St. Joseph's Seminary, Mountain View CA

Reunion June 17, 2023 at St. Patrick's Seminary.

Tape Recommendations

Paul Page, C’69, previously our musician with his wife,
Teddy, for our Alumni Day Masses, announces the
availability of his two new albums in digital and hard copy,
Sleight of Hand (piano solos) and Reflections (organ solos).
They can be downloaded directly from Paul’s main online
distributor, cdbaby.com.

They are also available at iTunes,
Spotify, Pandora, Napster, etc. Orders can be placed as
follows: Reflections at Reflections - Paul F. Page.

Listen . Sleight of Hand at https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/paulfpage11. There is a free score download of Reflections from Paul’s own website, http://www.paulpage.org.

Enjoy

The Art of Art Goodtimes, R’65

Art Goodtimes (formerly Arthur M. Bontempi) spent
seven years in the seminary. He has had a career in
political activism and is a major figure in poetry and
journalism, particularly in the State of Colorado. The
patriarchal image appearing later in this issue is Art. (Art
does not tell us whether his hair style is a form of protest
against the dress code in “The Rule”. You remember The
Rule, don’t you?)

A member of the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance, Art
brought his poetry to Colorado and has become a mentor
to poets and writers. Art was awarded a Colorado Council
on the Arts poetry fellowship in 1989 and has been PoetIn-Residence of the Telluride Mushroom Festival for 39 years. He was named Western Slope Poet Laureate from 2011-2012.
Art’s talent for poetry was developed at St. Joe’s where he wrote for the student paper, The Outlook:

In A Chapel After Benediction

The organ’s swelling storm of thunder-sound
Crescendos booms and stops. A signal noise
Sends scuffling out the doors long rows of boys;
And blanket-blackness grips the walls around,
As one by one the lights fade out. Alone
A votive fan-flame flickers fire-light
Amid the dancing spirit-shades of night’
And silence settles over darkened stone.
There, bent in body, shrouded with mental gloom
Within the darkest valley of life’s hills.
I search for strength and, looking, see my staff,
For from that soundless, shadowed chapel-tomb
A peace is born that warms and burns, that thrills
And swells until the heart could burst in half.”

Unfinished….

My boarding school laundry bag number
stamped on a thumb-size metal safety pin
sealing a net bag for underwear & dirty socks
which the French-Canadian semi-cloistered Nuns
of the Above wanted separated out in the laundry
& the only time we saw them was when it was our
table’s turn to eat late, bring food the sisters prepped
like canned plums in sauce we called “buzzard balls”
or industrial raviolis – I cut into one once & found
a dead fly on a pasta pillow stuffed with cheese
waiters got to push a large metal cart down the main
aisle of the refectory unloading dishes & picking up
plates, platters & clattering pans of silverware &
compost we rolled back through the kitchen’s
swinging doors where the nuns would serve but
none would say a word, only gesturing if necessary
this was the odd sequence leading up to seven
then add three & five you get eight an even like
one & three and five & one – all multiples of two
in the curious numerology of seminary life.

Exorcising St. Joseph’s
Mountain View

Largely a lark
(as much a listen). To some a vocation
but mostly a ‘50s dream getaway.
That flowering inner courtyard
and the Spanish tile tower
(if ersatz college wing).
A mish-mash of the
Medieval and California Franciscan
aged in French Jansenism.
The call was confusing.
Came to far fewer of the chosen
than even the Sulpicians expected.
Shroud of Turin, fact or fancy?
Lourdes? Fatima? Guadelupe?
Five proofs for the existence of God.
There were lots of answers
regardless of our pre-Socratic questions.

Panta rei? Dasein?

Questions like Ganci
and gang lifting the latches
in Bucky’s Greek class
and together in unison tossing
their textbooks out the window
into a grassy morning limbo.
Was it prank
or the beginning of an essential
sacred practice?
How much of the past
to toss aside post-Vatican I?
Post Vatican II?
Or must we tie ourselves back
to those first followers

BP

Before Paul -- the Tarsian convert -- who
took the Gospel on the road.
(A centurion of Empire).
Or best we take most precious blood
to our nation’s missile silos
as the Berrigan brothers do?
Not passing through a rectory.
Ignoring the Curia.
Going directly to jail.
Most citizens ignore
the price others pay. What it takes.
So long’s what it costs is kept cheap.
Most believers buy
into our corporate democracy
where votes like quotes
float with the market.
And life goes on like plain chant
where the line isn’t measured.
Isn’t barred
to block the flow.
Where, giddyup, go
we rise resurrected
in a crescendo of square notation.
A liturgy of pat dogmas.
So I had to be re-anointed
in the washer’s sacred spin.
Had to recycle the mystery for myself.

Becoming a private school
Latin teacher briefly
as if to fufill some perverse symmetry.
Forsan et haec
olim meminisse juvabit,
as Jack’s Virgil would have said.
And who remembers that
paganus originally meant
“country person”?
For 30 years being in the country.
In Heidegger’s fourfold.
Becoming one with Mountain.
Like many a spoiled priest,
a convert to the chaos
I once sought control of.
Became a bigamist of traditions.
Now becoming an acolyte of insects
and time wave zero
De gustibus
et vocationibus
non est disputandum.
I say godbless us all
Blessed be! So may I come to accept
whatever the Beloved brings to me.

Art Bontempi, was published in Outlook, St. Joseph’s
Seminary, 1963.

Interestingly, Art’s editor on the Outlook was our esteemed
Associate Editor of Semnet, the now retired Associate
Colorado Supreme Court Justice, Gary Hobbs, whose
photography and poetry we all enjoy on Semnet. Art says
that he and Greg may collaborate soon in a poetry reading
in Colorado.

Art’s political activism began back in San Francisco where
he was involved in the bioregionalist movement with the
Planet Drum Foundation. Deeply involved in ecology, Art
served for years as the only elected Green Party candidate
in the State of Colorado. He has also served five terms as
a county commissioner (think “supervisor”) and on many
commissions and boards.

Asked to reflect on the effect upon him of his seminary
experience, Art says:

“For the oldest of three sons of an Italian lower middle
working class family, admittance to St. Joseph’s was a
huge boon. The education was extraordinary -- Latin, Greek, History, Poetry, Rhetoric. The grounding I received
in the Humanities prepped me for college after I left the
seminary, and has been a huge asset in the career paths I
chose – poetry, journalism, politics.

But perhaps the biggest gift I received was being part of a
loving community of human beings for whom spirituality
and social justice were foundational principles. These
values have stayed with me and shaped the rest of my
life. I feel immensely blessed to have learned early that
there was more to life than the materialist society I was
born into.”

For these two alums, Dakin and Art, their seminary
experience does not appear to have been a waste, but
a positive experience. We thank them for sharing
themselves with you. We look forward to bringing you
some further biographical sketches of alums.
Alumni Newsletter Editor’s Note (Jim Harvey [email protected]): We have just learned that Art Goodtimes is suffering from cancer. Let us all pray for his recovery!

Email Jim Harvey to receive regular editions of the Alumni newsletter: [email protected]

Dakin Mathews, R’59

Dakin Mathews entered St. Joe’s as a Sixth Latiner in 1953
and left the North American College before ordination.
Currently he can be seen on Broadway as the Judge
in To Kill A Mockingbird. How did he get to Broadway?
Dakin says his post-seminary life, like Gaul (you will all
remember Gaul), may be divided into three parts: the
first part was dedicated mostly to university teaching of
English, with side jobs in theatre; the second part was
mostly acting in film and on TV with side jobs in theatre
and teaching; the third part, in which he is engaged full
time now, is mostly acting, writing and producing in
theatre with side jobs in film and TV. He acknowledges
“pretty much an obsession with Shakespeare” throughout
all three phases of his life.

Dakin was a founding member of John Houseman’s
Acting Company and Sam Mendes’ Bridge Project. He
has been a leading actor in over 250 professional plays:
on-Broadway in To Kill A Mockingbird, The Iceman Cometh, Waitress, The Audience, Rocky, The Best Man, A Man for
All Seasons and Shakespeare’s Henry IV. See the picture
in this issue of Dakin in The Audience with Judith Ivey
(on the left), Dame Helen Mirren and Dakin as Churchill.
Off-Broadway Dakin has performed in most of the
professional theaters across the country. He is a member
of both the Motion Picture and Television Academies. He
has appeared in over 30 feature films, TV movies, and
miniseries, including recently True Grit, Lincoln and the
Bridge of Spies. He has over 300 appearances on TV in ten
different series, such as, Desperate Housewives, The King
of Queens, and Gilmore Girls. Dakin has been the Artistic
Director of four professional theatre companies, including
two he founded. His award winning scripts have been
performed at places like Julliard, The Goodman Theatre,
the Old Globe, etc. His ten rhyming verse translations of
Golden Age comedies are currently being published by
Lingua Text.

Besides directing at many theatres, Dakin
has dramaturged Shakespeare for the country’s leading directors. He has given workshops in Shakespearean
verse-speaking across the country and worldwide.
We asked Dakin to tell you what he thought of his
experience in the seminary after this long and distinguished
career.

Here is what he said:

“I suppose the two biggest influences in my life at St.
Joe’s were: the education, especially in writing and
critical thinking; and Jack Olivier’s outsized influence
on me for the love of music and the theatre arts. A third counter-influence was my really bad academic
performance in Spanish and History, which I am still
trying to over-compensate for by writing eight original
history plays and translating ten Spanish comedies into
English rhyming verse. Long festering guilt is such a
great motivator. Oh, and like most ex-seminarians,
I continue to re-enroll in the seminary at least once a
month in my dreams.”

Dakin lives in Los Angeles with his wife of 50 years, Anne,
a daughter, her husband and three grandchildren.

Day of Recollection

The Director of the day was Fr. David Pettingill, Rhet '56.
He was appearing a second time by popular demand.
Fr. Pettingill is now a retired priest of the Archdiocese of
San Francisco. He was a long- time teacher, vice-principal and principal at Marin Catholic High School, a professor
and dean at St. Patrick's Seminary, a pastor, the founder
of the School for Pastoral Leadership in the Archdiocese,
and the director of the permanent diaconate program in
the Archdiocese. He is a popular teacher of homiletics
and preacher. He currently resides and preaches at St.
Emedyius Church in San Francisco.

October 12, 2019 Hall of Fame Induction Dinner

On Saturday evening, October 12, 2019, St. Joseph
High School (College) held its inaugural Sports
Hall of Fame (HOF) induction ceremony at St. Patrick’s
Seminary in Menlo Park, California. During the awards
dinner for the Class of 2019, the St. Joseph-St. Patrick’s
Alumni Association honored 63 outstanding coaches and
athletes who helped make the Intramural & Interscholastic
sports programs successful during their seminary days.

The evening’s guest of honor, Gordon Lacey, who served
as St. Joe’s athletic director and soccer coach from 1966-1975, became the first-ever person inducted into the newly
formed Sports HOF. Other inductees who also spoke
included Mike Sheehan H’71, Kevin O’Connor H’71, John
Collins R’64, and Hugh Donohoe H’68.

Overall, the awards banquet was attended by 108 athletes
and family members, and provided many wonderful
memories that will be recorded in the Gallery section of our
upcoming sjsemhof.org website. In addition, on Alumni
Day, Saturday, April 18, the Class of 2020 induction
ceremony will add 22 athletes to the St. Joe's Sports HOF.

SAVE THE DAY:

Alumni Day 2020 approaches! Look for your Invitation in your mail or contact Don Carroll at
[email protected].

We will honor especially alums in the following classes: Rhet Class of 1960 (60 years); Rhet Class of 1965 (55 years); College & High School Classes of 1970 (50 years); College
& High School Classes of 1975 (45 years); College & High School Classes of 1980 (40 years). In addition, help us honor our two Alumnus of the Year awardees, Dennis McQuaid, R'59 and Jerry Coleman, PSS, R'62.

Trump reminds me of Father Dillon, then rector of St. Joe's. I think it was in my freshman or sophomore year in high school when he stood up in front of us in the chapel and firmly pronounced,

"There will be NO epidemic!!"

A week later, it was announced that we would all be going home for a week because the flu had overtaken so many. I fortunately didn't get sick, but yay for the holiday.

Randy Gorringe
Rhet '67

Bishop Robert F. Christian, O.P., named Rector of St. Patrick Seminary

January 14, 2019

The Archdiocese of San Francisco announces that the Most Reverend Robert Christian, O.P., Auxiliary Bishop of San Francisco, has been appointed Rector-President of St. Patrick Seminary, effective January 14, 2019. Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone said, “I am excited that Bishop Christian, a man of deep love for the Church and extensive academic achievement, will be leading the seminary during its next phase of development and growth.”

Bishop Christian is a highly respected theologian and professor, holding teaching and administrative positions at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (the Angelicum) in Rome over the past 35 years. From 1997 to 1999 he served as vicar provincial of the Western Dominican Province headquartered in Oakland, California, and in 1990 was a participant in the preparation for the Synod of Bishops on “The Formation of Priests in the Circumstances of the Present Day” and served as a peritus (expert) at that same Synod.

For the last several years Bishop Christian has served the Church as a member of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission and as a consultor to the Pontifical Commission for the Promotion of Christian Unity. During the three years before his ordination as a bishop in 2018, he served the Western Dominican Province as Student Master and as adjunct professor at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology. He will continue to serve the Archdiocese as Auxiliary Bishop, but with responsibilities accommodated to his role as seminary rector.

Archbishop Cordileone also thanked outgoing Rector-President Fr. George Schultze, S.J. “I wish to extend my deep gratitude for Fr. Schultze’s wonderful service as President-Rector for the last year-and-a-half. He has done outstanding work in building up the spiritual life of the Seminary and in his leadership in stabilizing and strengthening it during this time of transition. He is and always has been a man of integrity, faithful to his Christian and priestly calling in his personal and ministerial life.

“Fr. Schultze was also the right man to shepherd the Seminary at this critical moment of its history. In collaboration with the excellent staff around him, he has assembled an exemplary teaching faculty and has positioned the Seminary for continued future growth in excellence in priestly formation. I will forever be grateful to him for his willingness to take on this assignment.”

Prior to his term as President-Rector Fr. Schultze served on the seminary faculty for eleven years in various roles: an adjunct faculty member of moral theology and social ethics, director of the pastoral year formation of the seminarians, collaborator with many and varied administrative tasks, and a highly sought-out spiritual director. With selfless generosity he has provided pastoral care to staff and students at the Seminary as well as to religious and parish communities in the area. He has also always been responsive to the many requests he receives to offer days of recollection to priests and other groups of the faithful throughout the Bay Area.

After taking some time for prayer, study and personal enrichment, Fr. Schultze will return to his vocational calling of spiritual direction, providing critical assistance especially to priests in pursuing excellence in serving the Church as an alter Christus for God’s people.

Fr. Schultze said, “I thank God for what we have accomplished at St. Patrick’s during this last year-and-a-half that I have served as rector, and I am delighted with the choice of Bishop Christian for the next rector. His academic experience and skill in dealing with seminarians prepares him well for this role at this time in the life of the Seminary. I am looking forward to returning to my work in spiritual direction so that I can continue serving the Church as best I can in keeping with the abilities that God has entrusted to me – all for the salvation of souls and the greater glory of God.”

Reposted by Randy Gorringe Rhet '67, administrator of this site.

This story by Greg McAllister Rhet '61.

The subject was approved reading material or otherwise...

The Paperback Railroad

The older I get, the stranger my memories sometimes seem. They hover there, taking up precious storage space in a bio-computer that can barely retain the events of last week. Their general outlines often remain bold and insistent, even though the fine details are blurry. One such memory I have dubbed “The Paperback Railroad.”

I think it was 1958 or ’59, because I was a tablehead at the time in the high school refectory, and something was going on that was making me nervous, because, after all, I was responsible for these lads on my table. I had noticed it a couple of days earlier – the butter-cutters exchanging conspiratorial glances, cradling some kind of furtive contraband in their laps, periodically sending mysterious messages to other tables.

“Okay, pass it up!” I demanded.

The second high kid feigned ignorance. “Pass what?”

“Whatever you have on your lap.”

He held up his empty hands, grinned, and shrugged.

“You want to lose your mystery for a week?”

Glancing across the table at the other butter-cutter, he reluctantly brought up a little bundle of folded papers and handed them to the right-hand man. When I opened them up, I recognized them as pages from a paperback book. They were sequential, page 146 to 155, and well-worn. I looked around the refectory and noticed that butter-cutters from several other tables were eyeing me suspiciously.

“Okay, what’s going on? What book is this and where’s the rest of it?”

The kid squirmed in his chair. “I can’t tell you.”

I felt my tablehead-sphincter tighten. “You better tell me! Otherwise, maybe I’ll have to show this to Cat and let him deal with it.”

The kid flushed. “Jeez, no! You can’t do that.”

“Okay then, tell me.”

Gradually, he and the other butter-cutter spilled the beans. They were part of a paperback underground - about 15 guys who were reading unapproved novels. In order to minimize the risk of getting caught by the faculty, they would tear the books into 10 page segments and pass them around sequentially. Once you finished your 10 pages, you passed them on to the next guy, and then waited to receive your next set of ten. The idea was that, if you were in danger of getting caught, you could pop the pages in your mouth and chew them up before the faculty member could see what you were doing.

Ingenious, I thought. But also very dangerous in those days of Imprimaturs, Nihil Obstats, and mandatory approval of all books by the Reverend Librarian. Most of the books on our reading lists were musty, hard-cover tomes dating back to the previous century. Paperbacks were seldom approved, presumably because the flexibility of their covers implied a lack of moral backbone. There were a few exceptions, like Miles Connolly’s Mr Blue, the Image Books series, or The Baltimore Catechism, but usually our approved reading matter was expected to reflect the rigidity of its cover. A pulp paperback like the one being circulated in the refectory exuded depravity.

I tried to explain all this to my rebellious butter-cutters, but I’m not sure my words had any effect. To this day, I don’t know if the paperback railroad ever got busted. I do know I never finked on them; for, despite my own rule rigidity, I realized the butter-cutters were somehow preserving the seminary’s very tenuous connection with the First Amendment. They were unlikely heroes, but heroes nonetheless.

If any of you have any memory of this subversive campaign, or better yet, were a part of it, please let me know.

Bob Nixon, R 62

Early Sunday morning while Archbishop Romero was being canonized in Rome, I woke up thinking about how he was killed by Salvadoran troops trained by our own US Army at the School of the Americas in Georgia. I also thought of a friend Charles Litkey an army chaplain in Vietnam, the most decorated chaplain since the Civil War, who turned in his medals at the Vietnam Memorial and worked the remaining years of his life to bring peace and end our support of the same military evil Romero condemned. Both Archbishop Romero and Charlie Liteky had profound conversions from their conservative early lives based on their deep listening with the poor and suffering.

I don’t think we can’t truly honor now Saint Romero, the martyr, without heeding his words to end the bloodshed, to obey a higher power than the government, to end flooding Latin America with millions of dollars of US military training, weapons, airpower, surveillance etc. What was happening in 1980 is still happening now: the US training, the US weapons, the Latin American bloodshed. Romero said that if he was killed and silenced, he would rise up in his people. And now perhaps we too are his people.