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By Erika Anderson, Staff Writer
This is the second in a six-part series on seminaries where
priests of the Archdiocese of Atlanta prepare.
LATROBE, Pa.—Kevin Hargaden’s first view of his seminary
was from the window of a propeller plane.
Along with future archdiocesan priest Michael Heninger, and former
vocations director Msgr. Don Kenny, he looked down upon the campus of St.
Vincent Seminary, taking in its beauty and anticipating the years there that
would form him as a priest.
Now a parochial vicar at St. Joseph’s Church in Marietta,
Father Hargaden and Father Heninger, a parochial vicar at St. Pius X Church in
Conyers, were in the first class of archdiocesan seminarians to be sent to St.
Vincent Seminary in 1994.
Msgr. David Talley, vocations director until last June, said that
the archdiocese began hearing many positive comments about the seminary’s
new rector, Father Thomas Acklin, OSB. Msgr. Talley had heard of Father Acklin
while studying in Rome, Italy, and, on his return to Atlanta, spoke to Msgr.
Kenny and Archbishop John F. Donoghue, who had “heard the same
thing,” Msgr. Talley said.
“The school was good and it had all the good things we were
looking for, plus the rector was outstanding,” Msgr. Talley said.
Thus began the relationship between the Archdiocese of Atlanta and
St. Vincent Seminary in western Pennsylvania. Currently seven men from the
archdiocese are in formation at St. Vincent and Archbishop Donoghue sits on the
Board of Regents. The future priests graduate with a master’s degree.
Father Hargaden, who was ordained in 1999, recalls his enthusiasm
on the first day of seminary.
“To me, it was like a big adventure—going up
North,” said Father Hargaden, a native of Milledgeville. “I was
excited. I had been wanting to (go to seminary) for a while and I thought
‘wow, now I’m here.’ It was all quite exciting.”
In the four years that Father Hargaden would spend at St. Vincent,
he would be forced to learn a new way of thinking, which was challenging for
the Georgia Tech graduate who holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics.
“Becoming a liberal arts student was difficult,” he
said. “Studying philosophy and reading books without pictures and
discussing them—that was a pretty tough transition for me. It took me the
first year to get used to it.”
Father Eric Hill, a parochial vicar at Transfiguration Church in
Marietta who was ordained in 2000, said he was nervous when he first left for
St. Vincent.
“It was just fear of the unknown,” he said. “Within
two to three weeks I was just fine. The community was great and very
welcoming.”
The fourth oldest Catholic seminary in the country, St. Vincent is
a seminary shaped by the Benedictine heritage of its founders. The St. Vincent
Archabbey/Basilica was built by Benedictine monks at the turn of the 20th
century. The seminary itself was founded in 1846 by Archabbot Boniface Wimmer,
whose intent was to prepare a sufficient number of priests to minister to the
spiritual needs of the people. Sharing a campus with the monks, the seminarians
are exposed to the Benedictine heritage of regulated daily liturgical prayer
combined with intellectual and manual labor. More than 2,400 priests have been
ordained after completing formation at St. Vincent.
Also on the campus is St. Vincent’s College, a Catholic,
coeducational college that serves 1,200 students. The St. Vincent Basilica
Parish, with about 1,500 families, also shares the campus with the seminary,
monastery and college.
Having only served as director of vocations for three months,
Father Serge Ward is in the process of traveling to each of the seminaries and
familiarizing himself with their charisms. As vocations director, Father Ward,
along with an archdiocesan Application Review Committee, chooses a seminary to
complement each seminarian, based on his background, personality and gifts.
Seminaries in Rome, Italy, New Orleans, Maryland, Florida and Massachusetts are
among those utilized in addition to St. Vincent.
Father Ward’s impression of St. Vincent was formed as a young
seminarian at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md. He remembers
his experiences at St. Vincent and with its seminarians, when he visited the
campus and was touched by its spirituality.
“You could just see how strong the Benedictine tradition was
in the formation of the men,” he said, remembering walking through a
graveyard where it seemed like hundreds of monks were buried.
“The spiritual effect on the place itself is in its history
and the number of nurtured vocations that had lived, worked and even died
there.”
The unique atmosphere of St. Vincent had a significant influence
on Father Hargaden’s years at the seminary.
“It was very helpful to me, just out of college. Having the
standard coed college campus there helped remind me where I came from and
created a sense of normalcy amidst all the new things that seminary life was
challenging me with,” he said. “At the same time, at the monastery, I
was able to witness the stages of Religious life and get a glimpse of the
beauty of the priesthood. From the priests who are —‘I’m
healthy, I’m strong, I’m ministering,’ — to the ones who
are elderly and decrepit and can only lie in the bed and pray—to see that
gave me a sense of what was ahead.”
John Matejek, an archdiocesan seminarian in formation at St.
Vincent, said that having the college, the parish and the monastery on the same
campus is helpful in making the transition from an academic to a ministerial
setting.
“You are able to see the church function as monastic life,
you have the adolescents and young adults preparing for their professional
careers, and you have the basilica parish,” he said. “You sort of
have a little bit of everything. You get the flavoring of lay life, seminary
life and parish life. It’s easy to take book learning and put it into an
everyday perspective.”
Father Hill thinks seminarians in general, no matter their
respective seminaries, could benefit from even more parish interaction.
Father Hill, who said he “really enjoyed seminary life,”
said that he thinks that seminarians could benefit by taking three years of
classes, and then serving as deacons or as unordained ministers in the church
for their last year of seminary.
“They need to really get that experience of parish
life,” he said.
Father Hargaden said that there are some things that academic life
cannot fully explain. Though the seminarians take classes that teach them how
to hear confessions, how to celebrate Mass and other sacraments, nothing can be
like the experience of celebrating sacraments after ordination.
“You can run through the mechanisms (as a seminarian), but I
don’t think that ever fully touches the mystery that is present,” he
said. “The mechanism is only a mere shadow of the beauty of the real deal
. . . The most sensitive and beautiful parts of the ministry are things you
cannot do in a practicum.”
Matejek, 53, who was active in Chicago politics for 21 years,
assists a priest every Tuesday night in an adult Bible study as part of a
practicum.
“I think that the practicum has been the greatest opportunity
I’ve had as a seminarian to learn spirituality,” he said. “As a
priest, especially in the Bible Belt, I feel I need to be trained more in
Scripture.”
As an older seminarian at a seminary where the median age is 32 to
37, Matejek said he fits in well at St. Vincent.
“You have a cross section here with guys from 22 to 55 and
56, so I’m not the oldest,” he said. “The community has been
very kind to me.”
Matejek believes that he can contribute a unique perspective to
class discussions, having lived as a Catholic before the Second Vatican
Council.
“At the same time, I get a lot of good out of the discussions
with the younger guys, hearing their perspectives,” he said.
Matejek, who will be ordained as a transitional deacon next March
at his home parish of St. Catherine of Siena, Kennesaw, is grateful to be
studying at the seminary, where he believes academics come second.
“The focus here is on spirituality,” he said. “We
learn to pray first. For me (St. Vincent’s) has been a fantastic
experience. If I know how to pray and I have a good relationship with my Lord
and his people who I am going to serve, then everything else will come
easily.” |
