Catch-22 Chapter 25: The Chaplain
The home-sick, submissive chaplain is having a crisis of faith. While conducting Snowden's funeral, Chaplain Tappman mistakes Yossarian's naked figure for a magnificent spiritual vision. Determined to help Yossarian, the chaplain visits Major Major about Colonel Cathcart's unfair mission extensions. The fleeting Major Major is never available and the chaplain miserably fails. Walking back, the chaplain is accosted by the ragged, famished Captain Flume, who has been living alone in the forest to escape his would-be killer, Chief White Halfoat. Flume is eager to know whether Halfoat has died of pneumonia. In the chaplain's absence, Corporal Whitcomb has been promoted to sergeant by Colonel Cathcart. Hoping to get into The Saturday Evening Post, Colonel Cathcart has adopted Whitcomb's generic condolence letter plan. Cathcart volunteers his men for a second mission to Avignon, hoping the dangerous mission will provide casualties so that Whitcomb's fill-in-the-black sympathy letters can be put to use.