Message from the Bishop Suffragan
for Chaplaincies

Does your call to ministry ask you to serve those who have served our nation? As in any hospital ministry, veterans seek an assurance in the midst of health challenges. Could your call be so portable and simple that you and the person you are visiting or counseling experience the fullness of Christ’s presence and love in a hospital room, in a hallway, in a surgery waiting room or in a discussion about PTSD? If yes, perhaps this brochure will assist you in discerning if VA chaplaincy is for you. Contact our office to discuss the possibility of serving in this capacity.

— The Rt. Rev. George E. Packard

 

Message from the Director for
Federal Chaplaincies

In VA hospitals, chaplains provide patients and staff with a vital spiritual presence through worship and pastoral care with veterans who have served and sacrificed for our country’s defense. The setting of this chaplaincy has an inherent role in promoting and valuing religious diversity. We need priests who can connect and serve our Lord in this special setting.

— The Rev. Gerald J. Blackburn

 

Frequently Asked Questions

• What do Veterans Affairs chaplains do?

VA chaplains are employed by the federal government to provide spiritual care and grief support to patients, family members and staff.

• Who are VA chaplains?

VA Chaplains are ordained persons that sense a call to serve veterans in physical, spiritual or emotional need. VA chaplains come from a variety of backgrounds including parish ministry and military or hospital chaplaincy.

• What relationship does the Bishop Suffragan for Chaplaincies have with VA chaplains?

All federal chaplains (including VA) come under the episcopate of the Bishop Suffragan for Chaplaincies instead of a diocesan bishop and must be endorsed by this office before they can complete the application with the VA.

• What are the minimum qualifications for a VA chaplain?

He or she must have completed a Master of Divinity degree, two units of Clinical Pastoral Education, and two years of ministry experience.

What is the ecclesiastical endorsement process in the Episcopal Church?

1. Applicants for endorsement need to apply only if they are in the process of being hired by the VA.

2. Prior to applying, make sure your diocesan bishop concurs with your decision.

3. Complete the online application on our website and send in your transcripts, a recent photograph, and an updated CDO profile.

4. Your diocesan bishop will be asked to fill out a reference questionnaire pertaining to you.

5. Once your diocesan bishop has given a favorable reference, the personal references listed on your online application will be contacted.

6. A background check will be initiated.

7. A personal interview will be arranged between you and the Bishop Suffragan for Chaplaincies.

8. A decision will be made and you will be notified.

When do patients and staff call on Veterans Affairs chaplains?

• Upon admission, to assess a veteran’s spiritual needs

• When needing someone to listen

• When dealing with spiritual estrangement

• At the death of a loved one

• When there is a need to sort out ethical dilemmas in the clinical setting

• When in need of prayer and guidance

• In times of crisis during a hospital stay

• When there are problems with addiction

• When dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

• When facing hospice and palliative care issues

• When death is imminent

• When needed to provide support to VA staff who are caring for veterans

For additional information

The Rev. Gerald J. (Gerry) Blackburn
Director for Federal Chaplaincies
Executive Officer to the Bishop Suffragan

gblackburn@episcopalchurch.org

800-334-7626 x6069
(212-716-6069)

 

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NEWS

Chief Chaplain Michael Pollitt, of the Coatesville VA Medical Center in Pennsylvania delivered this address at the Annual December meeting of the Endorser's Conference for Veteran's Affairs Chaplaincy.

Chief Chaplain Michael Pollitt, D. Min, BCC, CAC
Coatesville VA Medical Center
Coatesville, Pennsylvania

“Many years ago when I was a young cleric in the wilds of New Hampshire, I was asked to speak at a Salvation Army kickoff dinner, in September of that year. New Hampshire is a very beautiful state with mountains, lakes, and rolling hills. It also has a large French Canadian population. In fact in many of the northern cities you can hear French spoken on the street as a first language. So in an exercise of know-your-audience, I peppered my talk with many French words that I learned phonetically. I gave my talk, and they gave me a very nice round of applause. I was leaving the hall when I found myself surrounded by a group of older women reverently know as “memes.” They had a burning question and it was this: Did I speak French? Youth and the moment got the better of me and I replied, “A little bit.” This was an exaggeration, a gross exaggeration. I speak no French. Just then as if God were part of this conspiracy to expose me as a fraud, a car came by from the Province of Quebec with the motto on the license plate, “Je me souviens.” The head meme said to me, “Cure, what does it mean, ‘je me souviens?’ I had no idea and tried to morph into my best stuttering Jimmy Stewart---to no avail. She saw through my ploy and pressed the issue. “Try. Try to translate ‘je me souviens.’ I had no idea what “je me” meant but I figured that “souviens” was something like memento and the state of Maine---just south of the province of Quebec--has as its motto “Vacationland.” I put to the two together and said that” je me souviens” meant the land of souvenirs.” They began to laugh. Then they stopped laughing and the leader looked at me with sufficient disgust and said, “No cure, ‘je me souviens’ does not mean the land of souvenirs. It means, ‘I remember.’ ‘I remember.’

Chaplain Pollitt delivering the address at the December 2006 ECVAC Annual Meeting

 

On November 13, 1942, the USS Juneau was sunk, when hit by a Japanese torpedo. Aboard that ship were five brothers named Sullivan. They had enlisted after Pearl Harbor. Shortly after that a black sedan pulled up at the Sullivans’ home in Waterloo, Iowa, and three uniformed men got out---one was a chaplain. Mr. and Mrs Sullivan were standing on the front lawn---holding each other very close. Picture that scene for a moment. You could cut the fear with a knife. The silence was broken when the father asked, “Which one?” “I’m sorry sir,” said the commander. “All Five.”

How does a nation express its undying gratitude for such a loss? The answer: It can’t. We merely blush with our own inadequacy in the presence of such sacrifice. They are, as Mr. Churchill so rightly called them, “our honored dead.” And the story of the Five Fighting Sullivans lives on in our Nation’s history.

But for the living, there is much that can be done, and has been done, and should be done, for our nation’s veterans.

One of the greatest pieces of legislation ever signed by an American president was the “Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944,” or as it was later known as, the GI Bill of Rights.

It had six tenets:

1. Education and training. This legislation literally changed the face of higher education in America. The enrollment at great universities, such as Harvard, almost doubled by 1946. Dormitories became barracks overnight—with bunks stacked three high, and the fancy eating clubs, as one shocked professor remarked were now like messhalls. It is also noted that many of these veterans graduated in three years.

2. Guaranteed loans for homes, farms, and businesses. Levittown was an outgrowth of this. (A side note: Edward Levit was a former Seabee.)

3. And 4. Review of Military discharges and job finding assistance.

5. Unemployment benefits---or 52/20. Veterans returning from the war could receive unemployment benefits of $20.00 a week for one year. An interesting historical note---especially in light of some of the readjustment problems after the Vietnam War---Vietnam Veterans, after returning from the jungles of Southeast Asia were given 13 weeks to find a job.

6. Lastly, the jewel of this great legislation, the massive construction or renovation of VA Hospitals across the country.

Why did our nation do this wonderful thing? It was put in perfect context three years ago when I was attending a veteran’s conference at Coatesville, PA. There were many speakers, and you have a tendency to drift off at the third or forth, but this was the second speaker---I was still fresh. He began by quoting from President Kennedy’s inaugural address. Not the “Ask not…” but rather the stirring portion that goes “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill. That we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” The speaker went on to say, “And who is it who has done these lofty things?? Who is it who has paid any price, borne any burden, met any hardship, supported any friend, and opposed any foe----to assure the God given gift of liberty??” He said, “It is the American veteran.” It is the veteran who have done these lofty things. Let us never forget as a nation the debt of gratitude we owe to our veterans in and out of uniform. These are the people that the VA chaplain serves. Or as General MacArthur simply called them, “the noblest development of mankind.”

It is my great fortune to be the Chief Chaplain at the Coatesville (PA) Veterans Affairs Medical Center. To be blessed with the greatest ministry I could ever imagine. And to borrow a phrase from the great Lou Gehrig, “I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” Coatesville is the old style VA, actually constructed before the Second World War. It has a hundred plus acres, thirty plus buildings, many trees, flowers, grass, and, of course, the omni-present park benches. To use its old description, it is a long-term psych hospital. We have over five hundred and thirty patients and they are divided into chemical dependency, dementia, locked psych, open psych, acute care, and a large nursing home (we still have WWII veterans there.). We also have a large domiciliary which treats chemical dependency, homelessness, and PTSD. Many of our patients have called Coatesville their home for twenty years or more.

The Chapel is a free standing chapel and many of our dementia and locked psych patients come by for their daily visit. To someone not accustomed to our patients they might seem odd, even a little intimidating. But they can always tell you about their military career. For many of them, this was their “crowded hour,” and I like to ask them about their MOS. I’m always amazed to learn what they did in their younger day. Some of these guys and ladies must have had GT scores through the roof, and yet today many of them find the simple daily tasks of life to be extremely difficult to negotiate. Many of them seem trapped within themselves unable to connect to others; Dante defined hell as proximity without intimacy.

It was all put in perfect context two years ago at a mental health conference in Coatesville. The speaker, a psychiatrist, was talking about the great John Nash, of the book and movie fame A Beautiful Mind. As many of you know Nash was considered one of the three most original mathematical minds of the Twentieth Century—along with Einstein and von Neumann, all at Princeton at the same time!! Nash was a full professor at MIT at age 30, and then the bottom fell out. He was diagnosed as a “paranoid schizophrenic,” and he would never again hold full time job. Princeton, to its credit, and especially the Math department, allowed him to just hang around. He had been very meticulous in his appearance as a young man, but his disease had robbed him of that and he was now a wild looking figure. He was known as the phantom of Fine Hall—the math building. He would write on chalkboards these magnificent equations. Freshmen would ridicule him until a senior would take them aside and tell them that in their wildest vanity they would never be one-tenth the mathematician that Nash was. And so they learned, like everyone else, to copy everything he had written the day before. He lived this way for thirty-four years, on the edge of poverty—a forgotten man, this beautiful mind. Oddly enough, he was able to publish papers on occasion. Somehow his work had become not just important but foundational. His life changed drastically on October 11th, 1994. The Chairperson of the Math department found Nash in a class that he as auditing and asked to speak with him. On a park bench outside Fine Hall he told Nash that he had just been awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics. Talk about comebacks! After the announcement was made, many experts thought that it had to be someone else. A three word telegram was sent to Stockholm with the question, “Which John Nash?” The answer came back in four words, “John Nash of Princeton.” Nash’s sister, his only living relative, was listening to her car radio while driving in the mountains of West Virginia when word came over the radio that her brother had been awarded the Nobel Prize. She got out of the car and began to cry.

The conference speaker at Coatesville then said, “Now consider this; John Nash could be one of your patients.” Imagine coming to work one morning and being told that one of your patients had just been awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics. He said that we must discipline ourselves everyday to see that greatness which was once visible---but is still there—that their diseases have now hidden from the world. And we must respond to this with love, a deep and abiding love.

This is the special charge given to VA Chaplaincy, which under the Directorship of Hugh Maddry is hitting new heights. It is my belief that VA Chaplaincy is in the midst of a twenty year shift. If a VA Chaplain had retired ten years ago and came back today he or she wouldn’t recognize VA Chaplaincy. And likewise if someone were to retire today and come back ten years hence, they wouldn’t recognize VA Chaplaincy either. One of the biggest changes is something known as a spiritual assessment. Now, I know it is under attack and I’m not here to talk politics, but it is an invaluable tool. It is how the VA Chaplain measures the spiritual and existential vitality of a patient. As a chief chaplain I do more administrative work than I did as a staff chaplain at the Detroit VA, but it was there that I came to truly value this tool. I worked almost exclusively with addicts and alcoholics, many of them homeless, and I administered close to 5,000 spiritual assessments to veterans on the chemical dependency unit. This is a sample, an actual question asked by this chaplain. Ready?? Here goes, it’s going to knock your socks off with its intrusiveness. “What does intoxication do for you that sobriety doesn’t?” That’s it. That was an actual question from a spiritual assessment. Now any discipline could ask that question. It could pertain to the body, the mind, or the spirit. But listen to actual answers given to this chaplain at the Detroit VA. “It gave me a sense of oneness, completeness, unity, transcendence, fulfillment, tranquility;” “it filled the emptiness inside of me, the cavernous hole, and a moment when it all made sense.” This is our language. We understand these concepts as few people do. And without the spiritual assessment, these things would never be known. Viktor Frankl said that, “Suffering ceases to be suffering the moment that it finds meaning.” This is our domain the realm of meaning. Psychologist are trained to read the mind; we are trained to read the heart. And that makes the insight of chaplains invaluable.

Psychologist and Social Workers—and some of my best friends are psychologist and social workers--are not experts in spiritual things and no amount of saying that they are will make it so. If it were so, then all seminaries should be closed tomorrow and we should send our candidates to graduate schools of psychology and social work---but that is folly, and we know it. When the emperor is naked, someone has to say something. In antiquity, “those who foolishly sought [safety] by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.”

Now, once a spiritual assessment is completed, the chaplain is able to render a spiritual diagnosis, a treatment plan, and a discharge plan all as a member of the treatment team. A treatment team is made up of medical doctors, psychologists, social workers, therapists, physician assistants or nurse practitioners, and, a chaplain. Everyone does an assessment from their own discipline, from their own expertise. Everyone feeds into center---like spokes on a wheel---then and only then is the patient known in the fullest holistic sense of body, mind, and spirit. This stuff is changing all of the time and becoming more and more sophisticated. It stops you dead in your tracks, when every discipline is presenting on a patient, speaking about the same problem from their own perspective, and you see how it all fits together, like pieces in a puzzle.

Although VA Chaplaincy is involved at every level of care there are, in my opinion, three moneymakers for VA Chaplaincy. The first of these is Chemical Dependency, which I mentioned above, and VA is the largest care provider for chemical dependency treatment in the entire country, if not the world. This is my specialty. The second is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. The VA has been doing this since its inception and Coatesville is one of the leading treatment centers in the country (I would match the skills of my rabbi with anyone, anywhere.). The last and kind of the new kid on the block is Hospice/Palliative Care. If you remember from your languages, pall means to cover, and liative is the root for words like ‘alleviate’ or ‘leniency.’ Literally it means to cover with leniency in preparation for death. We as chaplains have always done this. I remember in seminary in a class on death and dying---I always wondered why didn’t Kubler Ross call it dying and death? (Oh, well)--but in this class on death and dying the professor said that it is a doctor’s job to help someone to live. It is a chaplain’s job to prepare someone to die. What an awesome responsibility.

Coatesville has a rather large chaplain staff: seven fulltime chaplains and a program assistant. They are highly trained hospital chaplains and have specialized civilian credentials in other fields as well. Seward Hiltner, the father of modern chaplaincy, said that every chaplain should be able to look at a patient both, theologically, but also clinically---My chaplains do both very well.

Rabbi Phil Goodman who I already mentioned--is a leading expert in PTSD, Fr. Larry Gould and I are Certified Addictions Counselors, and Chaplain Joel Copeland is trained in Hospice and Palliative Care. Chaplain Copeland and Fr. Gould are also trained ethicists. Fr. Joe Hasieber is our specialist in acute care, Chaplain Dave Ballantyne in locked psych, and marriage counseling (strange combination), and Chaplain Kendall Thomas in hospice and marriage counseling as well. We have among our chaplains combat veterans, former army and navy chaplains, a former Roman seminary professor, a former coast guardsman who sailed to the South Pole and back, a licensed family counselor, a licensed marriage counselor, as well as a former Arlington National Cemetery chaplain.

What do VA Chaplains do?? Well, first of all they are on call 24/7. At Coatesville every chaplain has the care of about 100 patients that they are responsible for, with weekly progress notes. They do labor mediation; are members of treatment teams; do spiritual assessments; teach classes; hold religious services; do one-on-one counseling; run programs for the medical center; conferences, special events; hold memorial services, funerals, marriages, baptisms; serve on committees like ethics and the employee assistance program; are experts on computerized charting; and the list goes on and on. On a daily basis my staff is great and on their good days, they are magnificent. And I mean that in all sincerity.

If there is one thing that all you can do for us, it is this---------Send us your best!!

VA Chaplaincy has afforded me that greatest opportunity and greatest ministry I could ever have imagined. Before my present assignment at Coatesville, I worked, (as I mentioned) exclusively with addicts and alcoholics at the VA in downtown Detroit. It was one of those rare assignments where I was actually more energized at the end of the day than at the beginning. Most of these guys were homeless and had nothing except the love that you gave to them. And that love, is the foundation of VA Chaplaincy.

Mother Teresa once said that “we can do no great things. Only small things with great love.”

In closing, I’d like to go back to the great John Nash when he came out of his nightmare with a renewed sense of life and humility, and the primacy of love. After Nash had been informed on the morning of October 11, 1994 that he was to be awarded the Nobel Prize, he was escorted by the chairperson of the Math department to the faculty dinning room. They were about to enter when Nash stopped him and said, “I can’t go in there I’m not faculty.” Now, Nash had not been a nice man when he was young, but thirty-four years of suffering had made him humble and soft spoken. He did everything well in Stockholm for the award ceremony. He spoke with the king of Sweden, and delivered his Nobel lecture. He broke with tradition at the end of his lecture when he said the following,

Thank you. I've always believed in numbers and the equations and logics that lead to reason. But after a lifetime of such pursuits, I ask, "What truly is logic? Who decides reason?"

My quest has taken me through the physical, the metaphysical, the delusional -- and back.

And I have made the most important discovery of my career---the most important discovery of my life: It is only in the mysterious equations of love that any logic, or any reasons can be found.

He looked at his wife Alicia and he said:

I'm only here tonight because of you. You are the reason I am. You are all of my reasons.”

The mysterious equation of love is the cornerstone of VA Chaplaincy.

Thank you.