Chaplain Melvin Ray on retaining faith so that you will prevail in the end

The Stockdale Paradox

Admiral Jim Stockdale was the highest ranking officer in the “Hanoi Hilton” during the Vietnam war. His eight-year POW experience resulted in the Stockdale Paradox: Retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, AND AT THE SAME TIME, confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.

The current realities of professional chaplaincy are not being addressed in a confrontational manner. Most brutal of facts is the professional health care chaplain (defined as a Board Certified Chaplain of the APC, or corollaries in the NACC & NAJC) is not perceived to be a health care provider; but in essence, a religious oriented person whose priority focus is religious ministry, as opposed to spiritual health care. Experience informs me that even professional chaplains find difficulty in articulating the contrast between religion and spirituality. There is little room for contrast if the title of the professional organization contains a word which designates a religious belief, i.e., Catholic or Jewish. Even the requisite endorsement by a religious body could be a barrier to becoming a fully empowered health care profession.

Indicators of such empowerment will be commensurate with established standards and expectations of other health care disciplines; dominate among the standards is licensing by a state regulatory board. In my attempts to initiate such a process, a state legislator asked, “What problem will this solve?” My reply was the problems of: continuity of quality and delivery of health care service; reliability and proficiency of the provision of professional health care treatment; safeguarding the public by assuring that all clinical health care disciplinarians are accountable to standards established by law.

I also submitted the following suppositions:
1. Care of the spirit is an integral part of health and wellness, as is care of the body and mind.
2. Clinical spiritual health care is to be differentiated from religious care. Religious care is practiced and provided by parish ministers (professionals) who have met standards of their particular religion.
3. A health care chaplain is defined by the Joint Commission of Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) and provides health care treatment in a health care setting without discrimination in regard to religion, or lack thereof.
4. The standards for Chaplains center on Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), which is a post graduate degree and includes at least one year of supervised internship and residency at an approved teaching institution, usually in a medical teaching facility.
5. Requirements for Board Certification are similar to (exceeding many) other professionals in the area of formal education, examination of competencies and credentialing by a national accrediting agency, certification (Board Certified Chaplain, BCC), continuing education, ethics and submission to the disciplinary authority of a national organization.
6. Citizens will appreciate the security, assurance and peace of mind that no discipline is able to practice clinical health care interventions without state licensure.

The legislator, a physician, asked me for similar statutes in other states (none of which I am aware) and input from my organization’s legal department. My impression is that efficacy of licensing will be broadly supported when preceded by a paradigm shift among leaders who desire professional chaplaincy to survive and thrive in an uncertain future. This shift is not forsaking our religious heritage, rather claiming of our place at the table with other health care professionals (who would think it ludicrous to involve volunteers in practice).

Of the ten APC strategies, four address empowerment. Perhaps it is pessimistic to observe that, as a discipline, we continue to marginalize, disenfranchise, and surrender our power, status, and definition to others. When Admiral Stockdale was asked, “Who didn’t make it out?” he replied, “That’s easy, the optimists” who confused faith with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of reality.

Do you have thoughts about advocacy you’d like to share with your colleagues? Send an e-mail to info@PlainViews.org.