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In Latin America, the role played by some military chaplains foreshadowed justifications forvarious of the region’s “dirty wars” and offered solace to their practioners as the violence spiraledout of control. As early as 1953, for example, Vicar General Roberto A. Wilkinson, an Argentinelieutenant colonel, not only portrayed the military profession as saviors of Western culture andcivilization, but he also blamed political protests dating to the sixteenth century as precursors of thethreat of Marxist subversion. Among those he singled out for responsibility for challenging authorityand thus threatening the values inherent in discipline, hierarchy and order were the ProtestantReformation, the Enlightenment, and nineteenth-century liberalism. 33Military Chaplains as Strategic Communicators during the U.S. Civil WarThe Civil War was a “crucial turning point” in the history of the American chaplaincy. Controversyhad raged about whether the eighty chaplains who served between 1813 and 1856 incarnated theviolation of the principle of separation of church and state. In addition, the grasping manner of someclergy in search of military appointment caused popular rejection “There were many vacancies forchaplains that remained unfilled … and the institution itself fell into disfavor because appointmentas a chaplain was considered by many as a political plum, to be held along with a civilian job,”according to one history of the period. “Congressmen complained that they were pestered by itinerantparsons seeking chaplaincy appointments.” 34 It was the war that “rescued the chaplaincy frompossible extinction and helped establish its identity.” The war “forced the army to professionalize thechaplaincy and improve the standards for the clergymen called into this unique ministry. That meantthat future chaplains were of a much higher quality.” 35 In short, they became part of the strategiccommunications formula--“a defensible policy, a respectable identity, a core value”—that was valuedby politicians and military leaders for their potential for contributing to the military’s success.At the time the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter in April 1861, the U.S. Regular Army hadonly 26 chaplains on duty to minister to a force of 16,000 officers and men. 36 As the war continued,military chaplains served both sides without benefit of belonging to a professional corps of uniformedclergy. The military offered little in the way of instruction or guidance; commanding officers couldchose their own chaplains, and many of these lacked formal religious training or, in a few cases, wereposeurs in search of a meal. (In this the chaplains on both sides differed little from those who hadserved under George Washington 80 years earlier, for whom “there was no authorized uniform, nosupervisory chaplain, no doctrine for chaplains.” 37 )In order to set down educational requirements, assignment procedures, and other professionalstandards, a Chaplain Bureau was created by the Union in both the Army and the Navy. In the North,the debate about whether chaplains were either officers or enlisted troops was decided by GeneralOrder No. 44, which stated that volunteer chaplains “will in all cases be duly mustered into theservice in the same manner prescribed for commissioned officers.” 38 The Union eventually countedon some 2,500 chaplains serving without military rank during the course of the war, including just33Wilkinson, “Psicología del mando,” Revista de Informaciones, September-October, 1953; See also, Edgar González Ruiz, “La iglesia en elejército. Prelados castrenses en América Latina,” Agencia de Información Fray Tito para América Latina, http://www.adital.com.br/site/noticia_imp.asp?cod=12534&lang=ES (accessed November 5, 2007); Sergio Rubin, “Los capellanes militares en la dictadura: una deuda pendiente,” Clarin,October 11, 2007, and Emilio F. Mignone, Iglesia y Dictadura, (Buenos Aires: Ediciones de Pensamiento Nacional, 1986).34“Second Draft – 7/24/50; Chapter Two, History”, p.6, Box 57, Folder: “Military Affairs: Chaplains: 1945-1950;” National Catholic Welfare CouncilGeneral Administration Series, ACUA.35Lamm, op. cit., pp. 57, 85. He suggests however, p. 64, that questions about the quality and preparation of chaplains persisted throughout the war.Some chaplains, he wrote, “were denounced as cowards and drunks, liars and cheats. … [a] chaplain from Wisconsin boarded in a brothel whilehis troops were in the field. An army major complained that his chaplain fled upon hearing the first sound of gunfire, which occurred just after theclergyman had delivered a sermon urging the troops to stand fast and firm in battle on the altars of patriotism. An army paymaster reported to a U.S.senator that ‘Chaplains do not hesitate to draw pay for three horses, when it is known that they keep but one.” If successful strategic communicationsincludes “a defensible policy, a respectable identity, a core value,” such cases certainly worked against the latter two requirements being fulfilled.36Lamm, op. cit., p. 59.37“Military Chaplains: A historian’s view,” The Christian Science Monitor, op. cit.38War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies 130 vol. (Washington, D.C.: Government PrintingOffice, 1880-1901), Series III, Volume 1, p. 327.122Security and Defense Studies Review 2009/Edición 2009/ Edicão 2009/ Volume 9, Issues 1 & 2