THE NAVAL PADRE

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 109, 25 January 1918, Page 5

THE NAVAL PADRE

. HIS FLOATING PARISH. To the wardroom the naval chaplain is always the "padre," and was so sges before this term was adopted by the Army; but to the lower deck, with its superlative gift for conveying opinions bv means of nicknames, ho may he either "Holy Joe," "The Sky Pilot," or "our blinking parson," according to how he impresses the men. If thoroughly popular, he will be to them just "tho chaplain," without any frillings—the trusted adviser and good chum of everyone aboard. Such is the position to which every "padre" aspires, and most of them attain it in due time. It is rarely acquired at a jump, for sailors, no matter in what part of tho ship they may live, must "take the range" of any man not actually "in blue cloth" before they finally make up i their minds about him.

Those who do not know r the Navy

hold the belief that the chaplain 'if a warship has "a soft number." They imagine that his duties consist in reading prayers once daily, conducting service each Sunday, and that for the rest of the time he toasts his toes by the wardroom fire and has about as much to do as a first-class passenger in a P. and 0. liner, Like many other popular conceptions of duties afloat this is a misconception. In most cases the "padre" also acts as naval instructor, which means being a kind of schoolmaster to the midshipmen and "subs" and a coach to officers working up as specialists. All naval instructors aro not chaplains, but most chaplains become naval instructors and are borne on a ships books in this dual capacity. One way or another the padre, if he be a right man in a right place, finds plenty of occupation in his floating parish' and does valuable work there. Very often he will devote some of his leisure to helping men who are improving their education with a view to obtaining promotion. And he is always the sympathetic friend to whom they can carry their troubles. Usually the varietv and complexity of these are better known to the "padre" than to anyone else aboard ship. He becomes the repository of all sorts of little domestic secrets. If Able Seaman Batlin receives information that the missus is not carryin' on straight in his absence, lie goes to the "padre for advice on iho matter. Or it may be that. Stoker M'Clinker, bashful and somewhat inarticulate on the subject, will seek his help in a love affair. Perhaps M'Clinker wants an amatory epistle indited and will not be satisfied unless it can be mndo to glow as redhot as the furnace which he tends during his period "on watch." War makes the "padre" a busy man He may bo appointed ship's censor, and as such have the delicate task of- &oing through Jill letters before vhey leave the ship. This job demands tact, discretion, and not a little astuteness, particularly when the correspondence of a thousand or more men has to bo censored. And it involves a lot of work

The 'Army has a bishop at the head of its chaplains' department. Until quite recent years naval chaplains were, from a Church point of view, "nobody's children" in a senso. i>ut Archbishop Davidson has made the Navy an archdeaconry of tho Province of Canterbury, and r.s a result the Chaplain of tho Fleet now holds the ecclesiastical dignity of an archdeacon in addition, to his naval rank. I here are Roman Catholic chaplains at some of tho naval ports, but the "padres who go afloat belong to the Established Church. Some of them are given Crown livings, though in a general way the naval "padre" does not get much in the wav of Church preferment."Jackstaff,'" in the "Daily Mail.