In 1978, I was ordained a Catholic Priest by Bishop Robert F. Garner of the Archdiocese of Newark, NJ, and worked for the next 13 years as a priest, mostly in institutions of higher education - first as a campus minister at Siena College, then as a professor at St. Bonaventure University, where I taught business law. In 1990, I left ministry in the Corporate Church - for a variety of reasons, some of which I discussed in an article I wrote in Commonweal magazine in July 2002, and spend the next decade of my life practicing law (I have a law degree from Boston College, class of '84).
In 2002 a friend asked me to officiate at his wedding - he was also a former Franciscan and, as he put it, "I don't want to be married by a Justice of the Peace, and I'm not a Presbyterian." I offered to officiate, thinking that, since once a priest, always a priest, I could come out of moth balls just once. He was delighted, and asked me, for legal reasons (that made sense to me) to join an organization called CITI Ministries.
I agreed, and though CITI had a quirky web name, I found it to be a group of dedicated, spiritually astute men and women - founded by Louise Haggett, a lay woman, to call married and partnered priests back to ministry. The priests I met in CITI are among the very best I've ever known, they reminded me of the wonderful priests I knew growing up - in fact some of them WERE the wonderful priests I knew growing up.
I did that one wedding, and then other folks called too - I hadn't expected that. But helping them reminded me of why I always loved ministry. I realized that, while I may not have been called to celibacy, I truly was called to priestly ministry. I dare not ignore that call.
In addition to my law degree and a Master of Divinity Degree from the Washington Theological Union, I have a Ph.D. in Education from Fordham University - where I worked for a while as University Attorney.