 We're delighted to be with you, our friends and alumni and alumni from Fairfield University in Prep. This morning I'd like to introduce you to someone who many of you have seen from afar and you've certainly, if you've been tuning in regularly to our streaming liturgies or if you have been during the academic year assisting at the liturgies in Egan Chapel, you would have gotten to know Father Paul Rohr. But this is an opportunity for me to speak with him and invite him to share more of the details of his story. That Paul is our Candice Minister is really kind of not necessarily intuitive. Paul is, after all, not a native of New England. He's not a Charlie Allen or a Father Jim Bowler or Father Michael Doody. Paul comes from St. Louis. He's a St. Louis native and he was not educated by the Jesuits in secondary school as many of us were who who entered the Society of Jesus. Paul was educated by the Benedictines. So Paul, what in the world are you doing as a Jesuit? How did someone who went to a Benedictine prep school and then went on to law school and began practicing law? How in the world did you find yourself as a Jesuit? Yeah, well, I mean, I think vocation, my vocation, like so many vocations, starts at home. I think I had a pretty good foundation there. Both my parents were committed to their practice of the faith. And it was very much growing up a a faith life that was centered around our parish. My father, who died when I was young, but when he was when he was alive, was very involved in coaching and different things for the parish schools, the parish teams. My mother was president of the parish council. Ian was they were just both very involved. It was not a I wouldn't say we had a very kind of overly pious home environment in the sense we didn't pray the rosary together or do a lot of devotional practices. But Mass was very much at the heart of of our experience. And so many of our friends, family friends came out of the the parish that we were active in. So I think that was the foundation that I had. And then I had really wonderful teachers in the faith. So I'm just very blessed all along the way to have had really wonderful inspiring priests and others who have taught me. And so Father Blasek mentioned the Benedictines. I went to a high school in St. Louis St. Louis Priory High School, which was founded originally by monks from England, who came over. And for my seventh grade religion class, I had an extraordinary man as my teacher who has been a friend and a mentor throughout my life. Mother was then brother Thomas Perking. And he was somebody who was born into a Lutheran family. He was paralyzed at the age of two with polio. And he went on to be first in his class at Harvard, was a Rhodes scholar, did a doctorate at Oxford with Elizabeth Anscombe. He was one of the great leaders and great Catholic philosophers, but a real sort of leader in analytic philosophy. And here was this guy who had all these credentials. And he had come to the faith, kind of an intellectual journey. And through the experience of getting to know other Catholics at Oxford. And he was just this holy man who was able to, for a young teenager, make the faith reasonable. So he was never afraid of questions. And he gave very intelligent answers to those questions or confessed if he didn't know the answer. And he was willing to be honest about that. But he just had this kind of radiant joy about him. And so Father Thomas, I think was just an instrumental influence for me of somebody who modeled Christian joy and the intelligibility of Christian faith. And that you could be somebody who was questioning and intelligent, who believed. And I think that that's really critical at that stage of life, because that's the time when you start to question, when you start to hear a lot of criticisms of your faith and its teachings. And if you don't have somebody who is a good guy, you can very easily sort of dismiss or become cynical about your faith. And he was always a wonderful example. We also had many, in my parish, we had some wonderful priests. And Senior O'Donnell became a bishop and was just a real support to my family when my father died. So that was kind of the early foundation of my vocation. And I think when I was in grammar school, I'd say probably around fifth grade, I started to think about being a priest. So I had early on some inkling of a desire. And then when I got to high school, I kind of put that out of my mind. It wasn't the cool thing to do. I didn't want to be sort of boxed in by that. And all the things that go with, you know, your discovery of yourself in high school were true for me. And I think I kind of put that all out of my mind. Then I went to college. I was personally cross and then at Georgetown. I transferred after my freshman year. And when I was at Georgetown, I again had these great teachers in the faith, some Jesuits who, some of them have gone to the Lord, but were really remarkable men who influenced me. It was particularly a Jesuit. Father Tom King would have a mask every day and on Sunday at 11.15 at night was the last possible chance you could get a mask. And I think it was with Father King that I first discovered a love for the liturgy. You know, you'd think I would have gotten in front of Benedictines, but I guess that's really more their charism than the Jesuit charism. But I just, he had this very kind of mystical quality to the way he would preside at Mass. And there was a sense of intimacy and of mystery and holiness about him and about the way he would celebrate Mass that was really a powerful draw. So I think I first, and I've also had something to do with just my age, I guess, was the first time I really enjoyed going to Mass and that I really felt that I got something out of it. And as preaching seemed to speak directly to my experience. And I think that was the experience of a lot of people who would hear him, that he was just able to touch something deep and awaken it in you. And so I was very, you know, that was a very important stage in my journey. I remember another conversation I had that was important from somebody who was dear to this place, Father Jeff von Arux, who was the chair of the history department at Georgetown when I was there. And I remember having a conversation, I think it was during confession. And he kind of gently said, you know, we have a way of progressing and growing up in all sorts of other different areas of our life, but not necessarily in our faith life, which was his kind of gentle loves to me, to kind of take it seriously, and really try to go a little bit deeper than I had been going. So I went on a number of retreats at Georgetown. And there were two that were really very important for me. One was a retreat called Agape. And that was this very deep experience of God's love for me, feeling loved in a really powerful way. And that faith was not just about obligations or about community, you know, in the sense of being with other people. But it was profoundly an experience of God's touching your heart, loving you. And I had never felt it so powerfully and immediately as I did in that retreat up until that point in my life. So that awakened me to just this whole other world of what our faith could be. And then another retreat that was very important for me in my own discernment, and my own journey is I had graduated with Georgetown. And I had decided to go to law school. And I did that because partly because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. And in that time, sort of in 1994, Connie was terrific. And a lot of people were going to law school, just to kind of have another thing in their resume. So there was a little bit of that there was a desire to get involved in in the political sphere, which is part of the reason I went to Georgetown. So I had an interest in politics or some kind of government service. And I thought this is a good way to do that. But I even at the towards the end of my time at Georgetown, I started to have this reawakening of not just mature faith, but of a desire for priesthood, maybe, or religious life. And I started to think about it in that sort of towards my seat in my senior year at Georgetown. And so this was something I brought with me to law school. And then after my first year of law school, I went on a five day silent retreat through Georgetown. And I was going to law school, Washington University, St. Louis, but I had come back to work during the summer in Washington. And I decided at the end of my summer to do this five day silent retreat. And I really wanted to figure out if it might call to be a Jesuit or not. And I thought, well, I'll just go to this retreat and I'll surely be able to know the answer to that. And I went in with this desire to know and get this fear, a tremendous fear that somehow God was going to swoop in. And then if I open the door, God was going to take over. And that would be the end of the story. And then suddenly I'd be carried away, be Jesuit, a priest, and all these things would follow. And I would suddenly lose my freedom in some way. And so I was really terrified in that retreat that that would happen. And the real grace, which certainly was helped by my spiritual director during the retreat to Father O'Connell was the discovery that that's not the way God operates, that God doesn't just swoop in and take over. That what I wanted in the depths of my heart, which I still at that point wasn't sure of, was what God wanted for me. There wasn't this disconnect of God imposing His will on me and trying to fit the square peg in the round hole or something. And so that was a deeply liberated experience. And it allowed my slow discernment to go ahead. And then I'm cutting out certain details, but I progressively had this sense that through the end of, towards the end of law school, that this is where I felt called to society. But I was a little bit in between the Jesuits and the Benedictines. I felt an attraction to both, actually. And but I was in return. I had to went back to Georgetown that spring of my third year of law school and I had a really a ha graced moment when I went back to the mass that I used to attend that Father King presided at. And I just said, this is what I want. And so to kind of shorten the narrative a little bit, I was ready to apply. I wanted to apply the vocation director said, you know, it's a little late in the game. We'd like you to do some further vocation programs with us and have us get to know you before we're ready to say that you apply. And so it took a little bit of time. I went and I worked for a little bit longer. And I ended up entering when I was 28 years old. So late a late vocation by the standards of a different time period, sort of an average vocation by today's standards in terms of entering. But it was a it was a very some ways it seems very it's one of those straight with God, what is it? God's right straight with crooked lines or something. You know, I could see a lot of sort of interesting turns along the way. But ultimately, I think there was a logical progression to how it happened. And I think my interest in politics, my interest in law is ultimately this deep desire that I had that I found in the society to change or be a force for change in society, to be somebody who is in dialogue with culture, in dialogue with the society we live in today that is deeply rooted in faith and in the tradition out of which our faith comes quite alive and in contact with the needs of real people and able to speak to their desires in a language that is accessible, that's even inspiring. And so I think that's kind of my own some of the key parts of my vocation story anyway. Thanks Paul. You touched on the connection between what you learned and what motivated you in law school and what still shapes your ministry and your understanding of your particular contribution. I wonder whether I would this would be a good jumping off point to talk about your ministry as the director of campus ministry at the Law Center of Georgetown. How did your experience of these the years of discernment and your time working in government and being educated as a lawyer, how did you find your experience at the Law Center? Yeah, that's a really great question. I mean I think I loved it. I thought it was a really graced period of my life to be at the Law Center. There are a lot of really both serious and intelligent people who are also idealistic. So there's a level of discussion that you can have with the person who's at that stage of their journey that is really rich and interesting and yet the challenge is that with the legal profession people walk in with a lot of preconceptions about what it has to be. So to give a classic example people think that you know the only right way to be a lawyer is to go into what's called big laws or one of the big law firms and to make a lot of money right out of law school for good reasons. I mean a lot of if you go to law school you have a lot of debt from your loans and so you know that's a significant consideration that you want to have to be able to pay those off. But part of what we did and part of what I think you always do in the company in you people in whatever setting you're in is trying to give them that deeper sense of freedom to you know show them the broader horizons of how they can use their people train. A lot of the work that we did was trying to encourage law school students to stay true to their values, to stay true to the reasons, at least the kind of deeper reasons that they chose the legal profession. It's hard at that stage to kind of I mean occasionally I would have students who come in and it was pretty clear that maybe they had not made the best discernment in going to law school it wasn't the best choice for them. And so you know to help them to that that deeper realization was kind of challenging because they'd already made a big investment or to see how maybe they can use what they had in other ways as for instance I have. So I think what I found helpful was I could draw from my own experience at law school a little bit of work experience I didn't have a lot of work experience but I could draw from just my own experiences of especially the first year of law school which is the one that they say in law school first year they scare you to death the second year they work you to death and the third year they bore you to death and so it's really the scaring to death part that most students need help with so this kind of collaborating with a team of people we worked very closely with our dean of students and with the other partners counseling our diversity officer a lot of different great partners that we had that helped just care for the student and I think that was so different my own experience I think I had a good law school experience I think Washington University was a good law school is a good law school but there was this definite difference between a Jesuit law school and the care for the whole person that was provided there from what I had experienced in law school it was just a world of difference in terms of the support system that was there. Well I wonder whether you could say more about that I know that the Georgetown law faculty and student body is very diverse so if the majority of your faculty colleagues administrators are not Catholics have not had a Jesuit education what's a Jesuit university doing in the law school business and what was it that a Georgetown approach to education a Jesuit approach to education brought to the formation of the faculty staff and students in a diverse setting yeah but good question a big question I think you know the motto of the law school is law is but the means justice is the end sort of may have flipped around but it's that's the sense justice is the end and law is the means so these larger questions about justice I think there's things that even before the society had its general congregation 32 we've been involved in questions of the common good questions of justice and so I think the society the Jesuits have always recognized the importance of trying to shape the people who are going to shape society we're going to be different makers in society and in our society as in I think any human society whether you like it or not the some of the most important influential different makers are lawyers if you look at the leaders of any significant movement they almost always have a lawyer involved civil rights movement you think of very good Marshall so you know being able to be part of that discussion and to awaken or to try to encourage deeper questions about justice and society is I think I don't want to say that that doesn't happen in other law schools I think it does so I don't I think we have to be careful about a kind of Jesuit exceptionalism that you know we're the only ones who do this kind of thing I think that we do it as just a maybe it's a constitutive part of our identity we have to do it if we don't do it we're falling short whereas maybe other traditions if you didn't do it would not be a contradiction of their identity but I think you know we care very much not just about mention the influence of justice and shaping society but I think we also care just about each person as as an individual with a story and with with a with a sacred story that had to be nurtured and and and so I think we all in our university took seriously that need to respect the desires of of each student and I also think that we foster this really this is a surprising really strong sense of community for a place it's the largest law school in the country 2,500 students there and most of them don't live live there although some do so the fact that was able to have a strong sense of community was really striking and I think we were blessed by having some some Jesuits and others who would help to foster that community there a lot of professors talked about Bob Dryanan as being a Jesuit that they were close to he had died before I got there but that was also part of father Urshi father last Urshi of course this is a wonderful Hungarian Jesuit who is almost 100 years old and still teach still teaching still teaching at the law center he just is unstoppable so he is another one of those inspirations to all of us who I think one of the things that we contribute as a general school any Jesuit school is the sense of the larger universe you know that you're part of a network you're part of a tradition that goes back centuries and that you know opens you up to a deeper conversation a larger conversation than a lot of other schools are privileged to have. Paul that's a great segue for me to ask you to talk about your time at Rome this network that you referred to is of course for us the network of the Society of Jesus our communities our institutions around the globe Paul had the great privilege of studying at the Gregorian University and living at our community attached to the church of the Jezu the mother church of the society and you could probably walk in one minute from your bedroom to the rooms of Saint Ignatius where Ignatius and his companions really founded the society and wrote our constitutions and directed the development of the society for the first for the first years so Paul tell us a little bit about how your experience of living in Rome being educated at the Gregorian and then continuing on to do your licensure in Canada law also at the Gregorian how these have also shaped your perspective and contributed to what you just referred to as this sense of a broader world and certainly a broader church. Yeah thank you well what would I say I think it's a tremendous experience of the universality of the church to be in Rome you know I lived in a house of judgments from 27 different countries so I don't know many other settings in or outside the Society of Jesus where you have that opportunity and you know in the States where we have something a more diverse community it's usually or at least sometimes the Americans are in the performance and here and there was very much a small minority of the people there maybe allowed minority as we tend to be sometimes but you know it was it was that sense of this rich set of cultures of traditions that still were united by the experience of the spiritual exercises and and I don't know how you feel a bond like that without the grace of God somehow at work you know I mean you can have other kinds of bonds I don't mean to say that you know that's the only kind of different traditions can happen it's it's very interesting to see how people can be very fully and authentically alive in their own tradition the national culture that they come from and yet at the same time deeply and fully anchored in this this spiritual tradition tradition of the exercises and of course of our shared Catholic faith so there was that university universality and then there was the depth aspect which is that you mentioned being close to the rooms of Ignatius being able to go there for Mass going there just to pray quietly and feel that connection to the founder to to the man that you know has shaped my life in so many ways was just such a such a grace I think you know in our tradition as you know Jerry we put a lot of emphasis on imagination and to have as a composition of place being able to imagine you know maybe sitting by Ignatius at his desk because so much is what we do in any work whether it's his priests or religious or any line of work is going to be pretty mundane and you know Ignatius spent the last years of his life you might even say crucified to a desk he was he was at his desk and just that steady plotting work that he was so good at in spite of being a charismatic religious founder you know I thought that was that was very very helpful you could see the place where he would go out and look at the stars to you know he was fond of looking at the stars and just that he sort of had those you know the mystical and the practical brought together but you looked at a place like the Jezu you know it's a Baroque church but what is the Baroque about what is ultimately about this this marriage of grace and nature right so how does the grace of God animate nature and bring it alive make it dramatic and unify it and I think that in the city of Rome you just see that played out again and again and again it's it's the church of the Romans it's the city of the Romans so you see all that antiquity but you also see the church has taken that enlightened it I would say and given a new and I would say richer synthesis to it just having friends from around the world is a is a great gift getting you know messages from them and connecting with them in these pandemic days I think is you know just taught me how blessed I have been to have had that experience of the church and you know I think the theology and I didn't go on and finish with canon law but I have some some it's mattering of knowledge in canon law but also I think gives me some some tools to help people in my work now and another work that I that I do so you know and let's face it it's just a beautiful place to live and there's a lot of great food and nice wine so what more can you ask for and Paul left all that to join us here at Fairfield the last part of your formation Paul was in Australia Jesuits have a concluding year after our long years of studies that we call the Tertianship a time of intent of returning again to our deep spiritual roots Paul concluded his Tertianship which he made in Australia and joined us here at Fairfield last August Paul I wonder whether I might ask you about what this this not even a year these past 10 months have been like for you joining us here at Fairfield yeah well at least the last few of them have been pretty strange as I think they have been for the whole the whole world but you know I think it's a it's it's an experience of God's fidelity I think wherever you go God is with you and you have uncertainty I do at least when I started a new place about whether it's going to be the right fit whether my gifts are going to be helpful for the people that I serve and you know what what I have to offer and yet you know God is just constantly both brought me down to earth and focusing on the now and the present moment and given me wonderful witnesses and teachers and friends who have welcomed me and helped me to adapt to this transition it's I think been a bit of a trial by fire in the second half of the year both because of the pandemic but also my mother passed away in March so having all that going on at the same time is trying to keep things together for what we do in the campus ministry and try to be a presence to people at at a very challenging time not just at the pandemic but now of course since the killing of George Floyd a whole new chapter in our nation's life that I think calls us to a profound examination of ourselves of the kind of national life we want to live of deep questions of justice and identity and that's something I feel like I'm very much learning as I go I don't feel that I've had the answers worked out at all and I and I also conscious that if you don't really think things through you have the capacity to really move somebody really alter the conversation in a very destructive way so I think it's been a it's been a good year it's been a rich year I think I've learned a lot I think I still have a lot to learn and hopefully God will still be as faithful as he has been I wonder whether I could ask you to say more about what you just noted with caution that one learns to the need to be careful and the way we have conversations and discussions could you say what you're more what you're thinking about yeah I mean I think that in any conversation any genuine conversation there has to be a full presence and attentiveness to each of the dialogue partners who are part of that conversation and to the dignity to the richness that each person brings to that story and I think each of us filter what another person has to say through our own lens and our own experience which is inescapable you have to do that but you'll have to do it with an awareness that you're doing that and in questions of justice and particularly racial justice so much of the experience of our dialogue partners you know the case tradition of african-americans especially is of not having been heard of not having been cherished of not having been really seen visible in our society where when not invisible not heard of experiencing debilination or oppression so how do we open ourselves to that and show we just have a couple minutes left so I'm going to wrap up how do we show that kind of deep reverence for the other in our conversation and have frank open discussions they really air what people feel their fears especially their fears but also their hopes their concerns in a safe or as somebody said just recently a brave space you have to create brave spaces and I think that you know our faith tradition is very much a deep resource for that and so I think you have the opportunity to really contribute to that conversation and to create spaces for that kind of engagement but I think it has to be thought through really carefully there are very a lot of sensitivities on all sides that have to be taken into account thank you very much Paul and thank you to all of you thank you Father Tony for again allowing us to to meet here and to invite our alumni and alumni and friends to be with us for this conversation Paul when you were describing the early influences Father Thomas and then Father Tom King who gave you such a sense that faith is open to questioning and that one needs to be able to give an account of one's faith and that the Eucharist is to be celebrated with joy and with reverence and an openness to the mystery of God I can't help but but know how powerful and enduring those influences were on you that that is those are among the gifts that you bring to campus ministry here and to our our Jesuit ministry and our Jesuit community so we are so glad that you are a member of our community and the member of our university community and prep community so thank you Paul and thank all of you in a few minutes we'll be celebrating the Eucharist and as always we will be remembering all of you thank you very much thank you