Home / News & Publications / Michigan Catholic News / 2008 / At 86, he still finds joy in priestly ministry
At 86, he still finds joy in priestly ministry
by Robert Delaney of The Michigan Catholic
Published September 19, 2008
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Robert Delaney | The Michigan Catholic
Fr. James O'Hagan, a retired priest of the Archdiocese of Detroit, reminisces about his decades of priestly ministry. |
Waterford Twp. — As he nears his 86th birthday next month Fr. James O'Hagan is retired, but far from inactive.
A resident of the Mendelson Home, an assisted-living senior residence on the Lourdes Nursing Home campus in Waterford Township, Fr. O'Hagan serves as chaplain to the residents of the Lourdes facilities.
Assisted by four other retired priests who are Lourdes residents, he sees to it that Mass is available at the three chapels spread among the four buildings on the campus. He celebrates Mass there himself on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays.
Besides that, he frequently celebrates the 6 p.m. Sunday Mass at St. William Church in Walled Lake, and sometimes visits the cloistered Dominican Sisters in Ortonville.
He is an example of how busy some of these "retired" priests continue to be in service to the Church and the Catholic faithful as long as they remain in good health.
They are supported in their elder years by the archdiocesan Priests' Retirement Fund, but that fund is underfunded – a problem the archdiocese has taken steps to remedy.
More than one-third of parishes in the Archdiocese of Detroit will take up a special collection the weekend of Sept. 27-28 to help remedy the underfunding. Other parishes have already fully incorporated higher pension contributions into their annual budgets, making a special collection unnecessary. This is the third and final year for the special collection.
The Priests' Retirement Fund pays the pensions and benefits for archdiocesan priests who have taken senior priest status. Priests who have reached age 70, but are still actively serving in archdiocesan assignments, also receive the basic $1,500 a month pension, even though their benefits are still being paid by the parish or Church agency where they work.
Fr. O'Hagan speaks enthusiastically about living on the Lourdes campus: "It has a very wonderful spirit, and that is the result of the Oxford Dominican nuns keeping the spirit of the place up."
Active for many years in the ecumenical Metropolitan Christian Council, an organization of Catholic and Protestant congregations in the Detroit-Windsor area, he says he was persuaded to get involved by Msgr. John Schweder back when they served together as co-pastors of St. Matthew Parish on Detroit's east side back in the 1960s.
"In my work with the Christian Council, I enjoyed getting into many different kinds of churches and finding the common links," he says.
Among the ecumenical milestones of recent years, Fr. O'Hagan says he was happy to be present when Cardinal Adam Maida met with the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople and with the Armenian Apostolic Patriarch Karekin II. He also hailed the closer working relationship that has formed between Catholics and Lutherans.
Fr. O'Hagan just retired from the ecumenical organization's board last December. He still serves on the Lourdes Nursing Home Board.
Looking back on his long career of service to the Archdiocese of Detroit, he speaks of his role as founding pastor of St. Gerald Parish in Farmington and his last pastorate, at St. Benedict in Waterford Township, as the most rewarding.
"I liked St. Gerald because everything was new and fresh, and I liked St. Benedict because I was able to re-do everything," he says.
"When I was asked to go there, (the late Auxiliary) Bishop (Walter J.) Schoenherr told me it was the ugliest church in the diocese. Now, that church is a beautiful piece of work," Fr. O'Hagan says.
And he says he was happy that each parish produced a vocation to the priesthood while he was pastor.
Among the greatest joys of his priesthood, Fr. O'Hagan continues, was "living through Vatican II."
"That was a marvelous, marvelous event in the life of the Church. It was wonderful that we got to use English rather than Latin. Although I still use a lot of Latin on my own, I don't bother other people with it," he says.
Speaking of wider trends in society, Fr. O'Hagan praises the progress that has been made in race relations since the early 1960s, recalling his own participation in a civil rights march in 1963.
Asked what he would say to a young man discerning a possible priestly vocation today, Fr. O'Hagan replies: "It's a very useful life, a very fulfilling and satisfying life. You're serving people and you're a good influence on society."
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