When many people think of a chaplain they picture the Father Mulcahy character on the TV show M*A*S*H.
When filmmaker Martin Doblmeier was making his new two-hour documentary, Chaplains, airing on PBS stations through 2017 [it doesn’t yet have a Toledo broadcast date], “I would talk to people and I would often say to them, ‘I’m making a film about chaplains,’ and sometimes you could actually see this sort of glazed look come over their faces,” he told the Blade in a telephone interview.
“They weren’t sure what that meant, and I would say, ‘Chaplain, like in a hospital, or a prison chaplain,’” he continued. “And they would still have this ‘uh-huh, uh-huh’ kind of look. And I would say, ‘You know, like Father Mulcahy in M*A*S*H.’ And then a light would go on, and they got that.”
Mr. Doblmeier ended up putting some M*A*S*H excerpts in the film, and he included an interview with William Christopher, the actor who played Father Mulcahy, as a DVD extra and on the film’s website, chaplainsmovie.com, where the DVD can be purchased.
More screen time goes to the actual chaplains he follows — Roman Catholic and United Church of Christ chaplains in a hospital; in a men’s prison, where a female Buddhist is a chaplain; in the Motion Picture and Television Fund retirement home near Hollywood, where a former actor is there as a rabbi; with the Hamtramck, Mich., police department, where a Muslim volunteer chaplain helps the police and the public in what recently became the first U.S. town with a majority Islamic population; an Assemblies of God chaplain in a Tyson Foods facility; evangelicals doing outreach to NASCAR racers and crew; and in Congress.
Military chaplaincy is represented by the Roman Catholic priest Paul Hurley, who during the filming was a colonel in charge of all the chaplains in Afghanistan, but in March was promoted to chief of chaplains for the Army and made a two-star general.
“Part of my job is to find interesting and dynamic people who you don’t mind spending time with and engaging in their lives and seeing them as interesting human beings, and sort of following their path,” Mr. Doblmeier said. He is the producer, director, writer, narrator, and even a camera operator for the documentary, and has been making religion and spirituality documentaries for more than 30 years. “They lead us into some of the more profound questions in the different areas that they work in.”
Stephen O’Brien, a Roman Catholic layman who is board-certified as a chaplain in relationship with the Association of Professional Chaplains, is Mercy St. Vincent Medical Center’s supervisor of its chaplain-training program, known as clinical pastoral education. “It’s the first video I’ve ever seen with that mainstream interest, focusing just on chaplains,” he said. He added, “I was glad they included a bit on the training, even though it was only a small piece.”
In the film, Mr. Doblmeier describes chaplains as “men and women who represent their own particular faith or religious tradition, but because they work mostly in public settings are trained to be of comfort and support for everyone, religious or not. … Chaplaincy today is an emerging profession that struggles to define itself as it faces challenges on many fronts, but chaplains offer a window into how to view religion, faith, and spirituality in a religiously diverse America that values the separation of church and state — even though exactly what that means is not always clear.”
In DVD extras, Mr. Doblmeier said “there had not been a film that was done on chaplains that talked about who they are and the work that they do. … With no compromise to their own faith tradition, [chaplains] engage people of very different faiths, learning about their religious texts, their sacred rituals — not just because they find it interesting, but because it's a way for them to help the other person find value and meaning in those beliefs at a time they need it the most.”
“I really thought it was powerful,” Mr. O'Brien said, “the way they showed that chaplains are there for everybody. It’s not denominational. It’s not even religious, spiritual. It’s ‘if you don’t even believe in God, we can still be with you, we can still listen to your story, we can still help you with your emotional processing.’ I thought that was really good. … A key part of our training is listening to stories, and to do that [chaplaincy students] have to listen to their own stories; otherwise, their own stories get in the way.”
Mr. O’Brien did note that chaplains’ work is sometimes more trying than the film showed. Stories from the hospital “were really good,” he said, “but they ended up with pretty good outcomes. I think they could have stressed — maybe it had to do with people struggling, seeing — but most of the outcomes here [at Mercy St. Vincent that] the chaplains get called to are not good outcomes. People are dead or dying, or being taken off life support; that’s why we’re called. I thought that might have been a better focus.”
“Are there stories that we didn’t get to that we wanted to? Sure,” Mr. Doblmeier said. “We didn’t get a chance to profile college and university chaplains; I thought that was an important loss. ... We didn’t do hospice chaplains. ... But if this goes well and if people really are moved by this film and there's interest in doing more, we’ve already got our eyes on a number of different story lines we didn’t do.”
Mr. Doblmeier said, “I hope that people will watch the film and not simply say, ‘Oh, aren’t those chaplains great people doing nice things,’ but that if any person watching the film is on their own special faith journey ... whatever that means for them, that they will be able to see within the story lines of these people something that applies to their own spiritual journey.
“I think the path these chaplains take us into is really rich enough to benefit everyone who intends to be a chaplain, or not a chaplain, anybody who’s on a spiritual journey. That, to me, is the most important thing.”
Contact TK Barger @ tkbarger@theblade.com, 419-724-6278 or on Twitter @TK_Barger.
First Published November 28, 2015, 5:00 a.m.
