Jesuit Journeys
Winter 2007

Same Call, Different Path
By William A. Thorn

I feel like it’s kind of forgotten,” says Pat Douglas, SJ. “I think there are many people who don’t feel a call to the priesthood, but feel a strong religious vocation. It’s another way to serve God that is no less.”

Douglas, who took vows this summer, is that rare member of the Society of Jesus who chooses not to follow Jesus through His priesthood. In the entire Wisconsin province, there are 13 brothers. Of the roughly 19,000 Jesuits worldwide, less than 2,000 are brothers.

“The main thing is, I want to help people realize there is no one way to serve God,” Douglas says. “You can serve God as a married person. Or as a single person. Or as a priest or as a brother. To have that as your focus is to serve God.”

Brother Mike Wilmot, SJ agrees. “We are all called, we all have gifts, we use those gifts to further Christ’s mission. Dealing with students is a gift. Saying Mass and preaching, those are gifts. The priesthood, the brotherhood, both are gifts. One’s not better than the other.”

A COMMUNITY OF EQUALS

Brother Ed Gill, SJ takes the idea a step further. “Of course we’re equals. Spiritually, I don’t think there’s a big difference between brothers and priests, or even among orders. For that matter, even among different branches of Christians,” he says. “It’s simply the operation of the Spirit in the individual, and recognition of the Spirit in others. Before God we’re pretty much all the same.”

“I’m completely accepted by priests and scholastics; all Jesuits,” says Brother Lee McNamee, SJ. “We (brothers) have the same privileges. Acceptance is absolute in every way. We’re simply members of the same community. There’s no superiority or anything like that. It’s a wonderful life.”

“There’s no major difference in lifestyle,” Wilmot says. “A Jesuit is a person who walks and lives with Christ in doing His mission – to save the world. That’s what all Jesuits do. In whatever they’re doing, all Jesuits are children of the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius. We’re all pretty much the same; living together, working together...finding God in everything that we do and all the people we deal with. All Jesuits walk with Christ and live with Christ in doing ministry.”

Yet, brothers are different. Not because they are not social and political lightning rods, like priests. Not because they’re less likely to have cell phones and email addresses. Not even because they’re typically softer spoken, more to the point, and less likely to expound, enlighten and elaborate, and evince and elucidate than their fellow Jesuits. No, brothers are different, quite simply, because God calls a different type of man to be a brother.

Pat Douglas is one such man. “The Jesuits? It was who I knew. I was taught by them. Their spirituality clicked with me. Finding God in all things. That was easy,” he said. “But I was never really feeling the call to married life. But I was also not at all into the priesthood, especially the diocesan priesthood.”

God calls a different type of man to be a brother. But each and every brother is clearly called. It may very well be that brothers even hear the vocational call loudest. In our parishes, every brother is encouraged, first, to the priesthood. Few vocational paths begin by exploring brotherhood.

“I was called to religious life. It was recommended I study for priesthood and the call would develop,” says Gill. “There were a lot of other brothers who started out that way and found there wasn’t a call to the priesthood. It was intuitive. A lot of different things go in. I couldn’t list them or sort them out. You have the gut reaction that this is right for me.” Or it isn’t.

THE FEW, THE PROUD

“I wanted to be a brother, but I didn’t want to be a priest,” says Wilmot. “Blame it on the Holy Spirit. He wanted me to be a brother in the Society of Jesus.”

“I loved the life. But I didn’t want to teach,” said McNamee. “And as a brother I wouldn’t have to worry about it. In those days, the brothers were kind of the work horses. They wanted me to be a priest. But I insisted, and was admitted as a brother.”

Douglas says the decision took him “quite some time, it really took a while,” he said. “As a senior in high school, I started feeling a strong vocation. People told me to go to college and live a ‘normal’ life and see if the call was still there. Ten years later, I started feeling it again. Actually, it was more a matter of taking my faith life more seriously. It was also a matter of cutting some bad habits; cutting things out of life and adding faith and time with God.”

In the world of work, Douglas found his vocation to the Jesuits.

“I did Juvenile Corrections in college; group therapy with boys on probation. I did court-ordered anger management and counseling with children who’d been physically and sexually abused. I worked in programs with children whose parents were about to lose their rights due to neglect. Basically, I worked with every sort of perpetrator and victim of domestic abuse,” he said. “It was great work and I loved it. And faith drove me to keep doing that work. But I kept the two worlds separate. Faith was just a support in my life. It wasn’t my life. When I got around to cleaning some things up, there emerged a further calling to combine the two. I really wanted to be identified as a man of faith.”

The path Pat Douglas now treads differs from the road brothers like Gill, McNamee, and Wilmot took.

“Nowadays, brothers are treated exactly the same. It wasn’t always that way,” laughs McNamee, now 62 years a Jesuit. “There were some very difficult years in there. In my early days most of those coming into the brotherhood were coming from blue collar jobs and farms – without any advanced education; no further studies. Nobody went to college or got professional training. Not even industrial studies. We had a bunch of excellent brothers who trained younger brothers in every profession.”

Brothers back then tended to be “hard workmen who did carpentry, ran farms, worked dairy farms, harvested orchards and vineyards, and ran their own wineries,” said McNamee. “When I entered, I was one of 40 brothers running a 2,000 acre farm and dairy (in Florissant, Missouri). We had the number two Holstein cow herd in the State of Missouri. We grew all of our own fruit and vegetables, we cared for our own pigs and cattle. We only had one lay person who worked on the grounds, everything else was done by brothers.

“Building the buildings, the maintenance of them; all brothers. Great technicians and engineers, running enormous plants, all of them; self taught or taught by other brothers. We took care of everything. The priests were teaching novices there while we were taking care of them both.

“Nowadays, the brothers take the same courses and same studies as the scholastics. They make the same Spiritual Exercises. It’s the same spiritual training and the same novitiate,” says McNamee. “Our brothers also study philosophy and theology. We didn’t do that in our time, but it’s amazing how much you could pick up living in a house full of priests.”

WALKING THE SAME PATH

“The novitiate is the same for a brother novice as a priest,” Douglas confirms. “The formation gets different with where I’m at now. We go to all the same places as scholastics do. But instead of so much philosophy and theology, I’ll get a concentration in something. I’ll do some philosophy and theology for background, but I’m after a pastoral counseling degree and an MA in social work. I see myself doing maybe more high school ministry and counseling.”

But even after college, “there’s a parallel life to the priesthood,” says McNamee. “Scholastics go on to teaching for two or three years. Brothers would do the same, teaching at a high school and university. Many brothers are teaching, even holding jobs as principals.

Regardless of training and spirituality and career paths, Gill, 51 years a Jesuit, doesn’t think the brotherhood has changed that much. “Fifty years ago brothers were doing many of the same things. The role hasn’t really changed,” he says. “No vocation would have changed any less than any other, if you’re dealing with a half century. Being a brother – then versus now – is no different than being an engineer now Jesuit Journeys – Winter 2007 13 and 50 years ago. There are constant changes over time, but you don’t feel different day to day.”

The bottom line, says Wilmot, 47 years a Jesuit, is that “this is a great time in the Society’s history to be a Jesuit and a brother. It’s a great time. The Society is really going places in our world,” he said. “The challenge for Pat is to find Christ in whatever he does, in whoever he deals with, lives with; in his prayer life. The possibilities in education and, therefore in ministry, have enlarged. A brother can do anything that he has the talent for, the calling for, and the need of the Society and Church for. All those have to come together. The opportunities for a young brother are limitless. The opportunities for ministry are limitless.”

Yet, because God calls a different type of man to be a brother, there are very clear-cut differences in a brother’s duties.

“We’ve always had the same challenges priests have; living life with the same perpetual vows – poverty, chastity and obedience – the difference now is mostly sacramental,” says McNamee. “Priests hear confessions, celebrate Mass, do marriages. Brothers can hold any position in the Society that doesn’t take the power of Orders. Only a priest can give dispensations to other priests. Say a visiting priest wants to do confessions or marriages only a priest can give him permission. A brother can’t dispense or ordain. Otherwise, there’s very little difference. I’ve done spiritual direction for years for our priests.”

A WORLD OF WORK

Jesuit Brothers often work in the background. Fr. Lee Lubbers, SJ (left) was congratulated for his 60 years in the Society by Father Provincial Tom Krettek,SJ while Br. Ed Gill, SJ was the emcee of the Province Days event.

Clearly, brothers are engaged in different sorts of work. Wilmot, like most Jesuits, started out doing educational work. “I was involved in high schools: teaching, coaching, and dean of students,” he says. (One of the students under him, interestingly enough, was a young Pat Douglas). “Now I’m involved with getting affordable housing for the working poor in Omaha. I also do some art work, welded sculpture, stuff like that.”

Gill works as a financial officer. He was an accountant and treasurer several times over, including one stint for the Wisconsin Province, another at Campion High School, and again at Sogang University in South Korea and at Red Cloud Indian School. At St. Francis Indian Mission he was “not part of administration at the school, but part of the Jesuit administration attached to the school.”

McNamee was an assistant secretary to the Jesuit general in Rome. He was a sacristan. He was also a business manager. He did fund raising, buying and shipping for several universities and helped build universities in Seoul, South Korea and Salta, Argentina. He worked as minister of a community and university librarian. He worked in drug and alcohol treatment centers at Creighton University and for the state of Minnesota. And after shuffling through so many different roles, he finally ended up teaching – a typing course, at Creighton Prep. “But I was in administration most of the time,” he quickly adds.

There is a certain, striking irony that McNamee, who became a brother because he didn’t want to teach, ended up teaching. And Pat Douglas – pursuing the brotherhood because he didn’t feel the call to pastoral ministry – now studying to be a pastoral counselor. And yet, being a Jesuit does not restrict one to these career paths.

“There is a freedom,” to the brotherhood, McNamee says. “In a way, yes. We have the same vows, so there’s no freedom there. But you’re not bound by the priesthood itself, which has its own set of constraints.”

Which isn’t to say brothers go gallivanting around the globe, uninhibited and unattached. Yet, because God calls a different type of man to be a brother, they naturally move in a different way than priests do. They have a different style. Without flocks to tend to, they can devote themselves to service in different ways. Yes, even freer ways.

“There is a certain freedom,” Douglas said. “Brothers can go wherever and serve whenever and wherever they’re needed. We can fly under the radar and just go serve God. There’s definitely an availability and freedom there. I can focus on bringing people to God in my works. Brothers I knew would never be hitting people over the head preaching. But by their works, you could really tell what motivated them. They were living their faith and showing it through their work.”