The Lord is my shepherd

The Twenty-third Psalm, with its opening line 'The Lord is my shepherd,' is one of the most recognizable passages in the Judeo-Christian tradition. In Joseph Heller's Catch-22, this ancient verse becomes an unexpected flashpoint in a confrontation between Colonel Cathcart and the chaplain, exposing the colonel's cynical approach to religion and his obsession with image management. The psalm's fate in the novel encapsulates the broader theme of how institutional power distorts even the most sacred texts for its own purposes.

The Psalm in the Colonel's Office

When Colonel Cathcart decides to introduce prayers before combat missions—hoping to get his picture in The Saturday Evening Post—he summons the chaplain to his office. The colonel is explicit about what he wants: 'I don't want any of this Kingdom of God or Valley of Death stuff. That's all too negative.' The chaplain, caught off guard, admits he was thinking of the Twenty-third Psalm just as the colonel spoke. Cathcart immediately recognizes the reference: 'That's the one I was just referring to. It's out.' The psalm is dismissed not because of its content but because it violates the colonel's aesthetic and strategic requirements for a prayer that will 'send the boys out feeling pretty good.'

The Search for a Suitable Prayer

The chaplain's subsequent suggestions are all rejected on similar grounds. When he offers 'Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul,' Cathcart cuts him off: 'No waters.' When the chaplain proposes a musical selection involving 'the harps on the willows,' the colonel objects upon learning it contains the line 'there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.' Cathcart's response is telling: 'Zion? Let's forget about that one right now. I'd like to know how that one even got in there.' The colonel's ideal prayer would be 'humorous' and would 'stay away from waters and valleys and God.' He asks, '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.'

The Colonel's Alternative: A Prayer for Bomb Patterns

When the chaplain admits that most prayers he knows 'make at least some passing reference to God,' Cathcart pivots to a more practical proposal: praying for a tighter bomb pattern. This, he explains, 'will be a feather in all our caps with General Peckem,' who believes that 'it makes a much nicer aerial photograph when the bombs explode close together.' The chaplain's hesitant response—that the colonel could lead such a prayer himself—is brushed aside. Cathcart insists that the chaplain's job is to lead prayers, and from now on, those prayers will be for a tighter bomb pattern. The entire episode reveals that for Cathcart, religion is merely another administrative tool, subordinate to career advancement and the approval of superiors.

The Abandonment of the Prayer Project

The prayer project collapses when the chaplain raises practical objections: atheists would need to be excused, and enlisted men would have to be admitted. Cathcart is horrified by both suggestions. He denies the existence of atheists in his outfit ('Atheism is against the law, isn't it?') and is appalled at the idea of including enlisted men. When the chaplain suggests that excluding them might affect whether God answers the prayers, Cathcart abandons the entire scheme: 'The hell with it, then. I'm not going to set these damned prayer meetings up just to make things worse than they are.' The colonel's final reflection reveals his true concern: 'having the men pray to God probably wasn't such a hot idea anyway. The editors of The Saturday Evening Post might not have co-operated.' The Twenty-third Psalm, rejected for being too negative, is never spoken, but its shadow hangs over the entire exchange, a silent witness to the corruption of faith by ambition.

The Psalm's Thematic Resonance

The Twenty-third Psalm's promise of divine guidance and comfort—'The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want'—stands in stark contrast to the world of Catch-22, where shepherds are replaced by colonels who raise mission numbers, where green pastures are bombing targets, and where the valley of the shadow of death is a daily reality. The psalm's rejection by Cathcart mirrors the novel's broader critique of institutions that use the language of morality and patriotism to mask self-interest. The chaplain, who believes in the psalm's power, is powerless to defend it; Colonel Cathcart, who sees it only as a public-relations liability, has the authority to suppress it. The Twenty-third Psalm thus becomes a symbol of everything the military bureaucracy cannot tolerate: genuine faith, vulnerability, and the acknowledgment of death.