A Higher Calling : Diocese of Orange Looking for a Few Good Men
WANTED: Single men, any age, for entry-level position with longstanding international concern. Low pay, long hours, limited wardrobe. Requires five, possibly eight years training. Must be fluent in Spanish. Obedience to superiors, celibacy a must. Rewards, incentives almost entirely intangible. Promotion slow or nonexistent. Preferred jobs not guaranteed.
Not the sort of ad that would make you want to chuck that Beverly Hills corporate law practice and dive right in, is it? Or put that career as a pro shortstop on permanent hold? Or say “thanks but no thanks” to medical school?
But that’s precisely what three Orange County men did. And right now, there are 92 others from the county like them working hard, and praying harder, hoping to fill that job. They look forward to it, they say, with greater fervor and anticipation than they have for any other event in their lives. For them, landing that job will be the realization of a dream, the beginning of what they see as an exalted future.
Sure it’s tough, they say. But they can’t see themselves being truly happy with anything other than ordination to the Roman Catholic priesthood.
“I grew up planning to be a doctor and to go to UCI for premed,” said Tim Freyer, 25, of Huntington Beach, who is now Father Tim Freyer, the result of his ordination early this month. “I wanted the nice house and the family and the luxuries. But at the end of my junior year at Huntington Beach High School, I decided I’d be much happier (being a priest). I’d thought that medicine was important in helping people, but I wanted to help the whole person, in this life and in the next.
“The best thing for me is that I’ve been able to follow the call of the Lord, and because of that, I’ve been able to experience a lot of love and friendship with the people I’ve worked and studied with. I could never be as happy doing anything else.”
Neither could Cirilo Flores, 40, of Costa Mesa, who gave up a Beverly Hills corporate law practice to study for the priesthood. Or Juan Hernandez, 28, of Santa Ana, a former semi-pro shortstop who hung up the spikes and glove in favor of a Roman collar and a breviary.
All three men are products of St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo, the only Catholic seminary in Southern California. It is a school for diocesan, or parish, priests, who are, said Father Daniel Murray, the director of vocations for the Diocese of Orange, “the general practitioners of the church.” Upon their ordinations, the new home-grown Orange County priests return to the county and are assigned to a parish here.
They are perhaps the most visible of the county’s priests, differing in their influence and duties from priests in specific religious orders who study at seminaries outside California, such as the Norbertines (who teach at Mater Dei and Santa Margarita high schools, maintain an abbey in El Toro and study theology in Rome), the Servites (who teach at Servite High School, do hospital chaplaincy work and have their seminary in St. Louis) or the various Trinity Missionaries, Jesuits, Dominicans, Franciscans and others.
The diocesan priest is the church’s Jack-of-all-trades. He celebrates daily Mass, hears confessions, performs baptisms, visits sick parishioners, helps organize bingo, trains altar boys, preaches sermons, conducts funerals and in general ministers to a specific flock.
In many locations throughout the country, the ranks of diocesan priests are thinning, and few young men are coming up to fill the jobs. However, Freyer and four other Orange County diocesan candidates were ordained June 10. That’s one more than the number of priests who were ordained on the same day in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the largest Catholic diocese in the nation. The Archdiocese of Boston, another large and traditional Catholic enclave, ordained only five this year.
But in Orange County, gains in religious vocations of all kinds are expected in the next few years, said Murray.
“I like to think that we have a lot of good priests who have provided good role models for the young people coming up to admire,” said Murray. “It also, I think, reflects the enthusiasm of Bishop Norman McFarland (bishop of the Diocese of Orange) for religious vocations. He’s been very outspoken about it.”
Seminarians also say they feel that the relative youth of the Diocese of Orange--it was formed in 1976--lends a kind of pioneering enthusiasm to the prospect of becoming a priest.
And in central Orange County in particular, priests are beginning to emerge from traditionally devout Vietnamese Catholic families. One of the five priests ordained this month was Joseph Nguyen, 25, a Vietnamese refugee who had early seminary training in Vietnam and who was graduated from St. John’s.
Whatever their motivation, however, the candidates for the diocesan priesthood in Orange County are faced with a long road. They cannot simply announce their desire for ordination and snap on the collar.
That’s where St. John’s comes in. The seminary, on a quiet hillside in Camarillo surrounded by citrus groves, has been turning out graduating classes of new diocesan priests for the southwestern United States for 50 years. On the wall of one of the dormitories are hung portraits of each class, and it is a fair bet that most current parish priests in Southern California can be found there. For example, the first bishop of the Diocese of Orange, William Johnson, appears in the class of 1944, and the current archbishop of Los Angeles, Roger M. Mahony, comes from the class of ’62.
There are actually two distinct parts of the seminary: the seminary college, which offers a four-year degree in philosophy to prospective priests who decide to pursue studies for the priesthood directly out of high school, and the theological seminary, a short walk down a hill from the college. The theological seminary requires another four years of study in such subjects as canon law, church history, homiletics (preaching), pastoral theology, Spanish and psychology.
(Candidates who have earned a college degree elsewhere must attend the college for one year of “pre-candidacy” studies in philosophy before being admitted to the seminary.)
During their time in the seminary, the candidates are elevated, successively, to the pre-ordination ranks of “reader” and “deacon,” and by the time they are ordained they will have earned either a master’s or a doctoral degree in divinity.
Candidates in Orange County must be recommended for seminary training by Father Murray, who has several meetings with each man. Most of the men who come to him to discuss a religious vocation will never enter seminary training, he said. Some students in the seminary college will drop out before going on to the theological seminary, but once the candidates enter their final four years at St. John’s the attrition rate is low, said Murray.
Most of the students live at the seminary during the school year, and participate in a daily routine that would be considered highly regimented at a secular college. A typical day begins with morning prayers at 7 a.m., classes until Mass at 12:10, followed by lunch and quiet time for afternoon prayer. Some afternoons and evenings are taken up with community service work, and most days will involve studying after dinner. It can be a demanding and sometimes difficult life, say the seminarians. But most of them, like Cirilo Flores, the former Beverly Hills lawyer, are exactly where they want to be.
“It came down to the bottom line that there had to be something more,” he said. “When I told people I knew that I wanted to be a priest, they wanted to know how much I’d be paid. And it was rather difficult, giving up the car and the condo, things like that. But I find that it’s very freeing not to be tied down to those things.”
So does Juan Hernandez, the former semi-pro shortstop who just completed his first year of theology at St. John’s after leaving his seminary studies for three years to pursue, among other things, his baseball career.
“I was quite comfortable,” he said, “making good money, living in my own place. But I found that I was missing something. I’m very glad I came back. This year is the best I’ve ever had in any school, all around. I feel that it has been very right for me to be here.”
How is the decision made? When does the realization come that nothing else will do? Does it arrive with a blinding flash?
Just the opposite, say the seminarians.
“I used to be kind of a goof-off, arrogant and self-centered” said Stephen Duffin, 26, a Fullerton resident who recently completed his second year of theology at St. John’s. “But that leaves you isolated and alone. For me, it was a gradual process of breaking down negative barriers. After the heady days of high school and the first couple of years of college, I still went to church, but it didn’t take top billing in my life. There was a big emptiness there. I got a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Cal State Fullerton, but I also took classes in philosophy and felt called to the priesthood.
“It’s not like I woke up one day and said, ‘Hey! I’ll be a priest.’ It’s more like one day you finally just say, ‘I have to address this.’ ”
Some, like Hernandez, take an initial run at it but find they have left something undone in the secular world.
“I found I loved baseball very, very much,” he said, “and I wanted to give it one last shot. I thought that time was a factor. I couldn’t always play baseball, but I could always be a priest.”
After graduating from St. John’s college, Hernandez returned to Orange County and joined a semi-pro team. He played for a year and a half, then worked at a succession of jobs, “looking for something that would really capture my interest.”
He decided to obtain a teaching credential. But while he was driving with a friend to UC Irvine to enroll in classes, he said, “all the time I was thinking about the priesthood again, and it seemed to be knocking on my door again. I wanted to get into the spiritual realm of people’s lives and in teaching I wouldn’t have been able to do that. I knew I had to reconsider my vocation.”
Steven Holtkamp, 24, a second-year seminarian from Santa Ana, grew up, in a sense, with the priesthood.
“My family was always very, very involved with the church,” he said, “and I worked in the rectory after hours during high school. There, you get to see the full range of what it means to be human. It really made me stop and think that priests were dealing with people at the base level--the most happy and tragic times in their lives.”
Like Holtkamp, who went to Mater Dei High School, many seminarians attended Catholic schools at one time in their lives and, said Father Murray, almost all were once altar boys. Freyer, however, attended public schools exclusively.
“My dad was a Lutheran who became a convert when I was in about the fifth or sixth grade,” said Freyer. “He got cancer when I was in the eighth grade, and I saw how much good the priests did for him and my family. They would come over for a home Mass, and that day was a big high for him. His whole disposition would change.”
However, said Freyer, such satisfying moments are not always part of the daily reality of either the priesthood or the seminary. And that realization, he said, sometimes comes hard.
“My vocation became stronger with time,” he said. “But there were times that I wondered if I could make it through the years. I didn’t doubt my vocation too much, although now and then I thought about what I could do if I left. Also, I’d see that the priests had shortcomings and that the (seminary) system wasn’t perfect, and that would get me discouraged sometimes.”
For Nguyen, the seminary could be difficult “because of the long training and the sometimes monotonous atmosphere. You’re always longing for something that’s ahead of you. You’re anxious to be a priest. You can get tired of school.”
Hernandez, a first-year theology student, said, “I have to say there are times when I still question (my vocation). It’s not something that one never asks again. It’s like marriage in that even when some people are married they may not be sure it’s right.”
But, said Duffin, reality can be a pleasant surprise.
“I had a naive picture of the seminary,” he said. “I thought I’d see guys with their heads in the clouds, floating around, all pious. But when I first came here I saw guys with Walkmans bopping around, and I said, ‘I can do that.’ It’s just normal guys doing normal things.”
Almost. The priestly promise of celibacy and their commitment to a life of relative poverty, say the seminarians, can weigh on them to differing degrees.
“I think the rewards of the friendship and the openness people have shown me means more to me now than money or a family,” said Freyer. “There’s a freedom in not having a wife or family that allows you to become part of others’ families.”
Duffin said celibacy “probably is easier for some guys than others. But what human beings need is intimacy, and you don’t give that up when you’re celibate. You channel all the passions and desires you have into all the good things they can bring.”
Flores said priests “are committing their lives for others. That’s a real basic understanding. People are going to be coming to you at all hours, all days. It’s a basic human fact, sexuality. But it can also be viewed as an adventure to be involved with people at so many intimate moments in their lives.”
Keeping the commitments, said Holtkamp, involves “remembering who’s in charge here. If your heart’s in it, it really isn’t a sacrifice.”
But, said Duffin, the priest-to-be must remember that he is, in effect, studying not to occupy a higher position, but to be demoted.
“With a lot of the attention that people give you, you can get swell-headed,” he said. “But you have to remember that when you’re ordained, you’re stepping down to be a servant of the people.”
The ordination is the payoff. And because it is a joyful and relatively rare ceremony, the church trots out the big cast, the bright vestments and puts on the big show that manages at the same time to be highly personal and intimate.
At this month’s ceremony at Holy Family Cathedral in Orange, the five new priests’ hands were anointed by Bishop McFarland, an estimated 150 priests from throughout the diocese laid hands on the young men’s heads and embraced them one by one, and several hundred of their family members and friends in the packed church finally applauded them enthusiastically.
Later in the parish hall, reception lines formed before each new priest, with family and friends offering congratulations and receiving the first blessings of each man’s new career.
“It’s living it up in the real sense,” said Nguyen. “Knowing you will be working with people and fulfilling a call that grows deeper within you.”
Freyer, who celebrated his first Mass at his home parish of SS. Simon and Jude Church in Huntington Beach the next day, said “the whole weekend (of the ordination) for me was beyond my wildest dreams. It was so great. It was a very spiritual time, a very humbling time, seeing so many people I’d met or worked with, and all this love just poured out on me.
“I’m still not able to absorb it all, even now.”