c. 1997 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) _ For 140 years, the Benedictine monks of St. Meinrad Archabbey have been training men for the priesthood in the rolling hills of southern Indiana outside of Louisville. But part of that legacy _ and a piece of Catholic culture _ will end a year from now when the monks close St. Meinrad College.

Without St. Meinrad, there will be only 12 freestanding Roman Catholic college seminaries in the United States. They are outnumbered by newer approaches to training candidates for the priesthood _ seminaries for older men who already have college degrees and formation houses linked to large Catholic colleges.

Costs have become too great, said the Rev. Mark O’Keefe, president-rector at St. Meinrad and a member of its class of 1978. But he believes the liberal arts, theology and spiritual direction the school offered remain a gift to all who studied there and to the church itself.

“We were able to get young men at a very formative time and envelop them in a Catholic tradition,” O’Keefe said. “But it also allowed them to be part of a broader tradition of classic education; to be part of the effort of humankind to reflect on the big questions of life, on values, ethics and virtues.”

Although the undergraduate school will close, St. Meinrad will continue to prepare clergy through its graduate school of theology and provide advanced degrees for lay men and women. The seminary has trained priests for dioceses in all 50 states, including most of the priests serving in Indiana’s five dioceses.

The Benedictine monks came to Indiana from Einsiedeln, Switzerland _ the site of St. Meinrad’s last hermitage in the 9th century _ in 1857 and brought with them a long tradition of seminary education.

Until 1968, St. Meinrad ran a high school in addition to the undergraduate college, providing classical liberal arts education to teen-age boys considering the priesthood. Although the high school lost enrollment during the 1960s, the college’s enrollment grew, peaking at 375 in 1967.

Enrollment has dropped during the last 30 years as the number of men seeking the priesthood has declined.

But O’Keefe contends the college is a casualty of larger changes in the Catholic church than the dwindling number of candidates for the priesthood.

“The Catholic culture is not what it once was. The closing of this school reflects the loss of the men and women religious who ran elementary and high schools from where vocations were nurtured,” he said.

The Catholic family is weaker than it once was, too, O’Keefe said. Strong Catholic families, often with new immigrant roots, once encouraged their sons to consider the priesthood. They sent their boys to high school seminaries and hoped academic success would lead to college seminary scholarships at such places as St. Meinrad’s and a life of service to the church.

“This breakdown has made it really more difficult to nurture vocations,” O’Keefe said. “Instead, the influence of material success and `getting ahead’ have become more important.”

But St. Meinrad was not quick to resign itself to extinction. In 1992 it broadened its potential student base by accepting men seeking a liberal arts education, but not the priesthood.

Also, instead of relying on diocesan vocation directors to send students to the college, St. Meinrad started recruiting. School officials went to college fairs and courted students through high school guidance counselors.

Despite those efforts, this year there are just 100 students at the college. Half are preparing for the priesthood, including Kevin Bazzel, a 21-year-old senior from Decatur, Ala.

“I think we’re losing a special kind of quality college. It’s not just academics, but spiritual and personal development,” Bazzel said. “It is like a fraternity. A family.”

Eighteen full-time faculty and 22 part-time educators at the college face uncertain futures. Most will have to find work someplace else.

And the tiny town of St. Meinrad, population 400, is losing a vital neighbor. Students from the college run the Cooperative Action for Community Development, a social service organization that helps local farmers and families. They host the regional Special Olympics competition each year and teach religious education in churches throughout the sparsely populated rural area.

It is this kind of service that the Rev. Daniel Mahan recalls when he thinks about how St. Meinrad helped him become a priest. He graduated from the college in 1980 and is now pastor of St. Luke Catholic Church in Indianapolis.

Mahan learned to pray at St. Meinrad by experiencing the deep prayer lives of the monks. He learned to think by studying classic philosophy, history, ethics and theology. And through volunteerism, he learned to give as Jesus did.

“As students, we ran that community corporation that met the basic human needs of the people in Spencer County,” Mahan said. “We would chop fire wood from the abbey forest and take it to homes where the only source of heat came from wood pot-bellied stoves. I learned how to give and to receive at St. Meinrad.”

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