March 16, 2009
As a Navy chaplain, Father Thomas A. Hall, C.S.P., has served the men and women fighting in the Middle East.
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It was his first Christmas Eve in the Middle East, and Father Tom Hall, C.S.P., was the only Christian living in a high-rise apartment complex on Embassy Row in Bahrain. The commander in the U.S. Navy Chaplain Corps answered a knock at the door to find the building doorman bearing a sheet cake decorated with the words: “Happy Christmas, Father Tom, with love from Mohamed and his family.”
“It was from the building manager,” Father Hall said. “Incidents like these are too numerous to recount.”
Whether it is consoling the families of fallen Marines or talking to those defending our shores in the Coast Guard after a difficult day at sea, Father Hall believes the naval chaplaincy allows him to be “the best Paulist I can be.”
“My ministry on a daily basis goes far beyond serving people of my own Catholic Church,” he said. “Most of the people I serve are non-Catholics. In some cases, I am the first priest people have ever met.”
Father Hall, 60, explained that Navy chaplains are assigned to the U.S. Navy, U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Marine Corps.
The chaplain formation program requires graduation from the Navy Chaplain School in Newport, R.I., with the same military training all officers receive: rules and regulations; customs and history; and physical training.
“Chaplains receive special emphasis on the pluralism of the U.S. military, since it is the chaplain’s unique responsibility to ensure that each individual follow the dictates of his or her conscience, Father Hall said. “My workmates in the Navy are chaplains of every imaginable denomination and faith group. On a daily basis, we are forced to cooperate for limited worship space and resources. And, our ministry always calls us to facilitate the free exercise of religion for all. Ecumenism in the military goes far beyond a prayer service and covered dish dinner with people of the neighboring church.”
In his 18th year as a Navy chaplain, Father Hall has the same duties as a parish priest, but his parish may be the people living and working on board a ship; stationed in a foreign country or encamped in a desert.
“My pastoral care, as a chaplain, extends to those outside the Catholic Church,” he explained. “When a service member wants to talk with a chaplain, they generally don’t care what church the chaplain represents. So, the Paulist priest who serves as a military chaplain really does ‘serve God by serving those outside his church.’”
Father Hall grew up in Los Angeles and attending Catholic grammar schools before graduating from Notre Dame High School in nearby Sherman Oaks. His father was Baptist and his mother a non-practicing Catholic.
Father Thomas A. Hall, C.S.P.“Never did they imagine that their son would fall in love with the church and become a priest,” Father Hall said.
Helping on his way were Catholic members of his extended family, who took him to church during a visit to Connecticut. At the tender age of 4, Father Hall decided he “wanted to spend the rest of my life in that place where people could talk to God.”
Like most young people in the 1960s, Father Hall was trumpeted by calls of the culture that included drugs, sex, civil rights, anti-war protests and Vatican II.
“My young ears were deafened by the cacophony of the world’s voices,” said Father Hall, who was an R.O.T.C. midshipman while studying at Marquette Universiy. “The one voice that spoke gently to my heart was the voice of Jesus Christ speaking through the Catholic Church. I decided then to commit my life to Christ as a priest in his church.”
Father Hall was teaching junior high math in Los Angeles when he began attending the Paulist-run Newman Center at U.C.L.A. It was there the future priest met the newly-ordained Father Jack Collins, C.S.P.
“He stuck me as a ‘regular’ guy,” recalled Father Hall. “He did not intimidate me with his priesthood. It was very easy to relate to him. Gradually, I met other Paulists. And, I found them all to be equally easy to relate to. I wanted what they had.”
The aspiring Paulist was attracted by the informality of the order, and the intellect of its members.
“I liked the fact that the community was manageably small, so that I could, in time, know all my brothers,” he sad. “I was interested in their ministry to the academic community through their university chaplaincies. And, I was very impressed with Paulist constitution which captured America’s best democratic principles.”
Before entering the Navy chaplaincy, Father Hall served as chaplain at West Virginia University and Florida International University; associate at Old St. Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco; and four years as Paulist vocations director. While serving as vocations director, Father Hall received a commission Chaplain Corps of the US Navy Reserves and was called to active duty during Desert Storm in 1990-91. He has now been on active duty for 18 years, including more than four years in the Persian Gulf, Puerto Rico for three years; and Sicily for three years.
Father Hall is currently on his last tour as a Navy chaplain, stationed at the Command Chaplain at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. Founded as the graduate school of the Naval Academy, it enrolls 2,000 mid-grade military officers from the U.S. military and the armed forces of forty other nations with students earning master and doctoral degrees in engineering, science, business and international relations.
“My favorite assignment was serving on the staff of a three-star admiral who commanded the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command in the Persian Gulf,” recalled Father Hall. “The admiral was a convert to Catholicism and a man of deep, personal faith. It was a time when the U.S. was doing air strikes against terrorist sites in the region. I recall the great care that was exercised in an attempt to minimize collateral injuries. I saw humanity at its very best among the officers with whom I worked.”
The chaplaincy has led Father Hall to walk the people he serves through the most profound moments of their lives, like when he served at the U.S. Marine Corps Combat Center on the Mojave Desert.
“There were 127 Marines from the base who were killed in military action in the Middle East,” he said. “I was honored to have been a part of the mourning and healing process that gripped the small community of Twentynine Palms, Calif., during that period. It was the macabre reality of a war that most Americans viewed from the sidelines. What I learned from those heroic young Marines is that each one of them acted in a holiness known to few. They did not die for the American flag. They did not die for the American way of life. Each of them died for the Marine on his left, the Marine on his right. Each of them laid down his life for his brothers. No greater love is there than that.”