In my last blog post, I wrote about entering St.
Charles College Catholic minor seminary in 1961 as a freshman in high school.
Here are some more details about my life there and a few anecdotes.
In the Refectory (dining hall), there were
rectangular tables that each seated 8 students and the priests sat along the
far wall, facing the students, ostensibly to make sure we behaved ourselves
during the meals. Students took turns waiting on tables. The sophomore college
students waited on the priests and got to eat their leftovers, which (no
surprise) turned out to be much tastier than what the students were served.
I thought the food was generally ok and have fond
memories of some of it. I always looked forward to the hot dogs and beans that
we had on Saturday nights (“de gustibus non disputandum est” – Latin for “to
each his own”). My recollection is that we got cold cereal for breakfast every
day and that some days we got hot cereal. The cold cereal came in individual
serving size boxes and extra boxes were stuffed up in between the corner braces
of the tables, to be eaten at dinner if someone didn’t like the offering that
evening. The worst meal we ever had was described on the menu as “mock pizza”.
It was a large round cornbread about an inch high with thin slices of bologna on
top and ketchup on top of the bologna. (Yumm!) I also remember that we each had
our own cloth napkins and napkin holders to keep them in between meals. Mine was
round and silver and had my initials on it. Here’s a picture of it. (Yes, I
still have it! My mother saved it and later gave it to me.)
All the students wore slacks, dress shirts, jackets
and ties (except during recreation time). During my sophomore or junior year of
high school, the rector (president of the college) decided that some of the
students were dressing in a way that was too “worldly”. The rector would stop
students in the hallway and tell them they could no longer wear a certain piece
of clothing. It was never clear exactly what the criteria were. I had a gold
colored sports jacket that my parents had gotten for me when I was in 8th
grade. I was always afraid I would be stopped and told it was too worldly. But
it never happened. Here's a picture of me that was taken in 8th grade.
When I was a freshman in high school our daily chapel
was in the basement of the building under the main chapel. On Sundays, we freshmen
would attend mass in our little chapel, go to breakfast and then attend mass
with all the students in the main chapel. Since we could only receive communion
once in a day and had to fast from the midnight before, we must have received
communion at the earlier mass. The masses during the week would not have any
singing and there was no sermon. However, on Sunday the second mass in the main
chapel would be a “high mass”. There would be singing (in Latin, since this was
before the Second Vatican Council). Along with the celebrant, there would be
other priests functioning as deacon and sub-deacon. St. Charles College has now
been converted to senior citizen housing and the chapel has been preserved and
functions as a parish church. In doing some research for these blogs, I came
across a website that has a number of pictures of the chapel, now called Our
Lady of the Angels Chapel. I had forgotten how beautiful and ornate the chapel
was. Here’s a link to that website.
At St. Charles, our high school schedule was not like
a typical high school. We had a full day of classes on Monday, Wednesday and
Friday. On Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, we had a half day of classes. On
those afternoons when we did not have classes, intramural sports games took
place. And, once a month we would have a “walk day” on one of those afternoons.
That meant we were allowed to leave the campus and go out into the community.
Most times, that meant walking to Arbutus, the nearest town, where we might go
bowling or shopping. My favorite recollection of these “walk days” is of
getting chocolate marshmallow sundaes.
Along with “walk days”, we also had some “free days”,
during which we could be out for the entire day. During my freshman year of
high school, we had a “free day” on Thanksgiving Day. My parents drove from
Somerville, New Jersey, to spend the day with me. I remember going to a
restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner. It was a disappointing way to celebrate the
holiday. When we celebrated at home, my parents would have friends over and the
food was much better. It must have been very difficult for my parents to make
that trip, because in 1961 traveling was not as easy and quick at it is now. In
later years we were able to go home for the Thanksgiving holiday. I was
studying for the diocese of Trenton and, at some point, the seminarians from
that diocese started chartering a bus that would take us to Notre Dame High
School, just outside of Trenton, and pick us up there at the end of the holiday
period. That made it easier on our parents. However, I also remember that, on
the Sunday after Thanksgiving, the trip back was always very long because of
all the people traveling at the end of the holiday weekend. Traffic was
bumper-to-bumper on the NJ Turnpike.
Very close to our seminary,there was a high school
seminary of the Paulist order and those seminarians came to St. Charles for
classes. We didn’t have a very good opinion of the Paulists, because a number
of those young men seemed a little strange. The strangest of them told us that
he had come to earth from outer space. (Seriously.) He said he and his parents
traveled to earth in a space ship and that his father died along the way and
they pushed his body out of the ship and watched it burn up in the atmosphere.
One day he came to class wearing what looked like a red flannel pajama top with
a tie. When one of the teachers asked him about it, he admitted that that’s
what it was and said he had not had time to do his laundry.
My understanding of
the Paulist priests at the time was that they preached about the Catholic faith
on city street corners. I’m not sure how I got that impression. But, I remember
thinking that it was a bold thing to do and something I could never do. I’ve
since gotten a better appreciation of the Paulists because of the writings of
James Carroll, who was a Paulist priest for 5 years. The mission of the Paulists
has always been to bring the teachings of the Catholic Church to American society
and to integrate American values into the Church. They established Newman
houses on campuses of colleges and universities that were not Catholic, at a
time when the teaching of the Church emphasized Catholics not mixing with
non-Catholics. Their efforts were criticized by the Vatican at the time and
Popes condemned what they called modernism and “Americanism” (which the
Paulists exemplified). The founder
of the Paulists, Isaac Hecker, according to James Carroll (in his book Practicing
Catholic) narrowly escaped being condemned for heresy. But Fr. Hecker’s
approach toward the faith gained greater acceptance during the Second Vatican
Council.
I have recently been in email contact with Larry
McAvoy, a friend who entered St. Charles as a freshman in high school the same
year I did. He provided some additional information, which I am including here.
During the earlier years, we were given access to the daily newspaper – but
only the front page of the paper and the front page of the sports section. (As
Larry put it “If the stories were continued inside, as they always were, tough
luck.”) We were permitted to call
home once a month but needed to get permission to do so. Larry also said that
we were told when we entered the seminary that 10% of our class would in the
end be ordained priests. He said he believes that 12 of the 121 of us were
ordained. Spot on!
Larry also reminded me about the reading of the
Martyrology. Each day at the beginning of lunch, one of the college students
would read about saints and martyrs who had their feast day on that particular
date. Larry pointed out that the student readers all hoped they did not get
assigned a certain date, on which the reading was a description of a martyr
whom some of us called “Super Saint”. I don’t remember this saint’s name but
the reading indicated that he was subjected to a number of tortures (e.g.,
being shot with arrows, dipped in boiling oil) and then ended with the words
“having survived these tortures, he was beheaded”. We all knew we would be
stifling laughter during the final description. No reader wanted to have to get
through that reading with a straight face.
Considering that St. Charles was a Catholic seminary
and those seminarians who continued on to ordination to the priesthood would
take a vow of chastity (to remain celibate and not marry), it was ironic that
the road the seminary was located on was called Maiden Choice Lane. During our
time there, the Catholic Church would start to open itself up to “the world”.
Most of us who entered as freshman in high school would not go on to ordination
but would step out into “the world” and into different vocations than the one
we envisioned as we began high school at St. Charles. Many years have passed
since that time. In two years we will celebrate the 50th anniversary
of our graduation from St. Charles. I believe many of us look back fondly
on the time we spent within those “hallowed walls”.
