COUSINS

Father Bob Ray and myself responding to applause from the congregation at the 200th anniversary of our home parish, Saint Theresa of Avila, down in Rhodelia, Kentucky, on October 14, 2018. 

Our maternal grandmothers were sisters. That makes us third cousins. As children, we often spent Sunday afternoons trying to entertain ourselves. 

 My sister Kaye (before her death this year) married his bother., Richard.  We share three nephews in common. 

We grew up going to the same school, even though he is a year older than me. 

We received the Sacrament of Confirmation on the same day. 

He was the first to mention to me in 1957, when I was in the seventh grade, that there was a new minor seminary opening in Louisville that would take boys out of the eighth grade. It instantly piqued my imagination. 

In fact, I can take you to the very spot in the playground where we had the conversation. 

As it turned out, he decided to go to St. Romuald High School in Hardinsburg and would wait till he graduated from high school to go to the seminary.  I made up my mind to go right out of grade school. The year I entered my senior year of high school at St. Thomas Seminary, he joined me for his first of two years of college at Saint Thomas Seminary.



Saint Thomas Seminary - Louisville, Kentucky
Opened 1952 - Closed 1970

He went on to St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore and, a year later, I entered Saint Meinrad Seminary. 

He was ordained a priest in 1969. I was ordained a priest in 1970. 

I would say he has been more of a contemplative in his ministry and I have been more of an activist - two sides of the same coin. 

It occurred to me that of the 200 year history, we have been around for 75 of those years! 

Archbishop Joseph Kurtz standing in the church where we grew up, were received into the church, made our First Confessions and First Communions, served Mass, were Confirmed and celebrated our First Masses. 



Saint Theresa of Avila our patron. 
March 26, 1515 - October 4, 1582
aged 67