Why Seminarians Need Your Prayers

These are the new seminarians at St. Paul Seminary in Crafton, Pa. 

for 2014-2015, along with the rector and vice-rector. Try to see if 

you can find me in this group, lol. This photo, by Chip Kelson, appeared

in this week's edition of Pittsburgh Catholic newspaper.

It has been about a month and half since I entered the seminary. People have asked what the life of a seminarian is like. The seminary is a period of testing and formation; it is a period in which one is nudged beyond one's comfort zone to see how well one holds up under circumstances that are not always completely under one's control. But there are deeper reasons why seminarians need your prayers.

To devote one's life to doing the work of God is a challenge. Whether one's ministry is "secular" or within a religious community, it is important to learn how to live and work within a community; and how to be attentive to the needs an concerns of other people, rather than being self-indulgent and pampering oneself. Life in the seminary should prepare a person for this challenge.

There are four elements of seminary life: human formation, intellectual formation, spiritual formation and pastoral formation. Life in the seminary should cultivate humility, fortitude, perseverance and obedience. Each of these areas of formation require your prayers.

Human Formation: In order to be a good priest you must first be a good human being. Human formation pertains to development of empathetic skills -- the sensitivity of the heart -- and the capacity to live in community.

Intellectual Formation: The priest is always learning and always teaching. Intellectual formation is strengthened by studying philosophy so that one will be able to analyze and synthesize, contrast and compare ideas that are essential building blocks of theology.

Spiritual Formation: A priest must have a deep interior life of prayer. The seminarian has a rich opportunity to develop one's prayer life. The life of the priest must be informed by liturgical and contemplative prayer.

Pastoral Formation: A priest must be prepared to attend to people's needs -- including their spiritual, intellectual and human needs. A priest, and especially a pastor, must be a lover of souls and is defined by care for the souls of his parishioners.

The writings of and about Saint John Marie Vianney provide a solid overview of what is required of pastors, even in the 21st century -- a life that seminary should prepare tomorrow's priests to live. I have found Reflection on Priestly Life: In The Footsteps of St. John Vianney, The Cure of Ars, edited by Leonardo Sapienza, an extremely rich source to study.

One will not be able to live the life of a seminarian, not to mention living as a member of a religious order, a brother, deacon or a priest, without living in intimate and continuous communion with Christ. There is nothing that we can do, in terms of the nature of this calling, on our own power, and there is no room for lukewarm commitments or mediocrity. We need your prayers.

My Father's Influence on My Spiritual Formation

My Father’s Influence

My family background and early life experience may be described as being church-based, with significant interfaith and ecumenical exposure. The ministry has played a large role within both my father and my mother’s sides of the family. My paternal great grandfather immigrated to the United States, in the 19th century, from the West Indies. He built A.M.E. churches up the coast of Florida, eventually settling further inland, in Gainesville. Since that time, each generation on my father’s side of the family has produced an A.M.E. minister. Both of my father’s parents died when he and his two brothers were children, so the boys were often rotated between the homes of relatives in Florida, and were eventually sent to a boarding school using some of the money from a trust fund their parents established before they died.

My parents had three sons, but the youngest was stillborn. I was the second to be born and I have an older brother. Although both of my parents eventually became academics and taught at the University of Pittsburgh, both my brother and I grew up with an awareness that one of us should enter the clergy, as each generation had done that preceded us. My parents never really pressured either of us on this matter, but my father brought us with him as he made the rounds, performing his ministerial duties along with the work he was doing at the university. Every Sunday, of course, my father presided over the services at church and we were quizzed on his sermons as he took the family out to dinner. In this environment my brother and I could not help but to feel close to my father’s ministry.

As a minister, my father always had an eye on the “competition”. He learned from watching other clergymen at work. While my mother listened to Billy Graham’s sermons, my father studied the speaking style of Martin Luther King and the delivery of Bishop Fulton Sheen. My father was constantly reading up on ecumenical and interfaith theological arguments, particularly as they affected the civil rights movement. He also stayed on top of the literature to make the gospel more accessible to young people. It was through my father, and his circle of ecumenical and interfaith friends in the clergy, that we learned about changes that were occurring in the Catholic Church, as a result of Vatican II, and attempts in mainstream Protestant churches and Jewish synagogues to respond to the challenges of war, poverty and prejudice.

(From my Spiritual Autobiography)

People Who Instructed and Inspired Me Along the Path of My Journey to Faith

One of the trends of thought among secularists is a form of radical indivIdualism in which families and the community are seen as unnecessary baggage that prevent the individual from living a full life. There is even an element of exaggerated individualism in the theology of some Christian groups that proselytize on university campuses. They call people to individual conversion experiences while neglecting the importance of spiritual formation within the community of the universal body of Christ. I have been blessed, over the years, not to have fallen, or remained for long, in the trap of Christian or secular individualism. I have had the guidance, encouragement, instruction and support from many clergy and lay ministers from within the church, most of whom are still living but a few who have since passed away.

I appreciate the spiritual direction, early on, that I have received from Oratorian Fathers Drew Morgan, Michael Darcy and, particularly, David Abernethy, who inspired me toward a deeper prayer life and put me on the road to Lectio Divina, Eucharistic Adoration, and praying the liturgy of the hours. Father David also encouraged my occasional writing in the Newman Center’s Catholic Anchor magazine. This was later followed by the example and instruction of Fathers Donald Breier and Thomas Burke at St. Paul Cathedral, who encouraged me to step up and serve in the parish as a Eucharistic minister, a lector and as a member of the parish pastoral council. I am thankful that our scheduler at the Cathedral, Pat Pope, keep me engaged in the lay ministry through thick and thin. I also appreciate Father Breier for encouraging my occasional writing on spiritual matters in the Pittsburgh Catholic newspaper. I was inspired by the early morning Masses and homilies of Fathers Brian Welding and Daniele Vallecorsa at the Cathedral, and was frequently challenged to “shape up”, during confession, by Father Kim Shreck, whom many of the parishioners affectionately referred to “God’s marine.”

Other priests who have given me inspiration and guidance over the years include Fathers Lou Vallone and Carmen D’Amico, when I was a parishioner at St. Benedict the Moor; and Father Kris Stubna, who is currently the pastor at St. Paul Cathedral. Conversations with Father Joe Carr, whom I knew long before he began discerning his call to the priesthood, and Father Barry O’Leary were very helpful in providing me with insights into the special challenges and blessings awaiting older men who consider the calling. While Father David Abernethy introduced me to the Liturgy of the Hours, Father Barry taught me how to pray using the Breviary. Father David Taylor, of St. Charles Lawanga parish, has always offered his encouragement and support as have the Knights and Ladies of Peter Claver in Pittsburgh.

I received early encouragement to discern a calling from Father William Clancey, at the Oratory, 35 years ago, shortly after my conversion to Catholicism, and, more recently from Father Joe Freedy and Deacon Toby Gaines. I particularly appreciate the time Father Joe has taken to counsel me about the process of discernment and his encouragement to listen to voice of Christ. I also received consistent encouragement and support, at critical moments, from Father Joseph Mele.

I have received encouragement in the form of opportunities to grow through service to the church by working with Dr. Mary Ann Gubish, in the Office for Parish Advisory Councils, from Greta Stokes Tucker, in the Department of Black Catholics, Ethnic and Cultural Communities, and from Dr. Veronica Morgan Lee in the race and reconciliation interparish committee. I was introduced to the inspiring and insightful work of Father Luigi Giussani and the Catholic lay movement, Communion and Liberation, through Father Michael Roche, while he was still a seminarian. I am forever grateful to Matthew Craig, my brother in faith, for leading me back to the church during a critical period in my life, following my mother’s passing and taught me essential Catholic prayers. Matthew has also encouraged me, repeatedly, to write about my conversion experience. I sorely miss John Hannigan, whom I worked with on social service, social justice and human development issues and who knew my father.

One of the strongest and most consistent sources of support and inspiration has come from Bishop David Zubik, with whom I have served during the Good Friday liturgy at the Cathedral for the past six years, and who took time, during a discernment retreat in Ohio in December of 2010, to meet with each participant individually.

These good men and women of faith, and many others, have helped my formation through instruction, spiritual guidance, their living example and by encouraging me to walk through the doors to serve the church. They have all helped to nurture my spiritual growth and maturation.

(From my Spiritual Autobiography)

What Are the Challenges Outside of, and Within, the Catholic Church?

Because I have spent much of my time, during the past 36 years, on university campuses I have seen and felt the effects of changes in the intellectual climate in higher education first hand. I have seen and felt the effects of the cultural shifts that have removed the process of reasoning from its grounding in faith. During a time when Western culture is increasingly characterized by relativism, materialism, secularism, and radical individualism the church stands out as a sign of contradiction. It awakens people from a false identity, as beasts or machines, and calls them back to their humanity. Frequently, however, the witness that the church provides is not received or is not understood. People have been taught that it is important to study technology, but not ethics; that it is important to be able to affect outcomes, but not to grasp meaning; and that it is important to have empirical knowledge, but not knowledge of the spirit. The consequences of this cultural relativism, this indifference toward inquiry into meaning, are the poor, wandering souls that one might see staggering down Forbes Avenue on any Thursday, Friday or Saturday night, resembling sheep without a shepherd. As a teacher I have been struck by how often my students have expressed the emptiness they feel, and how -- even if they anticipate having a good job with a steady income, they feel that their lives are adrift and that their relationships are devoid of meaning.

I’ll never forget the time when, as an undergraduate, I had an office meeting with one of my professors about film criticism. When she found out that I had converted to Catholicism she yelled at me for the better part of an hour. She was trying to convince me that Catholicism was irrational, but she never gave me a chance to respond. Her tirade was loud enough that several other faculty members looked in on us to see who had disturbed her so violently. The experience was memorable not so much because I was intimidated by it -- I had grown accustomed, by that time, to having contrarian views in the classroom -- the experience made an impression on me because I began to realize how deeply ingrained hatred of the sense of the sacred had become in institutions of higher education, and how emotionally invested critics of religion had become in their secularist and relativist worldviews. Although I somewhat understood the nature and the challenge of institutionalized ideologies that were anti-religious, I was unsure of how to respond. How does the church re-evangelize its people in a cultural environment that is so intolerant of the church’s teaching? How does the church equip students with the tools they will need in order to inquire into anything more than empirical truths? What criteria should one use when one is looking for a more comprehensive truth? How would one recognize that truth when one encountered it?

Of course, my experience with the rise of the intolerant secularist ideologies in higher education occurred before a series of scandals that rocked the church from within were made public. The church’s internal scandals, and the insatiable appetite of popular media to exploit them, has created an opening for long-standing critics to attack the church and to try to shame it into silence. Needless to say, this situation has created a much harder environment for the church to present the face of Christ to humanity -- but this is a situation that we have brought upon ourselves. The scandals have added to the skepticism and cynicism of the general public. They have provided ammunition for those who have argued that there is no reason for a person to commit themselves to anything beyond self-gratification and a utilitarian approach to others. People now have an excuse to turn inward. The scandals have reinforced the notion that religion should, at best, be a private matter and that its voice should not be heard in the public arena. The church must root out the corruption within it, primarily to help the victims of abuse to heal, but also because these scandals weaken the church’s ability to proclaim the Gospel. The world is looking for the answers that only the church -- through its apostolic ministry, its liturgy, its sacraments and the communion of the universal body of Christ -- can give, but they are reluctant to trust an institution that they believe does not live by its own teachings.

The Church is going through troubling times, but there have been troubling times in the past and there will -- no doubt -- be troubling times in the future. Anyone who has read the accounts of these scandals should be disturbed by them, but to be scandalized is not to be undone. The church is a divinely inspired institution, but it is run by people who are not perfect. There are no solutions in turning one’s back on the church. My personal experience has been that every time I have searched for answers to the meaning of life, outside of the church, I have come up empty. I have vainly sought solutions in technology, politics, the academy, economics, and popular culture. There were no answers to be found in any of these things once Christ was removed from the core of them. I have spoken with many others who have experienced the same thing. As imperfect as the church is, each time I have searched for answers outside of it I found myself coming back and saying, along with Simon Peter, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

(From my Spiritual Autobiography)