In spiritual care research, studies on military chaplaincy are underrepresented, and most available studies center on moral injury. This article contributes to the existing literature on spiritual care in the military by presenting a study of 13 case descriptions of spiritual care provision by military chaplains from the Netherlands. These were analyzed using the framework method, a qualitative method of systematically searching for patterns in data sets, in order to answer the question: How do military chaplains contribute to the moral resilience of soldiers and veterans experiencing moral stress? The analytical framework was constructed on the basis of Doehring’s (Pastoral Psychology, 64(5), 635–649, 2015) conceptual understanding of moral resilience as the outcome of processes of spiritual integration of moral stress in caregiving relationships. This study shows that soldiers experience moral stress when core values associated with ‘being a soldier’ conflict with expectations or actions of soldiers themselves or of others, with the way the military organization functions, or with the spiritual notion of ‘being a good, loving and loveworthy human being’. In their responses to moral stress, chaplains contribute to moral resilience by engaging in co-creating spiritual orienting frameworks which accommodate a sense of goodness of self and others and allow for nuanced, biographically rooted moral views. Soldiers experience conversations and brief encounters with chaplains as relational ‘moments of goodness’, which may also contribute to moral resilience.

Spirituality has become a popular term in chaplaincy and health care settings, but is defined in such a myriad of ways and in such broad terms that, as a term, it threatens to become unfit for clinical practice. Several prominent conceptualizations of spirituality are analyzed in an attempt to recover the distinctiveness of spirituality. An adequate understanding of spirituality for clinical use should run close to the lived spirituality of persons in their unique individuality, differing contexts and various persuasions. In the second place a distinct discourse on spirituality needs to be sensitive to characteristic experiences of that which is other.

A previous article focused on an analysis of prominent conceptualizations of spirituality in health care. The encompassing character of those approaches was viewed as problematic because too little attention is paid to the distinctiveness and particularities of spiritual experience. This article argues that the criteria gleaned from the prior analysis provide an impetus for a constructive discernment proposal of lived spirituality. The experience of otherness is provides a central clue to an understanding of spirituality particularly by two key terms, receptivity and transformation, as central characterizations of lived spirituality. These terms are investigated as they embrace operational potential for chaplaincy care. The article concludes with a reflection on chaplaincy care as it relates to spiritual practice.

In 2016, the Dutch Case Studies Project in Chaplaincy Care (CSP) was launched, an interdenominational and interuniversity empirical research project on case studies from different fields of chaplaincy. The article presents the methodological approach and the procedure of description and evaluation. The CSP works with research communities composed of chaplains working in a similar context under supervision by a research scholar. The article also analyzes the social and institutional framework of pastoral and spiritual care in a secular setting and its influence on the orientation of the CSP. In conclusion, a comparison to the situation in German speaking countries is drawn.

De volgende casusbeschrijving uit het lopende Case Studies Project raakt aan een pijnlijk hoofdstuk uit onze nationale geschiedenis: de inzet van Nederlandse militairen in Nederlands-Indië. De casusbeschrijving laat zien welke specifieke en tijdsintensieve aandacht begeleiding van de (wegens leeftijd) snel krimpende groep ‘oude veteranen’ vraagt.

Het artikel ‘Geestelijke verzorging in beeld – Onder het vergrootglas van de casestudy’ weerspiegelt de situatie halverwege de looptijd van het Nederlandse Casestudy’s Project Geestelijke Verzorging (CSP). Het project is intussen afgesloten, dat wil zeggen dat de verzameling van casestudy’s is beëindigd (maart 2021). Inmiddels zijn de beide auteurs, in samenwerking met de andere betrokken onderzoekers, bezig met de eindrapportage die voor de zomer van 2022 gereed moet zijn. In de loop van het project zijn circa honderd casestudy’s beschreven en besproken, waarvan er een aantal zijn gepubliceerd. Deze en andere publicaties over het project zijn te vinden op de website van het UCGV (https://ucgv. nl/). Naar aanleiding van het in het begin van het artikel genoemde congres is een publicatie verschenen, met de bewerkte inleidingen plus enkele andere bijdragen (Kruizinga et al. 2020).