Career as a chaplain

In 1972, Rev. James Barry Lonergan joined the Army as an active duty chaplain. Over the next quarter of a century, he served in 15 different positions of increasing responsibility at battalion, brigade, division and corps levels.

In addition to his troop duties, he was Catholic chaplain to the Corps of Cadets of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and the Infantry Training Center Chaplain at Fort Benning, Georgia. He was later named the Major Support Command Chaplain for all non-divisional units assigned to Fort Hood, Texas, as well as Senior Catholic Chaplain of the Army's largest installation.

Awards and decorations earned during those years included seven Meritorious Service Medals and three Army Commendation Medals. In May 1992, Father Lonergan learned that the President, with the advice and consent of the Senate, had approved his selection for promotion to the rank of colonel.

Upon receiving his "eagles," Father Lonergan was assigned the duties of Deputy Commander of FORSCOM and Senior Roman Catholic Chaplain for the U.S. Army Forces Command. (FORSCOM functions as the primary link between the Department of the Army in Washington and all the Army installations with combat-ready troops stretched across the U.S.)

In his final military role, Father Lonergan was stationed in Heidelberg, Germany, where he was in regular attendance at Top Secret military briefings. As the only religious presence in the room, he was responsible for looking at situations from what he terms "the perspective of morals and morale."

His European assignment as Senior Army V Corps Command Chaplain, which commenced in mid-1994, entailed supervising unit ministry teams assigned to the highest level combat unit in the Army: the Corps Support Command and the Corps Artillery Corps. In that capacity, Father Lonergan held the third-highest-ranking Army post available to a chaplain.

During his years in Europe, Father Lonergan slogged through wet mud in Hungary, toured bombed out Bosnian towns, and felt what he termed "the edgy caution of soldiers walking on the land-mine-laden earth" along the perimeter of a base in Bosnia. (AH)

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