Role Of Religion In Catch 22

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Does religion have a place in times of war? Where bureaucracy values the results of war more than individuals, the thought of God is questioned even by the men of faith. Joseph Heller tries to answer this question in his classic novel Catch 22, where a man known to the reader as The Chaplain begins contemplating whether it is right to serve his God and the men stationed at Pianosa, the small and fictitious island off the coast of Italy. The Chaplain’s doubt of his own capability to serve in his faith and advise the men who are forced to fly more and more missions as the count is raised from fourth five to eighty by the end of the novel. He no longer feels totally comfortable acknowledging his own religious beliefs to himself, the moving horrors of war, and the nonsensical bureaucracy has stripped him of his faith. …show more content…
Yet, in perfect honesty, he does very little in being useful. In the nineteenth chapter, The Chaplain is inquired upon by Colonel Cathcart about using prayer before missions. Yet Cathcart asks to exclude religion from the prayers,”’Haven’t you got anything humorous that stays away from waters and valleys and God? I’d like to keep away from the subject of religion altogether if we can.” And when the Chaplain explains that all of his prayers make a reference to God, as one would expect a man of God to pray to, Colonel Cathcart replies ”’then let’s get some new ones.’” (Heller 183)

Cathcart’s inquisition of the use of prayers is only as a tool for his own advancement. In Cathcart’s eyes, and by extension bureaucracy itself, actual faith in God has nothing to do with The Chaplain’s purpose. The Chaplain himself questions his role at one point, if he were to be a better servant to the men of war rather than the men of God. He is continually confronted by men who want to use religion as a tool without understanding the value of

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