Welcome to Veterans Radio. I am Jim Fossone. I'm the officer of the deck today.
We've got some great programs for you. I think you'll find very interesting. We
always want to remind you you can find more about Veterans Radio at its
Facebook site or by going to veteransradio.net where we're on the web
24-7. You can find a lot of our podcasts there as well. We post new ones every
Tuesday so you can get a new story, a new interview, something you didn't know
before by going to veteransradio.net. And before we get started we want to thank
our sponsors. First up we want to thank National Veteran Business Development
Council, NVBDC.org. It was established to certify both service disabled and
veteran owned businesses in the government and commercial or corporate
marketplace. You'll find out how they can help your business by going to
NVBDC.org. We also want to thank Eisenhower Center. It's a brain injury recovery center.
And in particular it's after the IMPACT program goes beyond awareness campaigns
and state-of-the-art imaging to help veterans first responders and athletes.
Learn more about EisenhowerCenter.com. They're located in Michigan and in
Florida. And finally we want to thank Legal Help for Veterans. Legal Help for
Veterans fights for veterans disability rights all across the nation. You can
reach them at 800-693-4800 or on the web at legalhelpforveterans.com. And finally
we want to welcome new sponsor to the program which is Veterans Business
Outreach Center which is located in Flint, Michigan and covers Michigan, Ohio and
Indiana. The Center is ran and operated by veterans to help other veterans in
National Guard, Reserve, spouses, expand and grow businesses. You can find more
about them by going to vetbizcentral.org 810-252-6200 and now on to our programs.
We want to welcome to Veterans Radio today John L. Call, Captain Call, retired
from the Navy after about 26 years. Captain welcome to Veterans Radio.
Thanks Jim glad to be here. Well we have you on because of your Navy service but
also because of your particular insights as a Navy chaplain. You are a Catholic
priest. You were born in Wyandotte, Michigan and did your preliminary
education and preparation for the priesthood here in Metro Detroit area.
And somewhere along the way you talk somebody into letting you join the Navy.
Not the normal path for any Catholic priest. Tell us a little bit about a
why a kid from Wyandotte, Michigan and for those of you not familiar with
Michigan around the world or Wyandotte in particular it sits on the water so I'm
sure you saw those big freighters go up and down but why did a kid from Wyandotte
want to end up in the Navy? Well that's that's a big part of it. Those ships just
were those were a fascination. There was a mystery about them. Where were
they? Where are they going? That sort of thing but the Navy is all my aunt's fault
actually. She worked at the Grossiol Naval Air Station long since
disbanded but she used to bring back these glossy recruiting magazines with
just all these pictures of sailors doing what they do in far off places and I
was I was hooked. I had forgotten that there was a naval station down there on
Grossiol. That ties that together. I didn't know that. That's interesting.
Oh yeah, it's still there is a civilian airfield but that's where it started.
And I guess you got a little extra boost on boy this would be an interesting
career if I can figure out how to do it when you were studying in Rome. Tell us
a little bit about that. Well that was my aunt's fault too. I wasn't studying
there at that time. She sent me there on a vacation as a ordination gift. So it
essentially said go to Rome send me the bill. Well I because I you know I'd done
some research and read books and stuff about the Navy. I knew the US Navy's
sixth fleet anchorage was down in Naples just a one-hour train ride from Rome.
So I hopped the train went down there and this is where the lights really went
on. I just there was no doubt in my mind that this is what God wanted me to
do. I find my way to the the anchorage and just out in the harbor in all her
glory is sitting the USS forest all. Big old aircraft carrier airplanes hanging
out all over the place like get down the pier as close as I can get and I run in
houses for Providence. Don't I meet up with the ship's Catholic chaplain? What
are the odds? Yeah I mean that's no accident in my mind. There was stuff
going on there. He took me out to the ship. Showed me around the place and I
was I was really hooked. I come back to Detroit went straight to the Cardinal
Deirdre's office and says you gotta let me do this. He was a kind man. Very
understanding sympathetic because you're just ordained John calm down. You got to
do this is apparently I didn't know at the time it's an arrangement with a
priest through the Catholic Conference of the United States. You've got to do
seven years as a priest in a pair in parish work in your diocese before your
ordinary will or can let you go to the military. So that was a deal. He said
you do two assignments seven years here and I'll let you go and that's pretty
well how it happened except that he he up and died in the midst of that and I
had to have the same conversation with Cardinal Schoca. But 1982 off I went. So
you joined you joined up in 1982 to the U.S. Navy and off to the Chaplain
School. For those who don't know the the Army Chaplain Corps is one of the oldest
and smallest branches of the Army. That Chaplain Corps actually dates itself
back to July of 1775 when the Continental Congress authorized one
Chaplain for each regiment of the Continental Army. So really the Chaplain
Corps is older than the country itself. Oh indeed. Well let's start with your
history with the Chaplain Corps. So you go to school first. What's the what's the
process here to get some duty assignments and tell us about those
assignments. Okay it's Chaplain School was was not arduous duty. We were out in
Newport Rhode Island in August of 82. A bunch of Chaplain candidates and also
medics doctors and corpsmen they put all in the same school trying to teach us
how to march and who to salute and how you get your uniforms and how you
wear them and all that stuff. And then I got my my first orders were to the
Portsmouth Naval Hospital in Virginia just outside of Norfolk. It's the
big Navy base on the East Coast and that was the medical facility that served
the sailors. I was there for two years with an awesome Irish priest Dennis Casey.
Foreign-born Irishman was just a wonderful model for me trying to figure
out what ministry in this new vineyard was like. And did you have the only
there for two years? That's what I was going to ask you. Do you have sort of the typical military rotation or they
move you every few years? Three years is normal. It seems that hospital ministry
and military is very stressful stuff. So they try to move you a little
sooner and two years is more the norm for hospital work. And that's what they did
with me. They also want to give new chaplains a variety of experiences and
kind of show them the many different sorts of ministry that the Navy has to
offer so that you can and should get more senior you might become more
specialized in one or the other. A lot of people don't know that we supply
chaplains to the Coast Guard and also the Marine Corps gets its chaplain corps
as well as doctors and corpsmen from the Navy. All the Marines are trigger
pullers. All their support. They don't like to be reminded of that.
It comes from the Navy. Well you guys are just taxi drivers. You just drive from places on those big ships.
But let me move you from Norfolk. Walk us through your next couple of
duty assignments over this 26-year history. Okay. From the hospital I went to
Okinawa with the Marine Corps for just a year and was supposed to stay longer
than that. The detailer, the guy who makes assignments, wanted me to get into
this exchange program with the Brits and the Royal Navy. So they pulled me out of
that and I lived in Portsmouth, England for two years. The exchange program is
something like 50 or so Navy people of all descriptions. Ship drivers, plane
drivers, mechanics, doctors, chaplains, medics, all of that. Just trade trade jobs
with their counterparts in the Royal Navy. So I lived over there for two years at
a hospital. That was terrific. Went from there back home to Groton, Connecticut and
a submarine group. This is kind of neat for the Catholic side of the house.
There's an admiral there who insisted on having a Catholic priest on his staff.
Normally we didn't put priests, it's junior is me. I'm just a lieutenant
commander now. Normally it's all captains on an admiral's staff. But he wanted a
priest and I was available coming off the exchange program. So they put me on his
staff in Groton. I was there two and a half years. Admiral Hoolie was a serious
Catholic. Daily mass goer along with his wife, Judy, wonderful people.
So there's that kind of demand for Catholic priests among the
hierarchies. Just very, very heartwarming uplifting. Went from there to my first
aircraft carrier, the John F. Kennedy. And we immediately went off to Desert Shield,
Desert Storm in 1991. A wonderful place for a priest to be. Again some very
important Catholic believing officers on that ship. Eight out of the ten squadron
commanders on the ship and its 70 aircraft were engaged churchgoing Catholic
people. That kind of leadership along with the captain who was Eastern
Orthodox. You can't beat that kind of leadership to reinforce your ministry.
Well in something like 25% of the military designate is or identify as
Catholic but certainly it's the Chaplain Corps and the military itself has all
kinds of folks including those who are non-dominational or atheists but the
Chaplain Corps has Protestants and Jewish rabbis and Muslim islams and Buddhists.
So I suspect over time in in these various assignments you've got to
interact with all types of different chaplains. Oh my goodness. Yeah. We live
in ecumenical ministry all the time. It's real. It's authentic. We enjoy each
other's company. We eat meals together. Our beliefs may be different one to
another and our religious practices as well but we appreciate each other's
ministry and our service and if you cannot live that way you don't last
long in the service. You're found out pretty quick and you don't make rank
and you go home to find some other vineyard to minister in. You've got to
be open-minded and tolerant and accepting and willing to learn about each
other's beliefs and practices and I don't know an institution on the planet
that does that better than the United States military. Because and I guess I
want to make sure that folks understand that when you're a chaplain you
minister to everybody who's there right. Good point. Could you elaborate on sort
of and I saw a quote that I'll come back to you on but it says you're quoted as
saying quote in the military a priest goes to where the people are close quote
but but talk about who you minister to and the type of ministry. Well you're
right it's essentially the ministry the missionary model. We go out we don't have
office well we do have an office but we don't wait for them to come to us we
are out and about with everybody living the Navy life and that that goes a long
way especially with the Marines. You're out living in the mud with them and
running with your pack with them you are you become one of the pack as they say
we've had a given an example of the the bombing of the USS Cole. They don't
destroyer like that doesn't normally have a chaplain assigned to it but they
were operating in the seventh fleet area and one of the we call them circuit
riders who just goes around from ship to ship. It spent a couple of weeks with the
Cole and gotten off just before the bomb went off and went off to do something
else. Well the Admiralty in seventh fleet tried to send them a couple
chaplains from the Admiral staff. The Cole wouldn't let them on the ship they
wanted nothing to do with them. They didn't know these people they weren't
about to come aboard and get deep down and personal with them. You got to be
part of the pack. They wanted that guy who would
Protestant chaplain who had spent two weeks with them at sea. He was up in
the Mediterranean at the time but the Navy jumped through all kinds of hoops to
get him down there because he was the only chaplain they were willing to set
foot on the ship. Get that kind of relationship with the people you're
ministering to. It just pays dividends over and over and over again. So you
spent I think it's 26 years in the service and and at some point in this
process and we've just sort of outlined maybe about eight or ten years or more
of that service. You have to be asking yourself or others are asking you why
are you staying and in what was going on in your mind there's every career
man or woman hits that point where they got to say it's time to time to stay or
time to go. There are things on the outside world I maybe got to go do. What
what were you thinking about as you were making that this is I'm staying for the
career decision. That's difficult. I really there was never a point that I
could identify where I decided I'm gonna just go to the end. I kept I kept getting
promoted. I kept getting more senior. I'm getting more
interesting fascinating jobs where I've got some authority and I can do some
things. I can mentor some people. I can teach the chaplains coming up behind me
and I enjoyed that very much. I know you really enjoyed your time with the Marines.
Now I've had a chance to have some meals with Father Callen and while he's a Navy
chaplain he's always defending the honor of the the Marines and I think maybe
did you close out did you close out your career at Camp Lejeune before retirement?
Was that the last duty assignment? Almost did. I had two assignments there on
two different general staffs the second division and then the second Marine
Expeditionary Force. Again I got the first job as that other one I mentioned
because Admiral Buck Emile Bedard a French Catholic demanded a Catholic
priest on his staff and I happen to be if I make a short story long I was at
Bethesda Naval Hospital at the time the day my name showed up on the captain's
promotion list. Father Fred Elkin that afternoon he was the
Detailer calls me and says John how fast can you get the Camp Lejeune? This
general was jumping up and down and throwing things about why he didn't
have his Catholic priest yet. So as soon as I got senior enough to qualify for
the job they sent me off there and two months later I'm in the desert of
Turkey with a battalion of the second Marine Division. It was sensational.
Well that's how you have to look at these opportunities that just sort of
arise is go well I wasn't expecting this but isn't this interesting. Well I
want to cover a couple of more things we could obviously talk the whole time
just on these interesting career opportunities in the in the chaplain
corps but let me speed forward a little bit you you retire from active duty in
2008 you stay on as a civilian contractor priest until 2011 and then you
spend a number of years on the staff of the Archbishop who's in charge of the
Archdiocese for the military services and ultimately by about 2017 you said
okay I've done my service here I'm heading back to the Metro Detroit area.
What I want to I sped that up because I want you to talk about and I don't think
today many people realize that the the chaplain corps isn't as robustly staffed
as may be needed with all the deployments and in the up tempo and the use of
contract chaplains can you talk to us a little bit about that aspect. Sure when I
joined the Navy in 1982 the Navy had 220 priests today this morning we have 39
in the course of that time you know like like every other diocese the Navy has
taken its hits in terms of the dearth of priests so what the Navy did with that I
mean they have a constitutional obligation to provide for the free
exercise of religion for their people so this is something they've they have got
to take care of this address it somehow so they started offering civilian
contracts to retired priests well not necessarily retired priests but those
were the only ones we could get or who though you know the Archbishop the
respective bishops would let go to cover the bases in the United States so that
the priests that we have could be sent to the Marine Corps to the ships at sea
and to bases overseas and that's where our all our active duty priests are today
there are none in the continental United States and that's again that's sort of
one of those things I think is a little shocking not only the drop that the Navy
seen which I guess you can say well that's normal because of just the lack of
priests in general but this idea that if you're a Navy chaplain you're deployed
you're not sitting you're not sitting somewhere you're deployed so that makes
it even maybe more difficult for somebody to make the commitment to be active
duty or be a reserve chaplain and be committed to that mission and as you
say the vineyards which are overseas or on ships well that's and this you know
current situation is what makes those deployments even more difficult there
sir there used to be a planned ebb and flow to these things you could you could
go deploy like I did on the Kennedy for two years I was on the ship but I came
back and was pastor of the Norfolk parish for a two year for two years so
you you were at sea you come home you go with the Marines you come home there's
that coming going sort of thing that now is impossible you're deployed you're
deployed you're deployed you go to the Marines you go to a ship you go to a base
overseas usually Europe there's there's no going home except for leave time it's
so we're we're like like many diocese now we're burning out the priests that we've
got turn to these civilian contractors and to fill the gap and then part of the
reason father call on our talking because the Navy recently stepped in it and
made national news and I said hey captain you got to come on and put this
into context because in the beginning of September 2020 the Navy canceled the
Catholic masses at San Diego bases continuing other services on base but
essentially saying hey go out into the community go on to the local economy and
find your religious services out there somewhat so so explain this controversy
and the outcome of it as it it brood for about a month yeah well it wasn't
fortunately it wasn't the Navy big Navy that decided to do this it was then just
the region of the Navy Southwest it encompasses most of the California bases
and certainly San Diego a very very large naval base with a huge Catholic
population and a large Catholic congregation that at I think three
different chapels all served by a contract priest who now was just gonna be
let go this was a decision of an admiral who in my opinion out there got way
ahead of his headlights he didn't seem to think big Navy would be interested or
the Department of Defense wouldn't come down on top of him bad bad idea not
thought out not staffed and he ended up having to back off of it and this all
played out in the you know military times and national papers and this is not
good you know anybody who's served knows if you're on the front page of the
paper it's not good for your career so we'll just leave that a leave that hang
in there but I well let me let me ask you to comment about a who I believe is a
friend of yours and that's the Archbishop of the Archdiocese for the
military services and and this will sort of bring us to an end but I think it's
important for you to with your unique experience because you were on his staff
for a number of years talk about the Archbishop and talk about this particular
Archdiocese Archbishop Timothy Brolyo like like the priests that he shepherds
is is borrowed from someplace else he was from he was a priest a bishop from
Cleveland who spent most of his time doing diplomatic work with for the
Secretary of State office in the Vatican he speaks he speaks five languages
fluently and I suppose they thought with all the traveling involved in you
know keeping up with the troops that he does that language skill would certainly
be of use and I've served now for I believe four different military arch
bishops and there is none who has been more on the road than he has usually it
not usually without fail Christmas and Easter Thanksgiving times you can find
him where the conflicts are he's in Kuwait he's in Afghanistan he's in
Iraq and stops other places well getting to and from there the office has a
heck of a time keep a track of him his poor secretary he has literally gone
two-thirds of the time he's just not in the office well again from a military
perspective you want your general you want your commander out with the troops
and it's clear that he's taking that message to heart hasn't he exactly he
models the military ministry as well as anybody without any military experience
himself and that originally concerned us when he when he came aboard but right
away he was smart enough to surround himself on the staff with a priest from
the Air Force a priest from the Navy a priest from the Army who could keep him
on from from making huge mistakes it's there's another parallel I want to draw
which is you know the the service military services have troubles at time
recruiting certainly recruiting different a diverse population and we have a
lot of talk about the great opportunities the service can provide to certain
citizens of the United States if they get in there and sees them and I wonder
you know they're always working at what different recruiting approaches in
different communities and I wonder how does how do you solve the chaplain
problem from a recruiting end in light of what's going on in different
communities is there an answer to the to the Catholic priest shortage in
the military in the Navy in particular with those shocking numbers we depend
we don't have a seminary we don't make our own priests the military we borrow
everybody else's we depend on the good-hearted generosity of Archbishop's
and bishops in the United States to loan us their priests most of them are very
happy to do that there are others who are just strictly against the military and
don't even want to hear about it so we leave them alone but we have a vocations
director on the Archbishop staff who is constantly in touch with the clergy
offices of the diocese and encouraging young people to think about the military
as at least part of their priestly service they they don't need to think of it
as a career necessarily you can go in for three years six years come home and
that way the Archbishop is not concerned about losing you entirely for the rest
of your priestly career and retiring on from active duty and he never sees you
again that is one of their principal concerns in loaning priests of the
military archdiocese so we are totally dependent on their goodwill and with the
command for priests being what it is in the diocese it's very difficult for
them to just offer up another one when they have priests we have parishes with
no priests yeah no this is a wider shortage of religious men and women
well I kept in call I appreciate you taking I kept you longer than I said I
would we didn't cover all the ground I hoped we had but you know it's an
interesting perspective and I think one that will hopefully help others
understand what it is chaplains do and what it is Catholic priests do the kind
of careers that they might have in the military and the importance in the value
of it you pointed out it's a sort of a it not only is down to the soldier sailor
marine level that it one-on-one but this larger constitutional issue to make
sure that they can exercise their free right to religion as well when in
service and so I think it's something we should all think about to make sure
that we're we have the military that we want to have one that's can be grounded
in God and country and ethics and get counseling and get help when it's
needed and all of those things are part of what you deliver as a chaplain over
the 26 career 26 year career so thank you for your service captain and thank
you for spending some time with veterans radio today thanks very much
Jim I enjoyed it and I want to thank everybody for listening to veterans
radio today I am Jim Fawson it's been a pleasure to be your host I'm a veteran's
disability lawyer at legal help for veterans and you can reach us at 800
69348 00 or legal help for veterans calm on the web you can follow veterans radio
on Facebook and listen to its podcast and internet radio shows by going to
veterans radio net and until next time you are dismissed you have a VA claim
denied by the board of veterans appeals contact legal help for veterans at 1
800 69348 00 their experts in handling cases before the US Court of Appeals
for veterans claims their number again 1 800 69348 00 veterans radio needs you if
you like our shows that are informative surprising stories and relevant
information on what's happening at the VA in the military we'd like your support
individual support of $5 to $50 a month or corporate sponsorship of a thousand
to ten thousand dollars would be welcomed you can go to veterans radio net
click on the sponsorship or support tab pay online and keep veterans radio on
the air