Former Student Will Become Top Teacher
By Peter Smith
Courier-Journal
March 9, 2008
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080309/NEWS01/803090457
[with video]
ST. MEINRAD, Ind. -- The hilltop monastery of St. Meinrad Archabbey can appear removed from time, its cloisters, courtyards and turreted buildings a piece of the Middle Ages transplanted amid the cornfields of Middle America.
But to the Rev. Denis Robinson, who will take over as president of the abbey's Roman Catholic seminary 20 years after he first visited the grounds as a student, "everything has changed."
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| The Rev. Denis Robinson will become president of the abbey's Roman Catholic seminary in June. |
After dipping precipitously, the enrollment of future priests at St. Meinrad's School of Theology has rebounded, making it one of the nation's 10 largest Catholic seminaries.
Programs for lay ministers and deacons have grown rapidly.
The undergraduate college on the grounds has closed, and those timeless stone buildings? Virtually all have been renovated.
"That physical transformation really is symbolic of the fact that we're constantly re-evaluating, adjusting, looking at what the church needs and then finding ways that creatively we can meet that need," said Robinson, a Benedictine monk who has worked his way up through the ranks of the seminary's faculty.
He will become president and rector of the School of Theology in June, succeeding the Rev. Mark O'Keefe, a fellow Benedictine monk who announced his resignation after 12 years on the job.
"He's full of energy," O'Keefe said of Robinson. "He's what we need right now."
Robinson, 45, a cradle Baptist who converted to Catholicism as a teenager, is widely praised not just for his energy -- he teaches more classes than a full-time load -- but his academic skills as a teacher.
"He reminds me of somebody who if he weren't a monk and a theologian and a teacher, he'd be an actor," said David Zorn, a lay student who directs music and liturgy at Transfiguration of Our Lord Catholic Church in Goshen, Ky. "He has a very strong presence that commands everybody's attention."
Robinson views O'Keefe, 51, who taught him as a student at St. Meinrad and helped inspire his path to the academic life and monasticism, as a mentor.
"I'm in the enviable position of taking leadership of an institution that can just grow from its strengths," Robinson said.
O'Keefe has been credited with stabilizing the seminary's finances and boosting enrollment among future priests, deacons and lay ministers.
St. Meinrad has long been linked to dioceses in Kentucky and Indiana -- including the Archdiocese of Louisville -- training many of the priests who serve there and, more recently, lay ministers and deacons.
Students also come from several other states and foreign countries.
Its enrollment of future priests has risen over the past decade from 81 to 95, placing it among the top 10 Catholic seminaries training American students, according to Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.
By comparison, overall annual Catholic seminary enrollment has remained largely flat over the past decade, according to the center's statistics.
THE REV. DENIS ROBINSON
Age: 45
Personal: Born in Iuka, Miss.
Title: President-rector-elect, St. Meinrad School of Theology; assistant professor of systematic theology; subprior (third in leadership) of St. Meinrad Archabbey.
Career: Ordained priest for the Diocese of Memphis, 1993. Parochial vicar for the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Memphis, 1993-97. Joined St. Meinrad Archabbey, 1997. Professed solemn vows, 2000. Director of continuing education and permanent deacon formation, 1997-2001.
Education: Bachelor's in philosophy, St. Meinrad College, 1989. Master's of divinity, St. Meinrad School of Theology, 1993. Master's in theology, Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium, 2002. Doctorates in sacred theology and philosophy, 2007, University of Louvain.
St. Meinrad school of theology
Location: Part of St. Meinrad Archabbey, a Benedictine monastery founded in 1854 in the town of St. Meinrad in Spencer County, Ind.
President-rector: The Rev. Mark O'Keefe (current); the Rev. Denis Robinson (as of June).
Enrollment: 94 seminarians (future priests in training); 184 in certificate program for permanent deacons; 124 in lay degree programs.
Age: 45
Personal: Born in Iuka, Miss.
Title: President-rector-elect, St. Meinrad School of Theology; assistant professor of systematic theology; subprior (third in leadership) of St. Meinrad Archabbey.
Career: Ordained priest for the Diocese of Memphis, 1993. Parochial vicar for the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Memphis, 1993-97. Joined St. Meinrad Archabbey, 1997. Professed solemn vows, 2000. Director of continuing education and permanent deacon formation, 1997-2001.
Education: Bachelor's in philosophy, St. Meinrad College, 1989. Master's of divinity, St. Meinrad School of Theology, 1993. Master's in theology, Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium, 2002. Doctorates in sacred theology and philosophy, 2007, University of Louvain.
St. Meinrad school of theology
Location: Part of St. Meinrad Archabbey, a Benedictine monastery founded in 1854 in the town of St. Meinrad in Spencer County, Ind.
President-rector: The Rev. Mark O'Keefe (current); the Rev. Denis Robinson (as of June).
Enrollment: 94 seminarians (future priests in training); 184 in certificate program for permanent deacons; 124 in lay degree programs.
"Anecdotally I'm hearing from a lot of seminaries that enrollments are up this year," said Mary Gautier, a researcher at the center.
But even if that becomes a trend, "still there's only about one-third as many being ordained each year as would be necessary to make up for the ones that are dying and retiring."
St. Meinrad has taken notice of that fact, greatly expanding degree programs for lay ministers, who have taken on larger roles in Roman Catholic life because of the overall decline in the number of priests.
Lay enrollment has been as high as 149 students in recent years.
As a professor, Robinson led the creation of a program to train permanent deacons, who are men who perform some clerical duties. Last year, some 15 dioceses used the program in which the school sends professors to dioceses around the country.
One of them was the Diocese of Knoxville, Tenn., which was formerly overseen by Louisville's current archbishop, Joseph E. Kurtz.
"I've had a good relationship with St. Meinrad," Kurtz said, adding that it has a "long history" with the Louisville archdiocese "that I anticipate would continue."
Katarina Schuth, a sociologist at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota who has studied Catholic seminaries for decades, said St. Meinrad has "always had a very good reputation for fine, high academic standards. That has not diminished at all through the years."
The school also had "good fundraising and public relations" that enabled it to finance its programs, Schuth said.
But while the university is on sound financial footing now, things haven't always gone so smoothly for St. Meinrad.
The seminary had to close its undergraduate college, where enrollment was plummeting, to stabilize its finances, O'Keefe said.
"It was a very painful decision for the board and certainly for the monks," said O'Keefe, who, like Robinson, is a graduate of the seminary.
The recent sexual-abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church also made it a dark time for seminarians to be studying for the priesthood.
The scandal prompted the seminary to focus its required psychological screenings for candidates more closely.
The crisis, though, made students more determined to "step up to the plate" and serve the church, O'Keefe said.
For his part, Robinson led the creation of a celibacy training program that deals not only with sexual issues, but pragmatic ones such as living alone, friendships and exercise and a healthy diet.
"One thing we owe the church is well-educated priests, priests who know the theology and Scripture and history and the tradition of the church," he said. " But they also deserve priests who know what to do with that education."
Robinson also has sought to heal the gap between older, more liberal priests and younger, more conservative ones, said Aaron Jenkins, a seminarian from the Archdiocese of Indianapolis.
"Everybody loves Father Denis," Jenkins said, "no matter the generation."
Reporter Peter Smith can be reached at (502) 582-4469 or: psmith@courier-journal.com
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