"Burke's efforts lead to biggest Catholic ordination class in decades"

From ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
By Tim Townsend

Sunday, May. 18 2008

Once or twice a year, each student at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary will drop by Archbishop Raymond Burke's residence in the Central West End at 4:30 p.m. From
there, they set off down Lindell Avenue and into Forest Park..

"The walks," as the seminarians call them, are opportunities for young men to have heart-to-hearts with a man who regularly meets with the pope, a heady
prospect for a young priest-in-training. The conversations are usually casual, and the seminarians get to see a more personal, human side of Burke — like when he gets a little skittish around off-leash dogs.

Kenrick officials organize the walks using time sheets. When the sheets are
posted, there's a rush to sign on.

"It's like when you throw pellets at the Japanese fish at the Botanical
Gardens," said seminarian Edward Nemeth, 26. "Guys falling over each other to
get their names on the list."

On Saturday, Nemeth and eight of his colleagues at Kenrick will be ordained as
priests in the St. Louis Archdiocese — the largest St. Louis ordination class
in 25 years and one of the largest in the U.S. It's also the same number of
ordinations in St. Louis as the last three years combined.

Since the 1980s, declining interest in the priesthood has been a growing crisis
for the Roman Catholic church in the U.S., a situation that was compounded by
the clergy sex-abuse scandal earlier this decade. One church study suggested
that 80 percent of parents whose sons are considering the priesthood try to
dissuade them, fearing their child is entering a life of loneliness and
unhappiness.

Burke is credited for helping to address such concerns at Kenrick. He is active
in recruiting priests and knows the seminarians — their names, their life
stories, their joys and their fears. He's also a frequent visitor to the
seminary, sometimes dropping by unannounced for lunch with the students.

"He's the center and the core of this whole thing," said the Rev. Michael
Butler, the vocations director for the archdiocese.

The student body at Kenrick-Glennon, which includes the undergraduate Cardinal Glennon College and graduate-level Kenrick Theological Seminary, is 112 students, the largest enrollment in two decades and a 50 percent increase over last year.

Monsignor Ted Wojcicki, Kenrick-Glennon's president, said he hopes to enroll
120 students next year, which would double the size of the seminary population
from a decade ago. Last year, the archdiocese announced plans to expand the
seminary.

The archdiocese officially attributes its recent success with vocations — Latin
for vocare, which means, to call — to a higher power. More men are hearing
God's call to the priesthood, they say. But God has had a hand from Burke, who
decided vocations would be a high priority since he arrived in St. Louis in
2004.

"A bishop's principal responsibility is to provide priests for the people in
his pastoral care," Burke said in an interview last week from Rome.
"Ordinations have to be absolutely right at the top of my priorities."

During a Vatican meeting just months before his death in 2004, Pope John Paul
II told Burke and other Midwest bishops to do more to increase the number of
men training for the priesthood.

"No one can deny that the decline in priestly vocations represents a stark
challenge for the church in the United States," the pope told the bishops.

John Paul was not exaggerating. The number of diocesan priests in the U.S. has
declined 22 percent since 1965, according to the Center for Applied Research in
the Apostolate at Georgetown University. In the same period, the number of
graduate level seminarians has fallen 60 percent.

In 2005, the St. Louis Archdiocese estimated that by the end of 2008 it would
have only 230 active diocesan priests, down from 313. The number has decreased,
but not as precipitously as predicted three years ago and stands at 286.

At Kenrick, it's not just Burke's involvement that is cited for the turnaround
in enrollment. The archbishop's conservatism, too, is an appealing aspect to
young seminarians.

"The people who are attracted to the priesthood today tend to be much more
conservative than their peers," said the Rev. Thomas Reese of the Woodstock
Theological Center in Washington. "Even in the 1950s, the people attracted to
seminaries were more conservative than their peers, but not to the degree they
are today."

Seminarians say Burke's conservatism helps him connect with them. The
seminarians openly discuss how they see Burke as a spiritual father and embrace
the traditional atmosphere Burke has championed in the archdiocese and the
seminary.

Burke, for example, is considered one of the most devoted supporters of the old
Latin Mass among U.S. bishops, and last year, Kenrick began celebrating the
traditional liturgy on Fridays. More formal vestments are now required at
morning and evening prayers. Burke said such "little things" help him
"encourage a strong identity among the seminarians, especially with the
celebration of the sacred liturgy."

Noah Waldman, 39, a former architect, was studying with a traditionalist group
of priests a number of years ago. Eventually, he felt called to be a diocesan
priest rather than part of an order. The problem, he thought, was that most
bishops would think he was too conservative.

"I was told there were two bishops in the U.S. who would be interested in me,"
he said.

Burke, at that time the bishop of La Crosse, Wis., took Waldman in. The
architect entered the seminary but decided Wisconsin was not a good fit and
applied to a philosophy program in England. Burke "told me I was making a big
mistake," Waldman recalled.

After the death of Pope John Paul II, Waldman decided the priesthood was indeed
his calling, and Burke, since installed in St. Louis, invited Waldman to
Kenrick. "Because of his support, I was able to make it through," said Waldman,
who will be ordained on Saturday.

Burke, however, plays down the notion that he's the main attraction. "More
traditionalist men have come on their own; it's not that I've gone out to look
for them," he said. "When men say they feel very confident in my leadership, I
tell them that they have to come to the archdiocese of St. Louis because
they're devoted to the archdiocese, not me."

Michael Houser, 26, began considering the priesthood when he was 13. He is the
oldest of 10 children born to parents in Chesterfield who took their children
to Mass every Sunday and prayed the rosary together as a family every night.

The Housers were part of a lay group tied to the conservative Legion of Christ
congregation of priests. Houser attended elementary school at Gateway Academy,
run by the Legion of Christ in Chesterfield, then attended the Legion's
seminary high school in New Hampshire.

Houser decided the life of a diocesan priest fit him best. "It appealed to me a
lot to be able to have a connection to a particular diocese — there's more
stability in diocesan priesthood," Houser said. "When Archbishop Burke came to
St. Louis, I was in my first year (at seminary), and he was a real godsend to
me."

Butler, the head of the archdiocese's vocations office, said he doesn't like to
think of the call to the priesthood in terms of numbers, but the future of the
archdiocese necessitates it. Based on priests' rate of retiring and advancing
age, the archdiocese needs to ordain about 10 to 12 men each year, Butler said.

To reach that goal, Butler said, the archdiocese needs to bring in 20 to 24 men
each year. That's about double the current level. Next year, the seminary
expects a more typical ordination class of five, though with larger entering
classes, the days of five-member ordination ceremonies might be a thing of the
past.

Nemeth remembered when Burke first got to St. Louis, the archbishop promised to
make the seminary the heart of the diocese. Nemeth believes Burke has made good
on that promise, and in doing so, has become "like a father" to the seminarians.

Nemeth said his most difficult moment at Kenrick-Glennon was when he was a
college sophomore during the clergy sexual abuse crisis that emerged in 2002.
"I remember being so angry at priests," Nemeth said. "Anywhere I went I felt
like I was under a microscope with people thinking, 'Is he one of them?'"

Strength, Nemeth said, came from watching Burke deal with controversy in the
succeeding years, an example the archbishop continues to set for future
seminarians.

"He stands for truth when he knows that's not going to be easy," Nemeth said,
"so we know he'll support us when we have to do the same."