“Once you’ve seen the brutal face of evil, says the Rev. Robert Barry, you start looking for the tender face of God.”
That was the lede of a Religion News Service article about the role of military chaplains, the silent forces on the battlefield that heal the spiritual wounds caused by war.
“The word really has power with these people,” Barry said. “Shrapnel hits the body, but it also hits the soul, and that’s where we come in.”
There is invariably a degree of controversy that follows the military’s chaplaincy. There are chaplains for Protestant Christians and chaplain for Catholics, chaplains for Muslims and chaplains for Jews—though not many—but from time to time Christian chaplains are accused of proselytizing on the battlefield.
However, the overwhelming majority of the U.S. military’s 4,000 chaplains aren’t out their trying to make converts of those damned atheists at the first sign of a foxhole. They are doing a fairly selfless service. And, if you ask me, they’re all a bit nuts for going into a warzone without a weapon.
“They are the spiritual backbone of the unit,” Gunnery Sgt. Frank Patterson, Twentynine Palms base spokesman, told me almost five years ago, when I profiled a chaplain from the base, Navy Lt. Robert Grove.
This being Veteran’s Day, I thought Grove’s story was worth sharing. It’s after the jump:
