One of the loyal readers, an active duty soldier sent me an interesting link to a story about a Catholic Army chaplain who was recently convicted of yeah, guess what? Sodomy and assorted other military crimes.
A Bamberg Army chaplain received a five-year prison sentence Tuesday for sodomizing three soldiers and committing several other offenses stemming from two encounters over a 13-month period.
Earlier in the day, Chaplain (Capt.) Gregory A. Arflack pleaded guilty to forcible sodomy, indecent acts, fraternization and conduct unbecoming an officer. The crimes touched the lives of six servicemembers, three of whom were sodomized and physically assaulted.
“To these [six] soldiers, I’m so sorry,” Arflack said as he choked back tears during the sentencing phase of the general court-martial. “You placed your trust in me, and I failed you.”
Yeah, that's in the running for the 2005 Understatement Awards, I think. This chaplain is, I hope an aberration in the Chaplain Corps, but what does that say about other chaplains out there? This guy went right to the edge with excessively coercive behavior, that was in fact a felony. How are commands dealing with chaplains who are pushing other aspects of their personal beliefs on the troops they deal with every day? When one of the evangelical knuckleheads runs up against a guy like me who says "no!", do they respect that, or are seeing it as a challenge to be overcome?
In the case of former CPT Arflack, how long until he's excommunicated by the Vatican? Or will he get to take over the diocese of Ft Leavenworth ... after all, the Army will pay his moving expenses to Kansas. A sodomizing priest moved to a new parish...gee, how ... familiar.
The soldier who sent me the link tells this story:
I am a servicemember and I'm so sick of the constant proletyzing and the power chaplains have. Last year I went with a buddy to see a chaplain, she had been raped and needed counseling very badly. All he could do was tell her to find comfort in Jesus and not to have anger in her heart...
A-Fucking-Mazing. The whole constant proselytizing thing just pisses me off to no end. They wanna pray? Fine. Don't include me, don't ask me, and don't tell me. Deal?
posted by Jo Fish on 11.02.05 at 08:51 PM
Comments:
Perhaps each chapel should have a resident secular humanist (paid by tax dollars, of course) who would be a point of contact for the nonreligious (and anyone else who needed help). They could be someone to go to when a service member feels vulnerable to suggestions to try superstitious beliefs. Oh yeah, they should also be free to try to convince believers that their beliefs are simply all a bunch of nonsense... Amen.
In one of my reserve units we had a chaplain - one of your Bible-beating, come-to-Jeebus snake-handlers from some obscure foursquare sect - that used to walk around handing out little slips of paper to GIs he heard cursing or using profanity. He was useless in every other possible way - couldn't help you with family problems, wouldn't work with the Red Cross people, whatever - so one day when he did this I grabbed the little paper with a joyful cry - Padre, just what I was looking for! - and blew my nose on it. Well, he flipped, and pretty soon was up in my face asking me what I believed in, did I know that I was hellbound, the whole nine yards.
Pretty hot by now, I grabbed my cammie sleeve and shook it at him. "This means I'm paid to sneak up and kill people, Padre." He looked offended. "What the hell else do you call it? Your holy book says "Thou shalt not kill...turn the other cheek" but we're here to kill and that's pretty much the devil's work. And you know what - I'm okay with that. But what's your excuse? You're supposed to be working for the Other Guy!"
I had to get pulled off the guy before I wound up in front of the commander (who probably would have given me 5 minutes extra duty - he thought the chaplain was useless). But that's pretty much my feeling about military chaplains. If they were worth a damn they'd be doing something else.
As an aside, why do Catholic chaplains seem to be an exception to this rule, generally? The Protestant padres I've met we mostly like the tool described above, hillbilly dumbasses with rock-solid fundy attitudes. But the Catholics were usually smarter and a whole lot better at chaplaining. Um, OK, except when sodomizing other SMs. Go figure
posted by: FDChief on 11.04.05 at 09:35 AM [permalink]
