‘God is calling,’ say two local men who will be ordained this week into Maine’s changing Catholic church

LEWISTON – Speaking days before his ordination, Gregory Dube believed he may never know if God wanted him to be a priest.

He felt a kind of peace, though.

Following five years in a Washington, D.C., seminary, during which he volunteered in a hospital and an AIDS hospice, the 28-year-old from Greene thinks he was called by God.

A priest once told him, “There will never be a strike of lightning that comes down from the sky and says, ‘That’s what I want you to do.'”

Yet, it is the most certain thing in Dube’s life.

Until his grand ordination – planned for 5 p.m. Friday at the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul – he will not know where in Maine he will serve or what role he will play in Maine’s changing Catholic church.

Already, Maine has fewer priests than parishes. An aging population of priests, part of a 1960s boom in ordinations, is swiftly retiring.

In 2005, the state had 97 active priests for 135 parishes. This year, there are 86 priests for 131 parishes.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, which administers all of Maine, predicts there will be only 65 active priests by 2010.

This is a good year, though. The diocese is ordaining a big class – five men in all. Two have already taken their vows. The Rev. Daniel Baillargeon, 54, of Old Town and the Rev. Bruce Skilet, 53, of Skowhegan were ordained last month.

The others represent a new generation of priests. Like Dube, Seamus Griesbach of Lisbon Falls is 28, and Nathan March of Cumberland is 32.

The three either attended public schools or were home schooled, another shift from the norm, when most future priests attended parochial schools.

There are other changes: With fewer priests, the days spent working in one church at a time are gone. Maine priests today work in teams, performing the sacraments among 29 clusters of churches. Each cluster forms a single parish.

Despite the drop in membership and the sharing of priests, Maine’s Roman Catholic Church, which according to one estimate has lost about 28,000 members in the past 10 years, will continue to exist.

“We are made for God,” Griesbach said. “We can pretend we’re not. But it doesn’t hold up in the end.”

For the young deacons – seminarians become deacons after completing three of four years of theology classes – the changes in Maine come as little surprise.

‘Faith crisis’

Dube was studying at the Catholic University of America’s Theological College in Washington when Bishop Richard Malone unveiled the cluster idea in April 2005. But he heard about it.

So did Griesbach, who was studying at the Pontifical North American College in Rome.

He agreed with the bishop’s moves.

“We have a faith crisis,” he said. “I don’t get freaked out by the decline in the number of priests. However, when I look at the numbers in most Catholic churches and the median age in most parishes, I get freaked out.”

People are moving out of Maine, he said. Congregations are aging. There are too few young families.

In 1997, there were an estimated 221,000 Catholics in Maine, according to Sue Bernard, spokeswoman of the Maine diocese. Today, that number is 193,200.

Griesbach believes that many people have distracted themselves from their faith indirectly with the noise of modern society or more directly with materialism or drugs.

“People are living unhappily and they don’t know why,” he said.

His job, he believes, is to be an example of a life lived by sacrifice.

“There are sacrifices in any meaningful life,” he said. “If we’re not willing to make those sacrifices, in the end we end up really being miserable.

“We were made to give ourselves away,” he said.

The sacrifice of priests was once more commonplace in Maine. It peaked in 1964, when 243 priests were actively working for the diocese, according to Bernard.

At the time, many Catholic families were large. If there were seven or eight children, one child was often designated for the priesthood at an early age, Bernard said.

In the 1960s, ordination classes sometimes surpassed 10 new priests per year in Maine. Since then, the average has been two priests per year, said the Rev. Frank Murray, who serves as the director of seminarians for the diocese.

There are currently 12 Maine men studying to be priests, so the two-per-year pace will continue for the foreseeable future, he said.

Fewer priests, more work

New priests will feel the changes, serving more churches in the clusters of parishes.

“Most priests would say, ‘I am working harder,'” Murray said.

Parishioners are feeling the changes in less convenience, in fewer Masses and fewer available priests for some duties, said Murray, who leads churches in Auburn, Mechanic Falls and Norway.

But people are beginning to understand the reasonable limits of a priest’s responsibility, he said.

“There was a feeling that the priest was the church’s building manager and point man on everything,” he said. “The whole flock is getting clearer on what they should ask of him.”

Not that Dube and Griesbach want a break. Both seem eager to get to work, once they find out where they will be assigned.

“I feel like a transient,” Dube said.

The uncertainty doesn’t bother him. He gave up control over his future, like so many other things, when he took this path.

Just don’t call it a “sacrifice.”

“I don’t like to use that word,” Dube said. “I really don’t. Sure, you are giving up something. But you’re also being able to give to the people. That’s the way I look at it. I don’t look at it as, ‘I am giving up a wife and kids.’

“If God truly calls you to this, you are given the grace to live this life,” he said.

And the dwindling numbers of new priests?

“I think God is still calling men to the priesthood,” said Dube. “The issue is that the culture is just so loud.

“Just slow down a minute,” he said. “God calls, but if nobody’s listening, it’s hard.”

Like Dube, Griesbach said he might never know for sure whether he was called by God. But that’s all right.

“Someone once said, ‘You know you’ve been called when the bishop puts his hands on your head,'” Griesbach said.

“Do you know your wife loves you?” he said. “Yeah. But she can’t take out her heart and show you the part that’s in love.

“Ultimately, we have to live like that,” he said.