Rev. Danny Fisher

Mollie at GetReligion.org offers a post today about an interesting feature that appeared in the pages of the Tacoma News-Tribune. She writes:

Navigating the First Amendment’s establishment and free exercise clauses when developing policies for government chaplains can be dizzying. The Washington State Department of Corrections found that out recently when trying to reach a settlement with an inmate who wanted the right to adhere to two religions at the same time.

Father Tom Suss, a Catholic priest and chaplain with the Washington State Department of Corrections, has taken a voluntary leave of absence in response to a new Corrections Department policy that allows prisoners to profess multiple faiths. Suss says the policy “[puts] his faith into conflict with his duties as a state employee.” The News-Tribune piece states:

Not long after [the policy was instituted], Suss said, an inmate at McNeil Island decided to become both Catholic and Asatru, a movement harkening back to the pre-Christian paganism of Europe and Scandinavia.

For the priest, this presented a dilemma.

“Common sense says you cannot be a pagan Christian,” he said. “As a state chaplain, I must endorse state policy. I have to be willing to endorse this inmate’s freedom to be both religions at the same time, but my own convictions being a Catholic priest don’t allow for a Catholic to be a pagan at the same time.”

[...]

…Suss said there are real-world scenarios in which he would be unable to perform his duties.

For example, an inmate might want to buy religious items belonging to the Catholic faith and to another faith that is seemingly incompatible. Normally, inmates are allowed to have only items approved for their tradition–yarmulkes for Jews, prayer rugs for Muslims, crucifixes for Christians and so forth.

“If I stayed, the individual who identified himself as Asatru/Catholic could come in for religious items and if I refused, he could sue me,” Suss said. “And the department would not defend me because I refused to endorse state policy.”

There’s more to this story, and I’d refer you to Mollie’s post for that. The News-Tribune piece also includes an important bit about the ways this policy can be abused for special privileges. (It seems to me, though, with regards to that, the risks are outweighed by the efforts here to honor the establishment and free exercise clauses.)

In terms of my response to all of this, I will just repeat a few things I’ve said before at this blog: I think it’s important that a professional interfaith chaplain know what he or she can do with integrity and what he or she can’t do with integrity. And I think it’s great that laws around these things generally protect that. In this case, it certainly does: the policy does not require chaplains to “perform ecclesiastical duties that run contrary to the tenets of their religion.” In other words, if Suss felt that some priestly task was being asked of him that ran contrary to Catholic dogma, he could refuse on solid legal ground. (That said, I don’t think this allows for him to refuse prisoners access to religious items just because he doesn’t approve.) As Mary A. Fukuyama and Todd D. Sevig have said:

It is important to recognize value conflicts that may involve an ethical dilemma for the caregiver… Caregivers need to be able to delineate boundaries that are consistent with their personal values as well as providing for respectful patient care. [1]

But, Robert G. Anderson also reminds us of the following:

The challenge for caregivers is to be comfortable in their own cultural and religious identity and open to working with and understanding different cultural and religious worldviews. [2]

Assuming he is sincere in this, the prisoner practicing both Catholicism and Asatru clearly has a different religious worldview than Suss. If he were to ask Suss to perform any specific religious task that would seriously challenge core Catholic beliefs, Suss could refuse. The Corrections Department policy seeks to protect both the religious freedom of the prisoners and its chaplains. (The policy may be a bit loose–prisoners can simply profess faith without undergoing any sort of formal conversion process or providing any sort of statement of good standing from a religious organization–but, as Washington State Senation Mike Carrell says in the article, it “errs on the side of conscience.”) It seems to me, then, that the challenge Anderson identifies really lies at the heart of this fracas.

Can that challenge be risen to here? Suss doesn’t have to perform any rite or ritual that he deems inappropriate, but can he attend to this man as a spiritual caregiver? Can he offer pastoral care and counsel to someone who has a very different spiritual life? Can he try to understand and work with the prisoner’s unique spirituality? This is the challenge that every professional chaplain faces. It’s what separates chaplaincy from other avenues of “ministry.” It’s the challenge that must be taken if spiritual caregivers want to most effectively attend to others (especially religious others). If we fail to accept the challenge, we’re doing something other than chaplaincy.

WORKS CITED:

1. Mary A. Fukuyama and Todd D. Sevig, “Cultural Diversity in Pastoral Care” in Ministry in the Spiritual and Cultural Diversity of Health Care: Increasing the Competency of Chaplains, ed. Robert G. Anderson and Mary A. Fukuyama, 37-8 (Binghamton, NY: The Haworth Pastoral Press, 2004).
   
2. Robert G. Anderson, “The Search for Spiritual/Cultural Competency in Chaplaincy Practice: Five Steps that Mark the Path” in Ministry in the Spiritual and Cultural Diversity of Health Care: Increasing Competency for Chaplains, ed. Robert G. Anderson and Mary A. Fukuyama, 1 (Binghamton, NY: The Haworth Pastoral Press, 2004).