ELENA PERRI

PHOTO COURTESY OF FATHER STEVE MCDERMOTT

From frat boys to fathers

FATHER MIKE Spitzer, Father Steve McDermott (photo at left), and Father Paul Stenson (below), all belonged to the same fraternity at Temple University in Pennsylvania.

PHOTO COURTESY OF FATHER PAUL STENSON

Three Sigma Pi brothers follow a similar path from the fraternity house to a “much greater fraternity”—the priesthood.

BY ELENA PERRI

IF YOU ASK Father Steve McDermott about his college days, he readily admits some shameful moments. A member of Sigma Pi Fraternity at Temple

University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he and his fraternity brothers had a habit of hitting golf balls from the roof into nearby low-income housing projects. “Sigma Pi was a major drug house at the time,” says McDermott, who serves at Maternity B.V.M. Parish in Philadel-

Elena Perri is a freelance writer who lives in Havertown, Pennsylvania. She is a former copy editor of The Catholic Standard and Times, a weekly newspaper published for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. phia. “The day I was supposed to move in, the frat house caught on fi re.” A space heater that ignited sawdust from a building project caused the fi re. His interest in the party-and-pranks frat house lifestyle started to wane after a 1989 trip to Medjugorje in Bosnia andHerzegovina, where the Blessed Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to six children on June 24, 1981. A radio-television-fi lm major at Temple, a friend asked McDermott to help produce a video for the Oasis of Peace religious community, which is based in Italy. “When I came back from Medjugorje, I just started really growing up, and I was getting tired of the frat house scene,” says McDermott. Shortly after returning,

Join us in prayer, community & ministry

We are the Priests of the Sacred Heart,

Catholic brothers and priests living and working together in community. Contact us at: 800-609-5559, www.scjvocation.org

Enter #116 at VocationMatch.org

he attended a presentation about the church’s teaching on sexuality and natural family planning (NFP). The talk “just completely pancaked me,” says McDermott. “I was emerging from the fraternity stage of my life and growing deeper in my faith. Up to that point, there weren’t too many talks that really just inspired me. The church’s teachings on the beauty of our sexuality and NFP absolutely blew me away. I wasn’t ready for that. It was just phenomenal.” The presentation inspired him to learn more about his Catholic faith, and McDermott began attending night classes in the religious studies program at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary. “That was such a huge boost for me,” he says. “I was really learning my faith like I never did before. I thank God for the teachers I had there. They were wonderful.” McDermott says his pastor took

FATHER STEVE MCDERMOTT helps young adults connect to the church.

advantage of his increasing knowledge of the Catholic faith by inviting him to teach religious education classes and assist with the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA) program at his parish.

The 11 o’clock Mass club

As McDermott continued growing in his faith, he and Mike Spitzer, who pledged with Sigma Pi in 1987, became friends. “Mike at that time was starting to get back into his faith,” says McDermott, who was ordained in 2003. “Mike and I would go to Mass together; no matter how hungover we were, we’d always make sure we were up to go to Mass,” he says. “It was funny because when we were going to Mass, other people started to catch on. Late Saturday night Mike would say, ‘11 o’clock tomorrow?’ People would ask, ‘What’s 11 o’clock?’ We’d say, ‘We’re going to Mass tomorrow.’ We had no problem saying that in a room full of our fraternity brothers. Then guys would come up to us and say, ‘Would you get us up, too? I want to go with you.’” McDermott says that because of their commitment to going to Mass every Sunday, he and Mike eventually had nine fraternity brothers going with them. “I thought, ‘That speaks a lot about community, real brotherhood, and positive peer pressure,’” says McDermott. He made a return trip to Medjugorje—this time with Mike Spitzer in 1990. The opportunity to make this pilgrimage became a pivotal moment in Mike’s life and his future discernment of a vocation to the priesthood. It was during the pilgrimage with McDermott that Mike says he surrendered himself to God in such a way that he was willing to accept whatever God wanted from him, including becoming a priest. “I had not been open to that level of commitment prior to that time,” says Spitzer, who was ordained in 1998. “I defi nitely wanted to set my own course and make my own decisions and did not trust God enough to ask Him to guide me.” Spitzer, who served at Queen of Peace Parish in Ardsley, Pennsylvania and as a teacher at Archbishop Wood High School in Warminster, Penn-

sylvania, is now a student at the Redemptorist school of moral theology, the Accademia Alfonsiana in Rome. (The school is named for the patron of moral theologians and confessors, Saint Alphonsus Liguori.) He has earned a sacred theology licentiate degree and is pursing a doctorate in moral theology, which deals with issues such as biomedical ethics, human sexuality, and social justice. The tragic death of one of his fraternity brothers, Spitzer says, was another of several events that helped him search for deeper truth and meaning in his life and relationship with God. “The rosary, reading scripture, and the sacraments of Confession and Communion became much more important to me after my 20th birthday,” he says. “Retreats, as well as conferences and prayer groups centered on Marian devotion, helped to root me in the search for truth and the desire of communion with God.” Spitzer says McDermott was the fi rst one to give him a push to visit St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, which trains priests for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and other U.S. dioceses. “He told me we’d at least get a couple free meals if we went for a day,” says Spitzer. “No college student living in a fraternity house is foolish enough to turn down free food.”

And one more makes three

Two Sigma Pi brothers becoming priests is pretty amazing, but the story doesn’t end there. A third fraternity brother and future priest, Paul Stenson, followed a similar path from the fraternity house to the priesthood. Stenson says he experienced an “intellectual awakening” during his sophomore year at Temple. After this experience, he had a spiritual awakening that changed his life forever. Stenson had already moved into the Sigma Pi fraternity house when it went up in fl ames. “Talk about a sign,” he says with a laugh. After losing everything he owned in the fi re, he moved into an apartment with some friends. “I moved right around the corner from Doc Holiday’s, a local bar,” says Stenson, of St. Thomas the Apostle Parish in Chester Heights, Pennsylvania. “It was just insane. That semester I got a 1.5 [GPA] and had dropped some classes.” One of Stenson’s high school friends was attending Drexel University in Philadelphia, and they would see each other on the train or subway. “I always saw him reading, and fi nally he started to feed me books,” says Stenson. “When I got turned onto reading, I had an intellectual awakening. I quit the frat and just

Enter #112 at VocationMatch.org

Enter #192 at VocationMatch.org

put my mind to college. I didn’t stop partying, but I did get out of the frat house. There was no way I was going to get out of college and still be in the frat.” Stenson, who graduated from Temple in 1988, says his spiritual conversion began after his mother and sister visited Medjugorje in 1989. “The following year I went around Thanksgiving,” he says. “McDermott was there, too, but we didn’t know it at the time.” He says it was at Medjugorje where he experienced the universal church for the fi rst time. “That was my fi rst time out of the country,” says Stenson. “Being in a place where you’re sitting on a mountain and the rosary is being said in fi ve different languages and attending a Mass that you can follow even though it’s

FATHER MIKE SPITZER (at right) with Fr. Burette, a friend and Eastern Rite priest from California, vested for the funeral Mass in Rome of Pope John Paul II.

in Croatian, that was my fi rst taste of the universal church, and it was powerful.” Upon his return Stenson joined young adult prayer groups in the Philadelphia area that were instrumental in his continuing faith development and vocation discernment. “I had the chance to be really immersed in being taught and learning [about the Catholic faith],” he says. “There was no way I could have done it on my own.” Stenson says it was also important to form friendships with other young adults “where the foundation was Christ and being Catholic.” While discerning his vocation, Stenson also prayed the rosary with his family and developed a devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Divine Mercy chaplet and novenas. Stenson says he has consecrated his priesthood to Mary. “She was the one who came and brought me back home,” he says. “It took a mighty strong arm, but mothers have that. They care. She had a tough job, but she did it.” Ordained with Spitzer in 1998, Stenson says he loves being a priest and using the communication skills he learned in college to bring people to God. The priesthood, he adds,

is not more diffi cult than the vocation of marriage. “That’s what some young people think, how hard the priesthood is. That’s a falsity that needs to be washed away.” He encourages young people to develop their identity in Christ fi rst.

“Many young people, guys especially, try to form their identity with their job,” he says. “Once you know who you are in Christ, then the other things take care of themselves. You’ll be able to hear where Christ is leading you—to marriage, to the priesthood, but it’s got to be an option. You have to ask our Lord, ‘What is going to bring you more glory in my life?’” For those discerning a vocation, McDermott recommends developing a prayer life and working with a spiritual director. “That’s where you’re going to hear God talking—through your prayers,” he says. While these priests joined the same college fraternity, Spitzer says they’re now part of a “much greater fraternity, the ministerial priesthood of Jesus Christ.”

Once you know who you are in Christ, then the other things take care of themselves. You’ll be able to hear where Christ is leading you.

See an ad that interests you?

Login to VocationGuide.org and submit a request to the advertising community for more information.