Face of church's future

<p>WELCOMED: Bishop Daniel Walsh embraces Sean Rogers during his ordination Saturday.Sean Rogers sat on a wood bench near the sun-drenched gardens of his childhood parish last week, searching for the right words to describe why he wanted to be a Catholic priest.</p><p>The impulse didn't come like a bolt of lightning when he was a child, kneeling in the pews at St. Rose Church in Santa Rosa. Nor was it a moment of epiphany that dwarfed all aspirations of a worldly life.</p><p>"I would say it's maybe like a feeling you get that marriage is for you," said Rogers, 33. "A feeling in your gut that God is calling you to this."</p><p>Rogers is the first priest ordained by the Santa Rosa Catholic Diocese in five years and begins his service at a time when the local church is trying to find its way out of years of sex scandals and financial challenge. His recent ordination represents the future of the church as it struggles to attract new leadership.</p><p>In the 1970s, the diocese had 85 to 90 priests. Today, it has 65 active priests, with four on leave.</p><p>"The local church is really supposed to provide priests from its own ranks," said Bishop Daniel Walsh, shortly after ordaining Rogers at St. Eugene Cathedral on Saturday morning. "When a local person is ordained, that's a great sign, a sign that there is true life in the local church."</p><p>Homegrown, mature and excited about the priesthood, Rogers is the kind of priest church officials hope can inspire others to replenish the ranks of the diocese. In the past seven years, 11 diocesan priests have died, while only five have been ordained.</p><p>His ordination marks a bright chapter for the diocese. Rogers is the son of Michael Rogers, owner of Mike's Truck Garden on River Road in Fulton, a familiar grocery store that sells fresh produce and dairy.</p><p>Sean Rogers attended the old St. Rose School on 10th Street until the sixth grade. He then went to Comstock Middle School and graduated from Piner in 1992.</p><p>Like his father, Sean is a big man at 6-foot-2 and 300 pounds. His years of playing football for Piner and later for the University of Notre Dame are evident in his lumbering gate. Although he's quick to point out that it was smarts, not an athletic scholarship, that got him through college.</p><p>"I was a 'walk-on.' I wasn't a scholarship player," he said. "I wasn't playing a whole heck of a lot."</p><p>After college, Rogers worked as a commodities broker for Merrill Lynch in Atlanta. He loved the fast-paced excitement of his job, but that desire to serve never left him.</p><p>In 1999, Rogers quit his job and came back to Santa Rosa to work for his parents, running the fruit stand. It was then that he first approached the church, meeting with then-Bishop G. Patrick Ziemann in early summer 1999.</p><p>A month after Ziemann approved Rogers for seminary studies, scandal rocked the Santa Rosa Diocese as Ziemann was accused of sexual and financial misconduct. In the next few years, the diocese, like many others across the country, was hit by lawsuits involving sex abuse allegations.</p><p>Rogers, who during this time was studying at St. Patrick's Seminary &amp; University in Menlo Park, said he felt shock and anger but no crisis of faith.</p><p>"I realized that I'm either going to deal with this or it's going to eat me up," he said. "But it didn't hurt my faith. It maybe matured my faith. . . . You realize that your vocation isn't about a bishop, it's about being a priest."</p><p>He brings to the office an acknowledgment of the troubles of the past and training that he says prepares him to meet the challenges facing the church and parishioners in the future.</p><p>"I'm better prepared because I know what to look out for. Even if we didn't discuss it in class, we discussed it among ourselves and how to prepare ourselves for the future and not fall into the same traps that our predecessors fell into," he said.</p><p>Rogers took a break from seminary school for two years, but not because of the scandals. He said he had only 18 months to go before his ordination but didn't feel ready.</p><p>"When I was in seminary, I thought I could do it my own way," he said, adding he came to see that "the measure of a person is what you do when life doesn't meet your expectations. . . . You don't lose your vigor, you just find different ways to get your point across. You become more wise."</p><p>According to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, the average age of the almost 500 priests who were ordained this year is 35.</p><p>Tom Diaz, director of vocations for the Santa Rosa Diocese, said the average age for newly ordained priests has been rising, in part because of the closing of high school seminaries across the country. Diaz said it is becoming increasingly difficult to attract young men to the priesthood.</p><p>"It's really a call to simplicity in life, and that's a lot harder today," he said. "Some people want high-paying jobs or they want to get married."</p><p>Four candidates, three of whom are foreign born, are in a seminary through the diocese. The next ordinations will not take place until 2010 and 2013.</p><p>Rogers' ordination Saturday was a modest, quiet affair, with few if any of the people driving by aware of the age-old ceremony taking place inside St. Eugene Cathedral.</p><p>In the pews to the right of the altar sat Rogers' mother, father, siblings and others in his family. On the other side of the church sat a number of priests. It was a two-hour ceremony that had Rogers on "cloud nine the whole time."</p><p>At one point, Rogers lay face down on the floor before the altar, his arms straight out to the side. A prayerful hymn filled the cathedral.</p><p>"The whole church was praying over me," he said. "You just think about every moment that got you to this place. Every person in your life that helped you get there."</p><p>The crowd of several hundred people greeted the newest priest in the diocese with sustained applause. This weekend, he takes his place at St. John the Baptist in Napa, his first parish assignment, where he will celebrate Mass on Sunday.</p><p>His father, Michael Rogers, said the experience fills him with happiness and pride.</p><p>"He just seems so much bigger than me at this point and that's really an odd feeling for a parent," he said.</p><p>You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com.</p>