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FR. DANIEL SCANLAN: WITNESS TO FREEDOM
On July 15, 2023, at the Epiphany Cathedral in Venice Florida, Fr. Daniel Scanlan became the first Donahue Academy graduate to be ordained a priest. His road to priesthood has been a path followed in perseverance and trust, a path of a man dedicated to hearing and responding freely to God’s call. Fr. Scanlan is a living embodiment of the ideals of Donahue Academy—he is a witness to freedom.
Daniel’s first step on this journey began at age 8. Finding himself bored, he complained to his mother, who wisely directed him to the family bookshelf. There Daniel picked up one of the many books on the lives of the saints and began reading. And reading. As the days passed he found he had read every one of the books—and so he read them again. Like St. Ignatius of Loyola, whose conversion began with books about the saints, Daniel recalls that following his immersion in those books, a desire was awakened in him—a desire to make a total commitment to holiness and sanctity.
When he was 13, his older brother, Eric, decided to enter the seminary; and the possibility of priesthood came to Daniel (his brother is now Fr. Eric Scanlan, pastor of Incarnation Parish in Sarasota). During this time, the Scanlan family moved to Ave Maria, and Daniel enrolled in Donahue Academy. There he found a group of friends who were, like him, committed to living a virtuous life in the pursuit of excellence. His determination was also aided by his father: “Nothing short of A’s!” Daniel strived to do his best in academics and athletics (especially basketball), and his zeal for the Church was obvious to all. Humanities chair Dr. Tyler Graham recalls that Daniel stopped him in the hall one day and asked, “Mr. Graham, have you done the total consecration to Our Lady?” By junior year, Daniel was convinced he was called to the priesthood.
But even though he believed he was being called to the priesthood, something held him back. “I was not free,” he recalls. “I thought I had to become a priest.” What started as a desire for holiness became a slavish relationship with God, feeding a bitterness that for a time, caused Daniel to reject the call. He started college at Ave Maria University and began dating. Perhaps marriage was really his vocation?
Toward the end of his freshman year, he sought spiritual direction during a student retreat. The spiritual director told him that blessings exist in all vocations and explained that God would bless a married father with children (something Daniel knew personally from his large family) but that He would bless a priestly father even more, and with many more children. This was Daniel’s moment of freedom. He knew he could follow the road God had set him on. He was free to choose between two goods, and he could now see his call was a gift. By the end of freshman year Daniel was ready to return to the path his call was setting him on.
But his first steps were tentative, and he remained at Ave Maria University for his sophomore year. That spring he was invited to dinner with Bishop Dewane, who, like the Good Shepherd he serves, saw a chance to gently spur Daniel a bit further down the road toward his call. Shortly after, Daniel asked for the application to St. John Vianney minor seminary in Miami and entered the next year.
From there, Daniel accepted his call in earnest and never looked back. After three years of philosophy at minor seminary, four years of theology in Rome for major seminary, and his ordination as a transitional deacon in September of 2022, Fr. Scanlan was ready to serve the Church for the sanctification and salvation of souls. The path that the Lord placed him on as a young boy of 8 had now brought him to his day of ordination, July 15, 2023.
At the long-awaited ordination Mass celebrated by Bishop Dewane, a packed Epiphany Cathedral witnessed as the episcopal laying on of hands and the invoking of the Spirit made Daniel a holy priest. Daniel’s brother, Fr. Eric Scanlan, vested him with his priestly stole and chasuble. Many times the congregation erupted in ovation, and the people of God rejoiced in this new priest of the diocese.
The next day, July 16, Fr. Scanlan chose Ave Maria Parish for his first Mass. The church was standing-room only, with countless Donahue Academy students, alumni, and families eager to join in Daniel’s first Mass. All eyes were fixed on Fr. Daniel as he blessed the chalice he would use for this and many future Masses and elevated the Host for the first time with a deeply reverent gaze of wonder and love. Many were moved to tears as they watched Daniel, with tears of his own, present his ordination manutergium—the cloth containing the chrism oil—to his mother so that, when she meets the Lord and He asks what she has given Him, she can show Him the cloth and answer, “My Lord, I have given You my son.” At the conclusion of Mass, Fr. Scanlan walked down the nave as the Ave Maria congregation erupted in jubilant applause—applause of gratitude and applause of congratulations for Daniel, whom our Lord has called and who has accepted that call in complete freedom, fully and freely offering the gift of the self.
Donahue Academy is honored to have played a role in helping Fr. Scanlan along his road to authentic freedom. It is what our school hopes to do for every student, by challenging them to see freedom in a way that the world often does not: as freedom from sin, as freedom for the good, and ultimately as the freedom to become the men and women God created them to be. When parents support their children by expecting excellence and by striving with them for holiness, they pave the way for them to respond to God’s call to become saints for the new millennium… and sometimes they become priests.
