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Due to a lack of active duty Catholic chaplains, the DoD hires (why, exactly? *) 234 priests on contracts. Since they are not military, they are subject to the Antideficiency Act which specifically forbids 'government workers' from doing their jobs during a shutdown, even if they volunteer their services.
(Apparently the House passed a bill to fix this yesterday, but the Senate hasn't acted on it.)
From Snopes.
* Is there some sort of necessary quota of Catholic chaplains? If so, why not for other religions? Hm, now that I looked, I guess there isn't that much a disparity between the percentage of non-Christian military and the percentage of non-Christian military chaplains -- except, of course, for the "no religious preference" crowd -- but since the percentages are so small, that means there are only 33 non-Christian chaplains in the entire Armed Forces, "making it unlikely that personnel adhering to those faiths would ever encounter a chaplain of their faith tradition."
(Apparently the House passed a bill to fix this yesterday, but the Senate hasn't acted on it.)
From Snopes.
* Is there some sort of necessary quota of Catholic chaplains? If so, why not for other religions? Hm, now that I looked, I guess there isn't that much a disparity between the percentage of non-Christian military and the percentage of non-Christian military chaplains -- except, of course, for the "no religious preference" crowd -- but since the percentages are so small, that means there are only 33 non-Christian chaplains in the entire Armed Forces, "making it unlikely that personnel adhering to those faiths would ever encounter a chaplain of their faith tradition."
