First Things RSS Feed - James A. Hamel

Good Priests, Good Soldiers

Mon, 25 Dec 2023 06:00:00 -0500

I hear the word “clericalism” a lot these days. Depending on which Catholic journals or blogs you read, it’s either a rampant scourge upon our church, or it’s hardly a problem at all. The term is pejorative and often directed at younger priests. It implies a pronounced haughtiness, intransigence, and the use of authority for the sake of domination. I must admit that I have met very few Catholic priests who exhibit those traits. Yet clericalism has been named by some as the “central obstacle” to the Church fulfilling her mission, as the reason why Mass attendance and vocations are down, and as the cause of sexual abuse in the Church. That strikes me as a facile explanation for some of the Church’s greatest challenges.

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Virtually Disconnected

Mon, 18 Apr 2022 06:00:00 -0400

Not long ago, I saw a news story about a New Zealand college student who had been found dead in his dormitory room. It has troubled me ever since. What made the story especially jarring was that the coroner estimated that the young man had been dead for about eight weeks before he was discovered. School officials only found him because the odor of his decomposing body was beginning to permeate the rest of the residence hall. Even his own family hadn’t inquired about him until several weeks after his death. Talk about dying alone. How could a young person from a supportive family, immersed in a communal living environment, be so invisible to those around him?

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Christmas at the Top of the World

Tue, 04 Jan 2022 06:00:00 -0500

Shortly before Christmas, I received a phone call from the office of the Air Force Chief of Chaplains. I am a chaplain in the U.S. Air Force, and I was asked to go to Thule Air Base in Greenland for two weeks to provide Catholic services for Christmas and the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God (New Year's Day). Thule Air Base, 800 miles above the Arctic Circle, is the northernmost military installation of the United States. It has a small base population of American, Canadian, Danish, and Greenlandic personnel. The base's main mission is to provide missile warnings, space surveillance, and satellite command and control for our senior civilian and military leaders. In the Air Force (and the recently formed Space Force), Thule is the punchline of many a joke about where one might end up if he or she doesn’t “straighten up and fly right.” Indeed, when I told a friend of mine, a former Air Force medical doctor, where I would be for Christmas, his one-word reply was, “Sucker!” That stung a little, but my instincts told me he was wrong.

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Where Two or Three Are Gathered

Mon, 11 May 2020 06:00:00 -0400

Most priests and ministers dread having to perform the funeral rites of their parents.

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The Hardest Mission of an Air Force Chaplain

Mon, 29 May 2017 08:00:00 -0400

If you’ve seen Saving Private Ryan, you probably recall the scene in which the commander and the chaplain make the long drive up the farm road to inform Mrs. Ryan that three of her four sons were killed at Normandy. What is most haunting (and accurate) for me is that Mrs. Ryan seems to know who is in the car and why they are coming to see her. She has an instinctual sense of foreboding. Once the awful news is delivered, she collapses on the planks of her wooden porch. It is a powerful scene.

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All Gave Some: Veterans Day 2013

Mon, 11 Nov 2013 00:05:00 -0500

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Ecumenism in the Chaplaincy

Mon, 28 Oct 2013 00:02:00 -0400

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