Priest From Oxnard to Be Honored for Life of Service

Father Carroll Laubacher was not the typical Oxnard farm boy.

Growing up in the 1930s, Laubacher found he was more interested in the Bible and Bach than in beans and sugar beets.

By the time he entered high school, young Laubacher had mastered three instruments and was devoted to the preaching of his uncle, the pastor of the Santa Clara Church in downtown Oxnard.

“When it came time to leave high school,” he recalled, “I was forced to choose between music and religion.

“It was one of the toughest decisions I’ve ever had to make, but in the end I went with the church,” he said.

“I went with the church--and I’m glad.”

Since making that decision, Laubacher’s work with the Jesuit order has taken him from the wineries of Los Gatos to the academic halls in Cambridge, Mass.

He has taught hymns under California redwoods and has ridden in patrol cars with the police squads of Hollywood.

Today, the 67-year-old pastor of Our Lady of Sorrows Church in Santa Barbara, who still feels most comfortable with his feet resting on the pedals of an organ, will be honored at his parish for a half century of service with the Jesuit order.

Laubacher works only 30 miles from the Rose Avenue chapel where he prayed as a boy, but his Santa Barbara parish is a lifetime away.

Born in 1926, Laubacher and his eight brothers and sisters grew up on a ranch at the corner of Channel Islands Boulevard and Victoria Avenue. At the time, he recalled, it was common to see cowboys driving steers down dusty streets in downtown. “It was just a tiny cow town back then,” he said. “It’s grown a lot. I go down there now and I can’t even find my way around.”

As Laubacher grew up, his family became increasingly involved in city life. His maternal grandfather, Thomas Carroll, became a prominent builder, bringing the Pagoda to Plaza Park, building St. John’s Hospital, and the structure that today is the Carnegie Art Museum.

He also built a new Santa Clara Church at 3rd Street and E Street, where Laubacher’s uncle was the pastor.

In 1943, with his family firmly embedded in Oxnard life, Laubacher left to join the Jesuit order. He would not return home, even on holiday, for nearly a decade.

“Seminary was like boot camp,” he recalled. “I showed up there and didn’t know a blessed soul. They worked us to the bone.”

Joining the Jesuit order requires a vow of poverty, in addition to the priestly vows of chastity and obedience. This pathway to priesthood, Laubacher said, is longer and more grueling.

For Laubacher, seminary meant 13 years of in-depth study of Greek and Latin, history, philosophy and literature, in addition to religious teachings. There is almost total removal from the rest of the world, he said.

While Laubacher was receiving his training, much of the rest of the country was engrossed in World War II.

“In seminary we were not allowed to follow newspapers or magazines. We knew the war was going on, but not much beyond that,” he said.

“I can still remember the day in 1944 when the bells of our chapel rang. Something important was happening. It was a dark and gloomy day, and our master called us in to tell us, ‘We don’t know what it is, but something big is going on and I want you to pray for our troops.”

Laubacher learned later that his prayers were for the soldiers invading at Normandy.

Two days before Laubacher left the first phase of his seminary, the war ended.

After further study in Spokane, Wash., and a teaching job at Loyola High School in Los Angeles, Laubacher was ordained a priest.

Of the nine students who had entered the seminary with him, only one other had successfully completed the training.

During seminary he had been permitted only one hour of musical study each month. But in 1956, shortly after he was ordained, Laubacher’s superiors allowed him to enroll at the New England Conservatory of Music to play the organ.

With 13 years of academic study under his belt, Laubacher dashed toward a doctorate, only to be pulled out of school by the Jesuit order one year shy of the degree.

“My superior at the time assured me I would have the chance to return and complete that final year, but he died suddenly, and my dream of a doctorate died with him.”

Laubacher’s next post was at a church he liked to call “the supernatural supermarket.”

As associate pastor at Blessed Sacrament on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, Laubacher witnessed firsthand the social revolution of the 1960s and 1970s.

“We dealt with people from all over creation at that church,” he recalls. “Hollywood was exciting and crazy.”

Laubacher said he can spin stories for hours about the lost souls and lunatics of Sunset Strip, but he is most animated when recalling his work as divisional chaplain for the Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollywood division.

“I used to ride around with the supervisor because it was the best way to see the police on a regular basis,” he said. “I saw a lot more than I bargained for.”

Laubacher, a tall man with a soft voice and gentle demeanor, was out of his element as he watched police arrest prostitutes and drug pushers, from the front seat of a squad car.

“I remember one time the car I was in got a call as we were heading down Sunset. He pulls into this driveway, and I’m in the front seat and I look up and there is this enormous yellow and black sign that says ‘Live Nude Dancing.’

“I’m sitting there in front of the sign wondering what I’m going to do if a parishioner spots me there and says, ‘Hey father, is everything OK? Are you in trouble?’

“Fortunately, that never happened,” he said. “But I must say, I really saw the seamier side of Hollywood.”

As Laubacher was watching the social changes around him, he was also confronting a serious metamorphosis within his own church.

Laubacher sees the period of change in the 1960s as the slow death of the church as he knows it.

During the 1960s, several orders of the church decided to discard their uniforms. Some restructured so there were no superiors. And on top of that, Laubacher said with contempt, even the music was changing.

“Everything went to what I call religious cowboy music,” he said. “All this guitar stuff and what not.

“Many of the orders, especially the ones that were so good at teaching, are dying out,” he said. “At the end of this generation they will be a part of history.”

Signs of that are evident even at Laubacher’s current post in Santa Barbara. The average age of Laubacher and his four associates is 70.

Laubacher attributes the change to a generational shift in values.

“Nobody wants to commit themselves to anything for very long,” he said. “When you join the Jesuit order, you are making a commitment for life. The whole idea of a longtime commitment has somehow become foreign to this generation.”

Regardless, Laubacher said he will accept the changes both within the parish and around it. His Santa Barbara church sits adjacent to an AIDS hospice and across the street from a homeless shelter. And most of the week he has to keep the church doors locked because it is filled with valuable artwork and priceless stained glass. It has endured several recent bouts of vandalism.

“We have to live in a world of what is, not of what was,” he said. “You can’t play ostrich.”

But that does not prevent Laubacher from maintaining tradition in his own way.

“Father Laubacher is a very dedicated priest. He is truly devoted to his work and believes deeply in what he is doing,” said Father Martin Brewer, an associate pastor at Our Lady of Sorrows. “He brings very special skills to this church.”

Among those skills, of course, is Laubacher’s musical ability.

His Sunday services are filled with a wide range of classical organ music, some of which he composed.

To Laubacher, combining music nd the church service comes naturally, said Sandi Ward, the church’s music director.

Looking back on his life, Laubacher cannot help but agree.

“Those have always been my two loves,” he said as he leaned back in his office chair, classical music playing softly from the stereo. “I am quite pleased with the way things have turned out.”