Scholarship & Sanctity - St. John's Catholic Newman Center

CathIlliniAUG09R 7/31/09 3:19 PM Page 4
Greetings, Newman family!
While I’m new to the pastoral
team this year, this is not the first time
I’ve been to the Newman Center. In
1998 I transferred to the U of I to
study philosophy and completed my
degree in 2000. I really didn’t get
involved with the Newman Center
until the summer entering my senior
year. It was a pivotal year since I not
only came back to my faith but also
experienced a profound calling to the
priesthood. Immediately after graduation
I started my seminary studies and
in 2005 I was ordained a priest for the
diocese of Peoria.
I’ve had a lot of different jobs so
far in the priesthood. My first year was
Voice of Newman
F R . A NTHONY C O , A SSISTANT C HAPLAIN
out on the western front of our diocese,
near the Mississippi river. I was
parochial vicar (fancy title for “assistant”)
at three parishes—the main
one being Immaculate Conception in
Monmouth—and a Newman Chaplain
for Monmouth College. After a
year I was transferred to Champaign
to be assistant chaplain to Latino
ministries and parochial vicar at St.
Matthew’s Catholic Church. So I
went from small country parishes to a
large parish at the opposite side of the
diocese; from trying to learn how to
be a priest, to trying to learn how to
be a priest in Spanish! I survived and
it was great. Eventually, I got wind
that I was going to be moved and to
my delight it was to the Newman
Center.
C ARDINAL N EWMAN’ S C ORNER
It’s going to be a great year.
Many of my former parishioners were
excited for me when they found out
where I was going. I’ve received a lot
of questions from them, but the most
important question people have asked
me is, “What do you want from your
time at the Newman Center?” Or,
simply put, “What do you want?” My
answer: I want to be happy. I want to
know the meaning of things. I want
to be free. This is what fascinates me.
My hope is to have all these things
through a companionship with all of
our students and staff.
May God bless you this new academic
year.
Sincerely yours,
Fr. Anthony
“It will not satisfy me, what satisfies so many, to have two independent systems, intellectual
and religious, going at once side by side, by a sort of division of labour, and only
accidentally brought together. It will not satisfy me, if religion is here, and science there,
and young men converse with science all day, and lodge with religion in the evening. It is
not touching the evil, to which these remarks have been directed, if young men eat and
drink and sleep in one place, and think in another: I want the same roof to contain both
the intellectual and moral discipline. Devotion is not a sort of finish given to the sciences;
nor is science a sort of feather in the cap, if I may so express myself, an ornament and setoff
to devotion. I want the intellectual layman to be religious, and the devout ecclesiastic
to be intellectual.“
— From his sermon, "Intellect, the Instrument of Religious Training", preached in the
University Church, Dublin. Feast of St. Monica—Sunday after Ascension, 1856.
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