Reflection in my Discernment Process

Reflection on the Long View of Ministry - 2001

There are many thoughts that motivate my request to be accepted into the diocese.

• I have continued a discernment process in these years, always keeping in mind what the Lord is asking me to be and do.

• I have continued journaling that I began in 1973 during my active ministry in the diocese.

• I have maintained an active spiritual life with daily prayer and meditation

• I completed my civil divorce on November 23, 1999. There were no children of our marriage.

• 12 people have said to me, since my divorce: “You could return to the diocese now, couldn’t you?” I have prayerfully discerned this multiple reminder for over a year.

• I have been called upon to ministry in various ways since leaving the diocese for a leave of absence in February, 1983, and formally leaving the diocese in September, 1985.

• In these years since leaving the diocese, I have completed a masters degree in business and management.

• I was project coordinator of a federally-funded job training and placement program for the homeless for 5 years, with a total overall budget of over a million dollars.

• I have coordinated a state-wide education program having budgetary control of a yearly $300,000 budget.

I bring a ten years of lived married love and my previous 23 years of lived celibate ministry that combine to make my decision an act of conscious choice that is stronger and more volitionally-based than the decision I made in April, 1963, in the study hall of Mt. St. Mary’s of the West, Cincinnati, when I walked up and signed the statement of commitment before ordination to subdiaconate. At that time, I had a simplistic view of what that choice meant. Now I make a choice knowing clearly what I am permanently setting aside “for the sake of the Kingdom.” This choice of commitment to servant-discipleship is a conscious choice that says:

I know clearly what it is to love a woman. I bring that same love to the work I seek to do in continuing my priesthood in the canonical context of full ministry. Like Amos, the prophet of Divine Justice and of God’s Loving Kindness (Hesed Yahweh), I respond to the call to proclaim God’s Word in the face of injustice.

I look back to the times past when I spoke to God’s people while serving in various contexts and forms of ministry. Now in these recent 14 years, I have had various responses from people who have showed their appreciation of my ministry. These people responded because of the credibility of my words. The credibility that they recognize is the Gospel truth. They’ve told me they see in my work a response that has grown out of years of being away from active canonical ministry. It is the prodigal offspring syndrome. The faithful son stayed and was so stuck on himself. The son who left had to leave to understand what he is all about.

It is curious that there are those who have said to me that the Church would be really blind not to see the value of the offer of a person of the background I bring with me to a renewed ministry. I would find it difficult to make that same claim myself. I do, however, wonder at the response of the Church to my offer of service.