Naval Professionals Needed

Vincent Robert Capodanno, a U. S. Navy Roman Catholic chaplain, was born on Staten Island, where he graduated from Curtis High School. He was ordained in 1957.

In 1968, Secretary of the Navy Paul Ignatius notified Lieutenant Capodanno's family of a posthumous Medal of Honor award recognizing his selfless sacrifice in the Que Son Valley with outnumbered elements of the 1st Battalion 5th Marines during the Vietnam War.

If someone asks, Has a Navy Chaplain ever received the Medal of Honor?, now you know.
Read The Grunt Padre's Medal of Honor citation. See the ship nicknamed The Happy Cappy here.

According to the Marketplace Chaplains USA, turnover at Taco Bell outlets in central Texas dropped by a third after they started employing chaplains.

Who then, should be providing spiritual comfort and guidance to our military? Not psychiatrists like Nidal (AbduWali) M. Hasan.

But, how many navy chaplains graduated this year to replace those leaving the entire fleet and shore establishment? Just 29 new chaplains at a time of heinous war. In the final year of WW2 (1945), the comparable number of navy chaplains graduated was 519.

Yet, what concerns our congress is not too few navy chaplains, but too few navy lawyers (over 300 added since 2008).

Submarines, of course, have neither chaplains nor JAG officers, yet. But then, things are changing. The Navy chaplain's school is now relegated to an Army base far from shore.

Submarines are always silent and strange.