The following are portions of an article from the Albany Times Union. They discuss the upcoming retirement of the Rev. Leo O’Brien, pastor of St. Vincent de Paul R.C. Church in Albany and the Albany Diocese’s vicar general. My commentary is interspersed.
Faith’s steady flame
For more than three decades, the Rev. Leo O’Brien has drawn people to his church
The man enters unobtrusively, walking slowly through the open double doors next to the altar. He steadies himself with the cane in his right hand.
It’s Sunday morning at St. Vincent de Paul church in Albany, shortly before 11 o’clock Mass. The man is dressed casually in dark slacks, a sports shirt and L.L. Bean jacket. He steps near the altar and sits down.
We’ve set the tone. He’s a very casual guy.
As he watches parishioners trickle in, two Filipino children play at the feet of their mother in the front row. Then the man stands up, walks down the four steps at the front of the altar and approaches an unfamiliar face.
“What’s your name?” he asks, extending a hand. “Does your mother know you come to places like this?”
More tone setting. He likes to use obtuse humor and a deprecating style.
This is the Rev. Leo O’Brien, pastor at St. Vincent. He has led this church on Madison Avenue for 34 years — and kept the people coming.
The silver-haired priest has welcomed all worshipers, creating a congregation of 700 families from 43 ZIP codes. Gay couples pray next to retirees; a mixed-race couple with one child slips into chairs next to a white couple with three.
And look, he’s so accepting. Come one, come all, it doesn’t really matter how you live, who you are, or even what you believe, as long as you come.
O’Brien addresses social issues without lecturing or politicizing. He “plants seeds,” as he puts it, smiling.
After announcing at a recent Mass that there would be a second collection for the poor, he said: “We wouldn’t have to do this if we weren’t spending all that money in Iraq.”
Not a bad point. It’s good to speak truth to power and to energize the faithful. I’m just wondering if he’s that honest about calling people to repentance and to living as the Lord and Church command them to live. Hmmm?
Now O’Brien is retiring as full-time priest, and parishioners worry about the church’s future. He turns 75 in six days, and church law says that priests must retire in their 75th year.
O’Brien has chosen July 30 for his retirement, although he’ll remain at St. Vincent part time, celebrating Mass on Saturdays, conducting marriages and presiding at funerals. Today he celebrates his last Easter Mass as resident priest.
“Physically, I’m ready to retire,” he says. “Certainly, I will miss being here full-time. I’ll miss being with the people, sharing their joys and sometimes their sorrows. I’ll miss supporting and helping them.”
I’m waiting for the ‘I’ll miss teaching them the truths of the faith, how to live lives in accord with their professed faith and allegiance to the Church.’
Winding down: O’Brien suffered a heart attack two years ago. He struggles getting around because of neuropathy, which causes numbness in his feet. In January he showed up at Mass wearing dark glasses. He had fallen and cut his eyebrow. The injury required stitches and produced a black eye.
Because of a lack of incoming priests, St. Vincent won’t receive a full-time replacement for O’Brien. Sister Joan Byrne, who has been at St. Vincent for 33 years, one fewer than O’Brien, will run the parish. And the Rev. Richard Vosko, who lives in Clifton Park, will celebrate Mass on Sundays.
“Without Father O’Brien’s strong leadership, I wonder how things will go,” says Bob Sipos, an active parishioner. “We’re going to miss him; that’s for sure.”
But Sipos and others say that O’Brien has motivated so many parishioners to serve on councils and committees that the parish will continue to flourish. O’Brien says St. Vincent has 400 to 500 volunteers.
He’s always recruiting, mingling with parishioners before and after Mass, making newcomers feel welcome and introducing worshipers to one another. His amiable manner seems casual, but it’s often calculated to get people involved.
“We have a motto,” O’Brien says, “Jesus didn’t hang a sign-up sheet in the synagogue. He went out and picked people.”
Being inspired: Sipos and his wife, Jane, both 82, responded to O’Brien’s cajoling shortly after discovering St. Vincent three years ago. Sipos is one of 53 parishioners who read the Scripture at Mass, and he and his wife visit the sick in the hospital.
“He can be very strong without being pushy,” Sipos says of O’Brien. “He’s a motivator. He makes his appeals seem so logical. You think, ‘Yes, I can do that.’
Sipos and his wife moved to Latham from Little Silver, N.J., to be near their son and his family, who live in Albany. They attended five different Catholic churches but found the parishioners indifferent, the services dry and the homilies uninspiring. Then they attended St. Vincent.
“After just one visit,” Sipos says, “we knew we’d found a home.”
Sorry the other Churches weren’t as entertaining as you’d have liked. Perhaps if they used smiley faced cookies instead of communion wafers?
You know that the only good churches are those that entertain you. This is the trap of self worship. Church is about me and how I feel, what I want, not about the worship of God. I wonder if they truly think that if they are not entertained God is not entertained?
They liked the music. Next to the altar in a front corner of the church, an ensemble plays guitars, flute, saxophone and trumpet. A pianist accompanies a choir of nearly 30, all ages. The hymns are upbeat and, O’Brien says, designed to get the parishioners involved in the service.
That’s right, the music must be upbeat, in the traditional happy-slappy Jesus style. No more sin, repent, sacrifice stuff. That’s just too heavy mannnnn…
The Siposes liked the homily, or sermon. They found that O’Brien’s homilies could be whittled down to a single, simple, doable message: Be kind to strangers, strengthen the bonds of your family, reach out to a friend.
And they liked the camaraderie — from other parishioners’ friendliness to O’Brien’s openness, accessibility and willingness to listen and address concerns. People don’t dart for the door after Mass; they hang around. As Sipos notes, the parking lot is slow to empty.
Melting pot: Noreen Thomas, 60, who lives in Delmar and has known O’Brien for 35 years, says he has created “the people’s parish.” She says “it’s not about what you wear or what you do for a living. We all come here as equals; talk about a melting pot.
“You don’t think, do I have to go to church today? You get up and go, because you want to. It’s like going to your grandmother’s for Sunday dinner.”
O’Brien says he’s most proud of helping the parish “become the community that it is, the people who come, the people we serve.”
He oversaw creation of a food pantry that gives away food three days a week to about 500 people a month. Parishioners donate blankets, clothes and other items for homeless shelters. The church sells coffee, tea and chocolate from developing countries to support those countries’ farmers. It encourages parishioners to write letters to politicians urging support of such things as health care for the poor, justice for immigrants and abolition of the death penalty.
For three decades, O’Brien has encouraged women to join men as readers at Mass; the Vatican in the 1960s urged pastors to involve more worshipers. About 10 years ago, he encouraged girls to join the boys as altar servers, carrying the cross, lighting candles, assisting the priest; that happened after a parishioner asked why they couldn’t have girl servers, and O’Brien replied: “We can.”
All of the above are good things. A sense of community, clear homilies that motivate people to do, the universality of the Church, no one is put out because of race or economic class, a priest who is open and accessible to his people, and ministries that actually put Christian ideals into practice.
After baptizing baby girls in front of the congregation several years ago, O’Brien said: “Maybe someday they’ll have the opportunity to be a priest.”
Priest problems: Only unmarried men can become Roman Catholic priests. O’Brien says he doesn’t see why married men and women can’t become priests, too. Because of a lack of priests, he says, 30 of the 190 parishes in the 14-county Albany Diocese do not have full-time pastors.
“It’s a great concern,” he says. “Men are not entering the seminary to replace us as we age and retire. There’s no bench strength. We must do something different.”
Now the downside all in a nutshell. I don’t know what to do, so let’s do something different.
Oh, and it is far more important to use events like the baptism of an infant to proclaim personal politics that contravene the Church’s teaching. It’s really important that father teach what father believes rather than what the Church believes. That way people can learn that the teachings of the Church are optional. Bad enough coming from a parish priest, but the vicar general?
I wonder how many young men or even those on their second or third careers have been challenged by the good father to be a priest? He’s been open, inclusive, hasn’t said a negative thing to anyone —“ yet no vocations?
A native of Raymertown in Rensselaer County, O’Brien was ordained in 1956 after attending Catholic Central High School in Troy, St. Charles College in Baltimore, St. Bernard Seminary in Rochester and Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He was pastor at St. Paul the Apostle in Schenectady for eight years and worked full-time in the bishop’s office for eight years, serving as vice chancellor, chancellor and vicar general. He remains vicar general, meaning he’s the diocese’s second-in-command, behind the bishop.
Much has changed in the Catholic Church during O’Brien’s career. Priests quit celebrating Mass in Latin, and altars were placed so priests would be facing the congregation. Nuns shed their habits for everyday clothing.
O’Brien embraced the changes, saying that they gave the church life. But nothing jolted the church as severely as the scandal of priests’ sexually abusing boys.
“Since the terrible scandal of clergy abuse,” O’Brien says, “I’ve had to be very careful in the presence of children. I’m never with a child alone, just to be sure I don’t give signs of anything possibly improper.”
St. Vincent at a recent Sunday Mass abounds with children. They play with toys and color on the floor at the rear and sides of the church. Their chatter, laughs and cries provide a constant background noise.
O’Brien calls a woman forward who is converting to Catholicism. As she stands in front of the altar, wearing faded jeans and a long-sleeve white shirt, untucked, O’Brien says: “Do you want to belong to this parish? We’re strange here.”
Here’s a great teaching moment.
It is different to be Catholic. It is to be among the strange —“ at least as the world determines us to be strange. It is because you are called to live a life of faith. A life that calls you to believe in and profess all that the Church teaches, even if you can’t understand it, even if it is uncomfortable or goes against what ‘society’ wants. You are taking yourself out of the world and will be buried with Christ in baptism. Buried so that you may come to new life.
The people laugh. But many revel in their belief that this parish is different. As O’Brien approaches retirement, he tells them not to worry. His motto, he says, is if you want your church to keep going, keep coming.
We all know that it is great to be in a church that is full, especially one alive with the joy of children, a church where the people are motivated and work really hard. Some of us only experience moments like that during holidays, when the churches come alive with people and their praise of God.
While this is great, it is not an end in and of itself. Washing out orthodox faith for the sake of full pews is no better than Judas selling out Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. The people are there, but what will you say to them? If you proclaim the truth of the Church’s teaching, some will walk away like the rich young man. Some will hear but will not be able to bear it. Heterodoxy is no solution.
As clergy, I know that if I fail to stand up for the teaching of the Church I am simply greasing the skids for those I should be witnessing to. I have a responsibility and am accountable, not just to my Bishop, but to God.
I wish Father O’Brian well. I simply hope that he will reflect upon his ministry and be strengthened in calling the world to repentance and orthodox faith.
