday serve as a Navy
chaplain.
Hall has always considered the Paulist Fathers to be the
consummate public relations men for the Catholic church in America. I
believe Im at my best as a priest when Im serving in a secular
environment, he said. The military is the most secular of U.S.
institutions. Its the greatest melting pot on earth.
Many in the military have little or no exposure to ethical
principles, much less organized religion. For Hall, naval chaplaincy
provides the best place to live out his Paulist vocation of ecumenism,
reconciliation and evangelizing the unchurched.
Part of his decade in the Navy came at the time of U.S. air
strikes against Iraq, Afghanistan and the Sudan. Hall was edified by the
concern and sensitivity of his commanding officers. Their task was to
destroy weapons and materials that threatened U.S. interests in the region. But
they were individuals with moral and religious convictions who strove to
accomplish their mission with a minimal loss of life. It was a time when
peoples faith was most evident and when my own faith was most
alive.
Last month Hall and many in the Navy prayed frequently for the
Russian sailors locked inside the sunken submarine, Kursk. Currently there are
no chaplains with the Russian fleet, but the Russian navy and the fleets of the
Baltic States are in the process of establishing chaplaincy corps. In November
Hall will travel to Latvia to provide information on U.S. naval
chaplaincies.
Hall has been passed over for promotion to the rank of commander
five times -- a situation that has felt like a kick in the teeth to
someone who had rarely failed at anything. But this setback has taught him that
the people he serves are oblivious to his rank. They all call me
Father. Ive come to realize that the most important things I
accomplish every day have nothing to do with my rank, but everything to do with
the priesthood. Promotion would not have taught me the same lesson.
National Catholic Reporter, September 15,
2000
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