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Thank you for this wonderful article. I hope to find an opportunity to read its contents in full soon, but I’m already impressed with the portion I have had the opportunity to look over already.
I am curious about one thing that I haven’t been able to find elsewhere. I’d like to know what the proper form of address is when speaking to an LDS chaplain. I remember how Father Mulcahy on M*A*S*H was addressed by that title by all his colleagues due to his position in the Catholic church. I don’t need an answer, but I am interested in learning anything you can teach me in this respect. Thanks in advance.
I was one of many beneficiaries of the Church’s care for military personnel during the Vietnam war. I was fortunate to be able to attend a prospective servicemen’s seminar in SLC with speakers including members of the Twelve, it was great. And the Church continued to provide pocked-sized copies of the Book of Mormon and “Principles of the Gospel” to us, though I replaced my BoM with a pocket sized triple combination while I was in the army. Interestingly, that triple suffered some torn pages when a dog that had adopted us carried it around. As a result our clerk started reading it. He apologized to me for doing that without permission, but as you might guess, he soon had his own copy of the Book of Mormon and joined the Church.
Another documentation of the importance of the pocket-sized scriptures for the military although this was for a different war.
Thanks for pulling together this excellent history. I was especially moved by the quote from the non-Latter-day-Saint chaplain, for this reason:
Back in 1967, at age 14, having been introduced to the Church by my best friend, I approached my parents about having the missionary discussions. My dad — active duty Navy since 1941, who pretty much lived on coffee and cigarettes while on board ship and who enjoyed his nightly martinis at home — responded, “That’s a great idea. I can’t think of any other church I’d rather have you join.” I’m not sure who was more surprised: me or my mother. I did take the lessons, and when I asked for permission to be baptized, it was my father who signed the form.
What I learned from him a few years later was that at various times in his Naval career, he’d had Latter-day Saint sailors serving with or under him. He was so impressed at how different these men were from most of the other sailors he served with that when I expressed interest in learning about and then joining the Church, he was more than happy to support me, as he later supported me on my mission. He once told me that he thought the Church was the only church that would save Christianity.
He died in 1997, never having given up his smoking and drinking, but I had the privilege some years later of doing all his temple work for him.
Thank you for your kind remarks. I wish I had received them before publishing because they would have made a great addition to the paper!