Franciscan Way of Life Tested : Executive Swaps Suit for Black Tunic of Novice Friar

On a typical morning two years ago, Dan Pacholec would have donned a blue business suit, wolfed down a bowl of Wheaties and driven to his job in retail.

Now on a typical morning, Friar Dan dons a black tunic and belts it with a cord knotted three times, to symbolize poverty, chastity and obedience.

He slips outside, where the mists rise off the corn fields. With a long rosary suspended from his waist, he steps to the sound of gently clicking beads.

Friar Pacholec is a novice, a new member of the Franciscan order. He and eight fellow novices are spending the year at the St. Joseph Cupertino Friary and Novitiate. They live as a community, study the Franciscan way of life, and help AIDS victims and the homeless in Baltimore.

It is a year apart from friends and family, a year to grapple with life as a friar before any vows must be taken.

The path is not an easy one. Statistically, only one in three novices will persevere in their “calling” to the religious life.

Life at the friary--the Franciscans bristle at the word monastery for they do not live in retreat--is an odd mixture of medieval and modern, mystical and mundane.

Pacholec drinks Diet Coke, watches movies on the communal VCR and cuts the vast lawn with a new riding mower.

Emulates St. Francis

Yet in his every act he strives to emulate St. Francis of Assisi, who renounced his life as a knight and a fabric merchant to found the religious order in 1221. A man of meditation as well as preaching, he sought solitude at times in the mountain hermitages of central Italy.

The friary is that kind of pastoral place, though with a booming county around it, the surroundings have grown more noisy.

Father Bart Karwacki, now the novice director, recalled hiking several miles to the friary in Clarksville in 1965, when he was a novice.

“We were lucky if we saw one car,” he said. Now, “I wouldn’t even attempt it.”

When the friary was built 60 years ago, it was a working farm in a community of farmers. There were no teen-agers driving Trans Ams, no shopping malls, none of the conspicuous consumption that has become a cliche of the region’s richest suburb. Still, Karwacki said, the changing atmosphere has had little affect on the novices, who renounce their need for such luxuries and rarely venture off the friary grounds.

At 31, Pacholec is the oldest novice in the group, though several others had careers in everything from nursing to computer programming.

His was a “typical Catholic upbringing” in the factory town of Holyoke, Mass., where his father worked as a die maker. The local parish was Franciscan, and he admired the friars’ balanced commitment to prayer and community service.

At Amherst College in Massachusetts he joined the Christian Assn., studying the Bible and sharing prayer. His thesis compared two men’s discoveries of faith, one through intellect and one through emotion.

Move Delayed

Though he originally planned to become a friar after graduating in 1983, family concerns led him to delay the move.

Instead, he became a sales executive for Albert Steiger’s, the retail company for which he had worked since high school. As he climbed the corporate ladder, he did his best to uphold his convictions, renting a modest apartment, going to Mass and mingling work with counseling.

Yet the business atmosphere seemed wrong. One colleague, faced with a problem employee, would say, “I think we should take a markdown on him.”

His relationship with his girlfriend also left him somehow unfulfilled, though his family thought she was perfect.

“It’s hard to find that one right person that fills all your needs, when you have a feeling deep down that you can give a lot--and maybe more than you can give to one person.”

So he left it all behind. He sold his beloved 1977 Plymouth Volare and, a year ago, enrolled at a seminary in Granby, Mass., spending a year of religious preparation there before coming to this friary.

Now, practically all his possessions are shared. The Franciscan notion of poverty does not require rags and thin soup; rather, the idea is that total dependence on God reduces the need for material wealth.

Pacholec’s narrow room contains a single bed, a desk, a small bookshelf with writings by St. Francis, a few Christian music cassettes and a miniature Amherst College pennant.

Now, his emotional support comes from the group, and from God.

Prayers Open Day

His day with the novices begins at 8 with morning prayers. The male voices recite the prayers with perfect unanimity, never stumbling, their hands folded quietly in their laps.

“Peace be with you,” they say, hugging their brothers. “Welcome,” they tell the stranger in their midst.

After a breakfast of cold cereal, the novices file into class taught by Karwacki. A square-jawed New Jersey native, he is frank and down-to-earth, a veteran of years as a high school guidance counselor and track coach.

He lectures about making a commitment to the Franciscans, which is not so different from marriage. To succeed, both must be freely and knowledgeably chosen. Yet ultimately, no one has any idea what commitment will bring down the road, he says.

“Nobody lives happily ever after.”

To the Franciscans, chastity means more than merely abstaining from sex. Linked with the vow of obedience, it means being willing to sever bonds with friends and fellow friars. Often the friars are asked to move to a new assignment, sometimes after only a year.

As Pacholec put it, ultimately you end up falling in love with God. “It’s hard not having it be a physical person,” he said, but “that’s the relationship that’s always there.”

Midday prayer follows class, and then there is lunch (grayish beef sandwiches) and a two-hour work period. While most of the novices help landscape an herb garden with radiating paths, Pacholec, in blue jeans, mows the vast lawn.

The complex sits on a 250-acre estate that once belonged to Charles Carroll, a wealthy patriot and the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence.

The stone main building is a scaled-down version of the friary in Assisi, Italy, the town where St. Francis spent his life. A dramatic structure of arcades, clay roof tiles and a central fountain, it has gorgeous views of the countryside.

The smaller building where the novices live dates to 1830, and was renovated by last year’s novices. Karwacki is a big believer in manual labor, saying it diffuses tension.

Time for Run

After work period, the novices have free time, when Pacholec usually lifts weights or goes for a run. Then there is evening prayer, followed by dinner and an hour of solitude.

At night, the novices might rent a video or sit in the kitchen and chat over chocolate cake. Pacholec goes to sleep about 10:30 or 11, the earliest in his life, he says, and he sleeps soundly.

If Pacholec completes the year, he will take simple vows, which entail a three-year commitment. That will be followed by years of theology training, the taking of solemn vows and ultimately the priesthood.

But Karwacki advises the novices not to predict the turns their lives will take. “You might find yourself a honey,” he says. “You might be a lot happier. That might be your calling.”

Even Pacholec says he “can’t say beyond a doubt that I’ll be a priest in 10 years,” he says.

Pacholec feels he has chosen the right path, living, as closely as possible, the way Jesus taught his disciples to live.

Is he happy?

Beaming, he replies, “Very.”