My name is Tony Ingram.  I am a Third Degree Knight from council 3537, Clarksville, TN.  I am also a Staff Sergeant in the US Army, which is the reason I am writing.  The US military, and the US army in particular, is in need of your help.

All the information that follows is from a homily given by Fr. Dave Kenehan.   The army has five important numbers that relate to the priesthood; 1275, 103, 8%, 25%, 197.  Alone these numbers mean nothing, so lets look at them respectively.  The Army has 1275 chaplains on active duty.  Of that lot, only 103 are Roman Catholic priests.  They represent only 8% of the Army Chaplaincy.  Most people would think, no big deal, that is enough priests for the army.  Of the 400,000+ active duty forces, 25% are Catholic!  After seeing Saving Pvt. Ryan last week, it reached a new perspective a soldier may not have a priest to perform anointing of the sick in a combat area.  Additionally the army currently has the following problems:

We have combat brigades without a priest assigned some installations do not have an active duty priest, a priest is contracted from the local area most installations have only one priest (at Ft. Campbell, KY, we currently have three priests, but have three combat brigades and three support brigades).

Priests are over worked, getting tired, and aging (average age is currently 52) sometimes they are dying earlier than they should (during the homily, Fr. Dave mentioned a priest who had a heart attack and was expected to be back to work after three days).

Traditionally the services drew from the seminaries, but there is a critical shortage of priests in the civilian sector.  The civilian priests are doing the same as the military, aging and dying faster than they can be replaced.  I see the military's biggest problem is the age of the priests it has now, the stress of combat on the older priests may prove as fatal as a well-placed bullet.  I hope never to see combat, but this is my chosen profession.  And I will do all I can to provide for the people who do the fighting.  But as a lay minister, I cannot do everything, we need priests!

Please read this in your meetings and pass it along to other Knights on line and through normal mail channels.

vivat Jesus
SSG Anthony W. Ingram
p0lishone@aol.com
Please respond to me through E-mail, or Fr. Dave Kenehan at the following.

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