Ordination Class of 2006 - New Catholic Priests include twins, converts and some surprises

WASHINGTON (May 1, 2006)—The Ordination Class of 2006 includes a set of twins, grandfathers, former Protestant ministers, men of varied ethnic and national backgrounds, the father of a priest and the son of a deacon.

The twins, James and Joseph Campbell, 26, the youngest of a family of 13 children, will be ordained for the Diocese of Erie, Pennsylvania, with their classmate Marc Solomon. James studied at St. Vincent Seminary, Latrobe, Pennsylvania, and Joseph at North American College, Rome.

Another seminarian, Daniel Hendrickson, S.J., 35, who will be ordained a Jesuit priest, is also a twin and has an identical twin who also is a Jesuit.

Some ordinands are in their mid-twenties, such as John Paul Erickson, 26, of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, and Jason Vidrine, 24, of the Diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana. Others are well into second careers, such as John Dant, 66, of the Archdiocese of Louisville, who was a vice president for air operations for United Parcel Services, and Thomas Bartolomeo, 69, of the Diocese of Rockford, Illinois, whose career included work as a business owner, educator and candidate for political office.

A few have come into the church from other religions. Steven Rogers, 49, of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri, grew up a Southern Baptist. A few were in the ministry. Jeffrey Hopper, 48, of the Louisville Archdiocese, was an Episcopal priest. Leonard Klein, 60, of the Diocese of Wilmington, Delaware, who is married, is being ordained a priest after 30 years in the Lutheran ministry.

Family relationships influenced some. David Axtmann, 61, of the Diocese of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, has a son who already is a priest. Joseph Pins, of the Diocese of Des Moines, Iowa, found himself called to priesthood when he attended his father’s ordination to the deaconate.

The newly ordained span a number of previous careers. James Duffy, MD, S.J., 39, who will be ordained for the Society of Jesus, is board certified in internal medicine and still practicing medicine. Steve Roberts, 44, who will be ordained for the Diocese of Lexington, Kentucky, is an obstetrician/gynecologist. William Dunn, 62, of the Archdiocese of Boston, practiced internal medicine and was on the full-time faculty of two medical schools.

Several are attorneys, including Jesuit Kevin O’Brien, 39, James Brady, 40, of the Diocese Lafayette, Louisiana, and Harold Reeves of the Archdiocese of Washington.

Michael Barry, 61, Diocese of Rockford, Illinois, was a U.S. Foreign Service officer for 24 years. Brian Needles, 51, of the Archdiocese of Newark, was a real estate developer. Allain Caparas, 30, of the Diocese of Camden, New Jersey, was a high school teacher. Raymond Enzweiler, 44, of the Diocese of Covington, Kentucky, taught university-level physics for 14 years.

Christopher Coleman, 38, of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, was a chemical sales representative. Leo Smith, 52, of Diocese of Venice, Florida, worked for the U.S. Department of Defense for 25 years. Anthony DiMarco, 49, of the Diocese of Norwich, Connecticut, was a Pennsylvania State Parole Agent and passed the Pennsylvania Bar while in the seminary.

Kenneth Brown, 56, of the Diocese of Monterey, California, was an associate professor of English for 26 years, and retired from the California State University system. Gregory Olszewski, 45, of the Diocese of Cleveland, was a reporter at a weekly newspaper. John Schwall, 57, of the Diocese of Salt Lake City, Utah, worked in the casino industry for 20 years.

Several have military experience. William Hegedusich, 46, of the Washington Archdiocese, is a retired Air Force officer, who flew as a navigator. Darin Colarusso, 40, of the Archdiocese of Boston, was in the Air Force and flew fighter jets as a weapons officer.

A variety of ethnic and national backgrounds marks the class. Jesus Gaviria, 33, of the Diocese of Paterson, New Jersey, is Hispanic. Maynard Ubaldo Paragan, 46, of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, Texas, is Filipino. Hieu Nguyen, 35, to be ordained for the Society of the Divine Word, is from Viet Nam. Slawomir Bystrzykowski, 31, of the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown, Pennsylvania, was born in Poland. Johanes Raharjo, C.I.C.M., 30, who is a member of the Missionhurst Congregation, was born in Indonesia. Anthony Lackland, 44, of the Diocese of Dallas, is African American and taught in a Catholic school. Rahab Isidor, 27, of the Diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau, Missouri, was born in Haiti.

Involvement in parish was important. One parish, Our Lady of Lourdes, in Bethesda, Maryland, in the Washington Archdiocese, has three men being ordained this year: Avelino Gonzalez, 41; Andrew Royals, 27; and Greg Shaffer, 34.

Some ordinands are parents. Stephen Geer, 51, of the Archdiocese of Portland, Oregon, is a certified public accountant and a single parent who raised an adoptive son from the age of three. Charles Huck, 51, of the Diocese of Crookston, Minnesota, has seven children and eight grandchildren. Michael Millard, 64, of the Diocese of Bismarck, North Dakota, is a widower with four children and seven grandchildren. Robert Kelleher, 66, of the Diocese of Scranton, Pennsylvania, has three children and three grandchildren.

Some have strong academic backgrounds. Bjorn Lundberg, 31, of the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia, was national Merit Finalist. Aaron Nord of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, was a National Merit Scholarship winner and an Eagle Scout.

Further information on the Class of 2006 can be found at www.usccb.org/vocations.

FYI, here's (one of many) the story of Leonard Klein.

Published by United Press International, June 4, 2003

Crossing the Tiber

By Uwe Siemon-Netto
UPI Religion Editor

WASHINGTON, June 4, 2003 (UPI) -- This coming Pentecost Sunday, the Rev. Leonard Klein will celebrate the birthday of the Christian Church for the last time as a Lutheran pastor.

He will stand in the magnificent chancel of Christ Church in York, Pa., consecrating the Eucharist as he has done for the past 22 years. The next time he will say mass at this "lovely feast," as Goethe called Pentecost, will be in perhaps three or four years' time -- as a Roman Catholic priest, and a married one at that.

Klein is "crossing the Tiber," as Lutheran and Anglican clergymen call the conversion of their many colleagues to the Church of Rome. Pastors and priests from these two liturgical denominations go this route with increasing frequency -- usually in despair over what they consider the slide of their previous spiritual homes into apostasy.

Others travel in a different direction; they "swim the Bosporus," which means that they join an Eastern Orthodox Church. Eminent Yale professor Jaroslav Pelikan, editor of half the 55-volume English-language edition of Luther's Works, went that way some years back.

Pelikan, who translated several of the reformer's tomes, was quoted as saying, "I was probably the one Lutheran who knew most about Eastern Orthodoxy. Now I am the one Orthodox who probably knows most about Luther."

Many others followed him, for example Jay Cooper Rochelle, one of the most powerful preachers of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and a former seminary professor, who frequently writes for United Press International. In the Midwest, there are a slew of Orthodox mission churches whose priests were Protestant pastors.

Klein, who will convert with his wife and his daughter, is not just any minister. He was the editor of Lutheran Forum, a feisty highbrow journal defending faithfulness to Scripture and the 16th-century confessions against his denomination's kowtows to secular fads, which currently focus on the question of whether non-celibate homosexuals should be ordained and whether the Church should bless same-sex unions.

There have, of course, always been conversions from Anglicanism and Lutheranism back to the church from which these two denominations split in the 16th century. The case of John Henry Newman (1801-1890), who became a cardinal, comes to mind.

But the pace of these conversions has been quickening in recent decades. The Anglican Communion alone lost hundreds of priests to Rome after its member churches decided to ordain women. One of the most prominent Lutherans to cross the Tiber was the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, a prolific writer and editor, and president of the Institute on Religion and Public Life in New York.

Like his friend Klein, Neuhaus considered the Luther's Reformation completed by the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. As Klein said, "I realized that my view of Lutheranism as a reform movement for the Catholic Church meant that if I was really going to practice the best insights of the Reformation, I belonged inside the Catholic Church -- not outside it trying to make the Lutheran Church Lutheran."

Others equally appalled by the rapid theological and moral decline of mainline Protestantism, including the ELCA, feel that the Church of Christ must still hear the voices of the Reformers. Such distressed Protestants may opt for the more faithful competitors of these liberal denominations.

Thus Episcopalians would join any of the five major "continuing" Anglican churches, such as the Anglican Catholic Church, the Reformed Episcopal Church, or the Anglican Province of Christ the King. Traditionalist members of the Presbyterian Church USA would either become part of the burgeoning confessional movement within their denomination, or switch to the Presbyterian Church in America, which is growing at a breathtaking pace.

Disgruntled ELCA Lutherans might "swim the Mississippi," as some of them say, joining the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, which has 2.6 million members and is headquartered in St. Louis; this columnist chose this option.

Whichever way the dissidents prefer to flee, though -- across the Tiber, Bosporus or Mississippi -- one thing is certain: hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions will "depart of fairer waters," as the Rev. Christopher Hershman of Allentown, Pa., phrased it, should the ELCA adopt an unbiblical approach to sexuality at its 2005 Church-wide Assembly, as many expect it will.

As all mainline denominations have to deal with the same issue, expect some of them to implode or erode to the point of irrelevance. More important, though, expect help from the southern hemisphere, where orthodox Christianity -- Protestant and Catholic -- is growing robustly, and whence black, brown, and yellow missionaries fly north, thundering into the ears of their American and Western European brethren: Hold it, you have lost your way.

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