Twenty-Five Years - Twenty-Five Priests!
(Winter 1997-1998 Newsletter)
Roughly 12% of Thomas Aquinas College alumni
pursue vocations to the priestly and religious life. While
not all have been called to take final vows, many have. In
fact, 25 men have been ordained to the priesthood in the first
25 years of the College's existence.
The numbers are almost evenly divided between
those who pursued vocations before and those who pursued them
after graduation from the College. All but 5 priests are members
of 12 different religious orders or congregations. Of those
who are professed members of a religious order, 5 are part
of eremitic or cloistered communities (Cistercians, Carthusians,
Benedictines, Maronite Monks, and Benedictine Camaldolese
Hermits). The Legionaries of Christ claims the most alumni
priests with 5, while the Oblates of the Virgin Mary follows
closely with 4.
Almost all of these priests found their vocations
at the College. Fr. Matthew O'Donnell ('88) a parish priest
with care of 4,000 families in Tracy, California, says that
his daily Mass attendance and growth in his prayer life at
Thomas Aquinas College "played a pivotal role" in
forming his religious vocation: "TAC gave me the true
freedom to follow Christ joyfully."
Fr. Michael "Francis" Gloudeman,
O. Praem. ('84) says he will never forget the clear and deep
call he felt to be a priest, during one of his daily holy
hours in front of the Blessed Sacrament at the College. Fr.
Francis - the "bicycle priest" - was the focus of
a January cover story in Our Sunday Visitor, because
of his unique dedication to helping home-schooling families
with catechesis near St. Michael's Norbertine Abbey in Silverado,
California.
Many, like Fr. Francis, credit their vocations
to more than just their exposure to the sacramental life at
the College. "More than several times since graduating,
I have caught myself reflecting about where I would be without
the convictions which the College's education has rooted in
my intelligence, and in my heart," says Fr. Mark Bachmann,
O.S.C. ('82), whose vocation is the monastic life. "How
much easier it is," he says, "to dominate the little
trials of life when one remembers from Freshman philosophy
that a passion is just a disposition and therefore is bound
to pass - or from Junior year, that true happiness lies in
activity, in the use of our faculties."
The habit of thinking is what Fr. James Garceau,
CRIC ('78) values from his college education. "At TAC,
we learned to go to the sources to find truth. I believe that
a priest today must stay close to the Source of his priesthood,
Jesus Christ, the eternal High Priest." As he says, "I
am thankful to the College for guiding me through texts that
helped to strengthen my faith, and so disposed me better to
respond to God's call in the priesthood."
Fr. Sean "Anthony" Kramer ('86),
echoes the same, living as a contemplative monk with the Congregation
of Maronite Monks in Bethlehem, South Dakota. "The writings
of St. Thomas and the other doctors and Fathers are a principal
source of nourishment for my life as a contemplative monk.
Without the education I received at Thomas Aquinas College,
much of this Catholic tradition would have remained a closed
book to me."
Father John Higgins, ('90) a Bronx parish
priest, sums up much of what others have found in living their
vocation: "People are hungering for the truth and my
education at Thomas Aquinas College helped me to become a
better servant of the Truth."
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