In 1976 when I was 22 and David was 25 we were both accepted by Bishop Raymond Lessard as seminarians for the Diocese of Savannah. Both of us were to be classmates at St. Mary Seminary and University in Baltimore. David was a convert to the Catholic Faith from the Southern Baptist Church.
Then during the summer of 1976 while we were both preparing for seminary life at St. Mary's in the fall of that year, for some inexplicable reason it was decided either by Bishop Lessard or the vocation director that David would go to Sacred Heart Seminary on Lover's Lane in Hales Corner, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee.
David and I were stunned as we had bonded over the summer of 1976 meeting up at my future parish where I would be pastor from 2004 to 2016, St. Joseph Church in Macon.
It was inexplicable that David, 25 years old (I was 22) would be sent off to a seminary catering to much older men, many of whom were widowers and second career candidates, well into their 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's if not even older.
That seminary experience didn't work out for him and he left the seminary and diocese to pursue other endeavors. But God's calling led him back to the seminary being accepted by the Archdiocese of Atlanta where he was actually born.
That led to his ordination, a stellar ministry, being named auxiliary bishop of Atlanta, then Bishop of Alexandria, Louisiana and now Bishop-Elect of Memphis. He is following a bishop who was forced to submit his resignation by Pope Francis.
If not for that faithful decision to send him to Hales Corner, Wisconsin on Lover's Lane, I think Bishop Talley would have flourished at my seminary where I flourished as well. He would have become a Savannah priest and I think he would not have taken the journey he is now on, but who knows.
So that faithful decision by our diocese led him to Atlanta and Alexandria and now Memphis. God's calling acts in mysterious ways. Ad multus annos to Bishop Talley.
8 comments:
David is a good man and a good priest. I expect he will be a good bishop for Memphis. May God guide him in the days ahead.
Does he follow the Gospel or is he another liberal activist? Does he have a disordered attraction to tradition as Francis’s team puts it or does he keep up to date with whatever AOC says he should think?
A worthwhile Lenten meditation:
"Our Culture of Contempt - The problem in America today is not incivility or intolerance. It’s something far worse." Arthur C. Brooks, NYTimes, 2 March 2019
"In the words of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, contempt is 'the unsullied conviction of the worthlessness of another.'"
"What we need is not to disagree less, but to disagree better. And that starts when you turn away the rhetorical dope peddlers — the powerful people on your own side who are profiting from the culture of contempt. As satisfying as it can feel to hear that your foes are irredeemable, stupid and deviant, remember: When you find yourself hating something, someone is making money or winning elections or getting more famous and powerful. Unless a leader is actually teaching you something you didn’t know or expanding your worldview and moral outlook, you are being used.
Next, each of us can make a commitment never to treat others with contempt, even if we believe they deserve it. This might sound like a call for magnanimity, but it is just as much an appeal to self-interest. Contempt makes persuasion impossible — no one has ever been hated into agreement, after all — so its expression is either petty self-indulgence or cheap virtue signaling, neither of which wins converts."
I wonder if he could read the Latin announcement of this appointment?
I assume he knows how to keep his eyes closed and his mouth shut when it comes to sexual activity among the hierarchy, or else he’d never bern made a bishop in the first place, but is he connected to any of the scandals that the church has decided to come clean about? (The ones that are past the statute of limitations)
In HS, my girlfriend's and my parents always warned us, "Familiarity breeds contempt." But, we found that it only lead to more familiarity...
I am not sure the name "Lover's Lane" is a good street name for a street on which a seminary is located!
May thr Holy Spirit guide and guard Bishop Talley.
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