Sacred Heart Confers Degrees Upon Largest Graduating Class
Supreme Knight Anderson challenges graduates to be "people of and for life"

Commencement is always a special time at Sacred Heart Major Seminary. This year's event, held Saturday, April 24, was a time of even greater celebration.

Seventy-one students, both seminarian and lay, received diplomas or degrees from the College of Liberal Arts and Graduate School of Theology, making the Class of 2004 the largest graduating class since the refounding of the seminary in 1988. The graduate school had its largest class since 1988, as well, with twenty-nine students receiving either a Master of Divinity (10), Master of Theology (8) or Master of Pastoral Studies (11) degree.

In his congratulatory remarks at the Baccalaureate Mass, main celebrant Adam Cardinal Maida, archbishop of Detroit, cited the academic year 2003-04 as an "exciting beginning to a new chapter in the history of Sacred Heart Major Seminary." Some milestones under the new rectorship of Fr. Steven Boguslawski, OP, said the cardinal, included the successful accreditation visit by the Association of Theological Schools and the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, the promotion of Sacred Heart alumnus Fr. Michael Byrnes to vice rector, and the reassignment of beloved and long-time vice rector Fr. Patrick Halfpenny to the influential parish of St. Paul on the Lake, Grosse Pointe. The academic year also saw the state-of-the-art renovation of the liturgy laboratory and the completion of a videoconferencing classroom suite that will allow Sacred Heart to expand access to theological and pastoral education.

A chapel full of joyful attendees heard the commencement address of Dr. Carl A. Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus. He challenged the graduates to be "a people of life and a people for life" as a way to renew the Church and the world as called for by the Second Vatican Council. Dr. Anderson suggested Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, St. Maximilian Kolbe and St. Faustina Kowalska, as "three great pillars of renewal" who symbolize the virtues of charity, forgiveness and mercy, virtues that graduates should emulate. Pope John Paul II is a fourth model of virtue, said Dr. Anderson, particularly for priests and seminarians. He called the graduates "the John Paul II Generation," since they had lived much of their lives under his pontificate.

 "You are a legacy of far greater value than achievements in diplomacy or institutional change, for you are in a special way the seed of the 'new springtime of the Gospel' of which [the Holy Father] has spoken so often," concluded Dr. Anderson. Those who "glibly accommodate the culture of death . . . may think they are the future, but in reality their time has passed."

Cardinal Maida in his homily ratified Dr. Anderson's stirring call for renewal. "I pray you will have a sense of prophetic mission and ministry," said the cardinal to the new graduates. Though "there is in each of us some brokenness and sinfulness," like St. Peter we can overcome our frailties and "never shrink back from proclaiming [Christ's] Gospel of Life, in Word and deed" though the message may not be popularly received by the dominant culture.

The cardinal also thanked Dr. Anderson and the local and national Knights of Columbus organizations for their unremitting defense of the culture of life. He thanked them particularly for pledging $1.25 million to fund Sacred Heart's newly established Fr. Michael McGivney Chair of Life Ethics. Father McGivney is the founder of the Knights of Columbus whose cause for canonization was opened by the Diocese of Hartford in 1997.