Ordination is a recommitment for some soon-to-be priests
Benjamin Barr thought about becoming a priest as early as second grade, when he watched his parish priest, the Rev. Francis Frazer, at work. He loved the idea of working with people in a parish.
“You’re involved in people’s lives from all of the highs and all of the lows, and you help them experience God’s presence in all of those moments, whether it’s the sadness of a funeral or the joy of a wedding or baptism,” he said.
Mr. Barr, 35, is one of five seminarians who will be ordained Saturday as priests in the Diocese of Pittsburgh. The men range in age from late 20s to mid-50s, they were students or teachers or professionals before they became priests, and they were educated everywhere from Pittsburgh to Boston to Rome.
But they all started their priestly formation at St. Paul Seminary in East Carnegie, and they returned there this week for a period of prayer and reflection before their ordinations.
For Mr. Barr, Holy Orders — the Catholic sacrament in which seminarians become priests — is the culmination of more than a decade of education, decisions and doubt. He decided to go into seminary right out of high school and lived there while taking classes at Duquesne University. After two years, he began an advanced course in philosophy in Washington, D.C.
The five men are becoming priests in a time of upheaval for Catholics in Pittsburgh, as the number of priests shrink and the diocese plans to consolidate or close many parishes.
But health problems forced Mr. Barr to take medical leave, and after another year he left the seminary, returning to Beaver County to run a series of grocery stores.
“There’s an interest in seeing whether or not you can do something else, be successful at something else, make it, if you will, your world,” he said this week at St. Paul Seminary.
He stayed involved with his local parish, helping out with the youth group and distributing communion when the pastor asked him to. But the thought of being a priest never left Mr. Barr, and after several years, he began to consider going back.
“There was really not a day that went by that I didn’t think about it, but just thought, no, not now,” he said.
Around the same time, two other former seminarians were also thinking about the priesthood again.
David Green, 55, who grew up in the South Hills, trained to be a priest for several years as a young man but left to become an elementary school teacher, working at Catholic and public schools. After more than two decades, he decided to translate the service of teaching to the service of priesthood, entering a seminary in Boston for second-career priests.
“God calls people at different times,” Mr. Green said.
Dan Waruszewski, 29, of West View, entered seminary for the first time in high school, living at St. Paul while taking classes at Duquesne University. But after a few years he left — he said he had a negative experience at St. Paul and needed to address anxiety issues and explore his life. He worked in IT for a few years and joined a missionary group, running retreats for students.
One day during that missionary year, he and a youth were joking about a poster asking men to consider the priesthood; the advertisement looked like a poster for “The Matrix,” but with priest’s cassocks instead of trench coats. The ad’s slogan was, “Will you answer the call?” Well, asked a priest standing nearby, completely serious: Will you? A few months later, Mr. Waruszewski decided he would.
For Mr. Barr, the push to go back to seminary came from the people around him. Because of his continuing involvement with his parish, fellow seminarians, now priests, began to ask him when he was coming back. His mother told him he looked happiest when he was doing work for the church. At his grocery store, a woman who worked in human resources told him that with his ability to talk to people, his current job didn’t make sense.
When he finally decided to go back, in 2011, Mr. Barr said the people around him seemed to rejoice more than he did. The priests he went to seminary with congratulated him; the HR woman told him going back made more sense.
After five or more years of training, the five seminarians are back at St. Paul, resting, praying, hearing lectures from older priests and working out things like family receptions. On Saturday, they’ll make vows and profess obedience to Bishop David Zubik, who will consecrate them. They’ll be given vestments, the clothes of a priest — Mr. Barr’s childhood pastor, Father Frazer, will “vest” him — and they’ll be able to say Mass, hear confessions and anoint the sick.
The new priests will be assigned parishes at their ordinations on Saturday, though two of them — Thomas Gramc and Alek Schrenk — will go back to Rome in the fall to finish studies at pontifical colleges that they began four years ago.
They become priests in a time of upheaval for Catholics in Pittsburgh, as the number of priests shrink and the diocese plans to consolidate or close many parishes. More broadly, Mr. Schrenk said his decision has often been met with skepticism — problems within the church, such as sexual abuse scandals, and the decline of a “Catholic culture” in general.
“The question now is, ‘Why would you want to do this?’ instead of, ‘What led you to do this?’” he said. “What that’s done is, the guys who are approaching this are in some way, even in their own understated way, radical.”
What priests can do, Mr. Waruszewski said, is try to offer people fulfillment in God and in the church — an idea he feels is radical.
“We can say we’re listening to what’s going on in their life and perhaps we can even help them with some advice or point them if they need to to a psychologist, but let them know if they’re loved that they’re valued, and their value isn’t based off an election or their looks or their social status,” he said. “Their value is because they’re a son or a daughter of God.”