Entering seminary is 'best decision I ever made'
Robert Delaney of The Michigan Catholic
Published April 20, 2007
Robert Delaney | The Michigan Catholic
Seminarian Clint McDonell says CSA support helps makes attending seminary possible. |
Detroit — For seminarian Clint McDonell, the decision to enter Sacred Heart Major Seminary "was totally the best decision I ever made in my life."
"I've enjoyed the academic work. I've enjoyed being here with my brother seminarians — being a part of a group of men dedicated to doing God's will," says McDonell, 28, one of the eight men on track to be ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Detroit in 2008.
The change in his spiritual life has been especially gratifying, he continues: "I'm amazed to see how much I have grown in my relationship with God here. And I've experienced real growth in my sense of vocation; it's been a real affirmation of the call I first felt as a little kid serving at the altar."
McDonell, who grew up in St. Raphael Parish in Garden City, says he first thought about becoming a priest when he was in the fifth or sixth grade. "I benefited from knowing a lot of good priests. I would point, first of all, to Fr. Ed Prus, who continues to be a big influence on me," he says.
Later, as a student at Detroit Catholic Central High School (then in Redford Township), the Basilian priests he encountered there "were also a very big inspiration."
McDonell says his sense of a calling to the priesthood was still with him in high school, but when it came time to go to college, he had a scholarship to Bowling Green State University in Ohio, and began his studies there with the idea of becoming an English teacher.
His English literature classes, however, awakened an interest in the literature of early periods, "and I wound up studying classical literature in Latin and Greek," he says.
But, somehow, McDonell began to feel a career as a college professor teaching classical literature just wouldn't be fulfilling, so he left Bowling Green during his senior year and got a job.
"In the two years after I left college and before I entered the seminary, I spent a lot of time thinking. I still loved literature, I still loved language, but I realized it wasn't what I was called to," he says.
McDonell recounts how he took a day off work to meet with Fr. James Bilot, the archdiocesan vocation director, who gave him a tour of the seminary. "Fr. Bilot took me into the main chapel, and the sun was shining through the stained-glass windows, and I thought: this was where I needed to be," he recalls.
 But McDonell — now in his fifth year at Sacred Heart — says he could never have made it to his current status as a third-year theology student without the help provided through the Catholic Services Appeal. In fact, he says most local seminarians in their final years of formation probably couldn't afford to be there without the assistance provided once they enter the last four years before ordination.
And they are grateful for that support and pray for those who contribute to the CSA, says Clint McDonell: "We always remember our benefactors — that's a regular part of our prayer when we pray the Daily Office at Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer."
College-level seminarians are responsible for their own tuition, room and board, but all are covered through CSA funds once they are in the seminary's Graduate School of Theology.
When McDonell entered SHMS in 2002, he still needed two years of college-level study to earn a bachelor's degree in philosophy, and except for a partial scholarship that "put a dent in it a little," he had to take out student loans to pay his tuition. But McDonell says he would not have been able to finance his graduate studies.
"I come from a regular blue-collar working-class family. If I hadn't had a scholarship to go to Bowling Green, the money simply wouldn't have been there to send me to college. To take on another four years of loans wouldn't have been a possibility for me," he says, explaining that the total tuition cost would have come to about $72,000.
And his fellow seminarians are in pretty much the same situation, McDonell continues: "I don't think any of us have whole lot of means, so (CSA support) has really made seminary possible for us."
For awhile McDonell thought about joining a religious order, but he says the experience of spending about eight months helping out at St. Sebastian Parish in Dearborn Heights showed him the satisfaction that can come from serving in a parish.
Seminarian Clint McDonell stands outside Sacred HeartSeminary in Detroit. | "The people of St. Sebastian are keenly aware of their mission to spread the Gospel, and it was really a joy to be there," he says.
Covering graduate-level seminarians' tuition out of CSA funds began in the 1980s under Detroit's former archbishop, Cardinal Edmund C. Szoka. Recalling his own seminary experience, he decided seminarians approaching ordination needed to be focused on their studies and their prayer life, not scrambling to work part-time jobs and taking on more debt.
CSA funds also supply graduate seminarians with a $200 a month stipend to help with their books or miscellaneous expenses: "Most of mine is spent on car insurance. That stipend is great help to doing ministry – to be able to drive out to a parish or a jail or a hospital."
The CSA, which kicks off next month, is the annual campaign to fund most of the ministries of the Archdiocese of Detroit. Besides the assistance to graduate-level seminarians, the CSA provides general support for the seminary and for such archdiocesan ministries as the departments of Education and of Parish Life and Services, the Metropolitan Tribunal, campus ministry and hospital chaplaincies, the CTND Catholic cable channel and The Michigan Catholic.
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