Priest to recruit military personnel for new kind of service

The Rev. John McLaughlin never served in the military, but he’s faced unexpected, violent death in the way troops do.

Decades ago, McLaughlin lay bleeding on a Boston street after being stabbed from behind. The prayer-filled moments that followed, when McLaughlin believed he might die, changed his life and ultimately led him to God. Now, in a newly created job, he’ll try to recruit military personnel to the Roman Catholic priesthood.

He believes that service members, who confront death as part of their jobs, could have a similar openness to religious service.

“You start realizing how fragile life is,” McLaughlin said. “And when people start thinking in those terms, they eventually start thinking about helping people in life.”

This month, McLaughlin left his parish north of Boston and became the first-ever national vocations director at the Archdiocese of the Military in Washington. McLaughlin will travel the country, speaking to troops about following a commitment to their country with commitment to their faith.

The clergy shortage in the Catholic church is well documented, and officials see the military as potentially rich ground to find future priests and nuns.

Besides having faced questions of life and death, military men and women tend to have traits necessary for religious life, including self-discipline and a willingness to sacrifice, said Monsignor James Dixon of the Archdiocese of the Military.

Church officials estimate 11 percent of seminary students during the last three years served in the military or had a parent who served. The archdiocese long has reached out to service members, but never had the money to hire someone dedicated to that job, Dixon said.

“We finally got to the point where we think it’s become an absolute necessity,” he said.

Army chaplain Paul Hurley, who attended seminary with McLaughlin in the early 1990s, advocated for his friend to get the job without McLaughlin’s knowledge.

McLaughlin, 50, the oldest of four brothers, said his first major encounter with God came when he was stabbed in the liver at age 20 while walking near Boston’s Faneuil Hall marketplace. He and his brother were jumped without provocation, he said. As he lay on the street, McLaughlin prayed for forgiveness, and for his family.

His commitment to the priesthood came more than a decade later, after experiencing an overwhelming peace during visits to the village of Medjugorje, in the former Yugoslavia, where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared.

“I thought, this is what God wants me to do, is to tell people about that and bring that peace of God to them,” he said.

McLaughlin was initially hesitant to take the new vocations post, telling Dixon he was comfortable at Saint Monica’s.

O’Brien replied, “There’s a lot of men and women in Afghanistan and Iraq that were pretty comfortable, too,” McLaughlin said. “That little guilt trip made me think about things.”

Many plans for the new job are still largely uncharted, McLaughlin said, adding he knows the challenges of drawing people to the priesthood in the modern day remain huge.

“All I know is that if I show them I enjoy the priesthood and believe in it, if God wants it to happen, it will happen,” he said.