I’ve rarely told this story because it was a challenging time and experience as a young man discerning my vocation. I was in my mid 20s, having withdrawn after first year medical school to discern the priesthood. I had been visiting a nearby seminary, and a monastery, off and on since during college, split between a medical profession and marriage, and a higher calling to the priesthood or religious life.
I basically walked away from becoming a doctor to apply for the diocesan seminary, placing my trust in that process, knowing I may never get the opportunity again to practice medicine. I had volunteered in high school medical explorers in the ER and loved medicine, volunteering and working in hospitals during college, majoring in premed biology.
But having grown up as an altar server serving Mass every Sunday for a decade, for our well loved, very conservative and zealous pastor Fr. Norbert Karava, OFM, I felt the Holy Ghost drawing me to discern the Priesthood.
When I applied for the Tulsa Diocese, the 6 month long application process was a great scandal. The previous vocation director Fr. Davison had himself counseled me to consider the seminary in college, knowing me somewhat well, but by the time I applied there was a new vocation director who shall go unnamed.
This priest many times I met with him described the priesthood like a secular “career,”actually using that word, emphasizing the parish priest as a “community builder” with little emphasis on the actual responsibility of saving souls through the Mass, sacraments, preaching, teaching, and directing souls. He spoke of the Church like he was a Protestant.
I was not phased. I passed a psychological test, a goofy career style test that I was told indicated I may have the call, because “it shows you have much empathy for others.” Each month I had a different interview in a long list of interviews, mostly with senior priests of the diocese.
These interviews were equally a scandal. I gave simple Catholic answers why I was interested in becoming a priest, and my love of the liturgy. I had attended a conservative Novus Ordo, the Byzantine rite, and occasionally the Tridentine rite.
Having been told I needed to be registered at a parish and call that my home parish, I chose the FSSP parish where the pastor there became my spiritual director, and having interviewed me himself a few times, was the main priest to write a recommendation.
However, in the interviews with the diocesan priests, they sounded liberal, worldly, even like Protestants. They kept questioning my traditional bent and even made pejorative statements against the Traditional Mass or any notion of restoring Tradition in the Liturgy.
During this whole process, since I started attending the TLM every Sunday, since it was my new parish, I could not help eventually to see that I was at heart a traditionalist. That the modernist orientation in the post-VII Church was very apparent in this long interview process.
I called a seminarian I knew growing up who was a devout and orthodox Catholic, in the seminary, and they were not happy with the training and theology they were receiving at the seminary the Tulsa diocese was using.
One day I got a call from the vocations director to come see him, with no indication why. When I sat down and met with him, he told me with zero enthusiasm, I had been accepted for the seminary, but there was a concern with my traditional or conservative bent, and that the seminary board had an issue I was too involved with the FSSP parish (this after being told I had to join a parish and make it my home), and visiting Clear Creek Abbey. My love of the Latin Liturgy was clearly described as a problem, that “you are going to have to distance yourself from the Latin Mass.”. Even though at the time I had never said I preferred the Latin Mass or would have any problem saying the Novus Ordo if ever ordained.
The message was loud and clear. I was technically accepted because there was a priest shortage, but I was not what they wanted. As a note, my psychological or moral disposition, or background, were never questioned. It was my piety and zeal for orthodoxy and the salvation of souls, which I honestly expressed in all those interviews, which was cast in a questionable light.
I then told the vocations director I needed to think about this new development and would let him know. Driving home that day, and for some time later, all of those scandalous aspects of the seminary application process started to sink in.
I realized they wanted a version of the Catholic priest that was not Catholic, conflicting with my catechism and Catholic education since childhood, and that if I accepted the position of seminarian, being a Catholic devoted to Tradition, and even was ordained, my faith would greatly diminish if not be lost, and it would probably mean a life of extreme stress going against the status quo, like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole.
Still though I had to pause and keep praying about it. What I discerned was that I would only consider accepting being a seminarian if I heard back from the vocations director and seminary board. I knew they were waiting to hear back from me, but after leaving a medical career, and a long application process, it was a reasonable assumption that IF in fact they really valued what I had to offer, and were looking for Catholic priests to primarily save souls, then they themselves needed to call me back.
I never received again any communication after that meeting from the vocations director, seminary board, or the Bishop. The conclusion was they were not sincere, and had in essence wasted my time and disrupted my life. It was too late to return to Med school, and my Med school loans were too great to go to the FSSP. That left me discerning for a year or so with my spiritual director, to the point I discerned with him I did not have this higher calling, but was more strongly desiring marriage.
This whole experience was trying, having given up a medical career only to be marginalized by the modernist clergy of my diocese, seeking the priesthood. Though I eventually counted it all as a blessing. The silver lining is I saw firsthand into the evils of the post-VII version of not only the priesthood, but a mutilation of the Faith. It helped me ultimately to discover the Traditional Catholic Mass, and the treasures of Catholic Tradition, while eventually meeting my wife, thanks be to God herself a devout, traditional Catholic.
So today when I hear about all these hundreds of persecuted faithful priests, priests for example like Fr. Altman, I know I made the prudent decision.
Conclusion, if you’re a young man who loves the Church and her Liturgy, do not become a diocesan priest, except if hypothetically your Bishop and diocese itself is already promoting Tradition.
This was all a very long time ago and has mostly been forgotten, but something I’ve hardly described to anyone. But it is a story that needs to be told as a witness to this Crisis in Christ’s Church, and even more importantly as a testimony to the truth of traditional Catholicism.
All for the greater glory of God!