Msgr stuart swetland biography

He was the Executive Secretary for the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars for twenty years and hosted a variety of television and radio shows presenting Catholic social teaching. He currently serves as pastor of Our Lady and St. Built upon the pillars of faith, wisdom and solidarity, Donnelly College embodies the Benedictine values of truth, excellence, community, diversity, inclusivity, justice and service.

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Msgr stuart swetland biography

These values lead to student success and growth in their careers, minds and spirits. At Donnelly, we help students discover who they are and why they are. Our students are the dream makers; we are here to help them achieve their dreams. I invite you to become a part of Donnelly — as a student, a volunteer, a supporter or an advocate. Name a profound experience of mercy, either given or received, and the impact it has had on your priesthood.

There was once a place where I was serving and I decided to put on an extra time for confession. I was unsure if this was something that I should do — I did it almost on a whim at the request of some people. So I prayed to God as I started this new time of confession that if he wanted me to do this, he should make it clear I was doing the right thing.

The next week he sent me an incredible number of people who wanted the sacrament and many, many people who had been away from the sacrament for years. It was an amazing answer to prayer and a sign that God wanted as many times as possible for the confessional to be open and available to people in this great sacrament of mercy. He was made a Prelate of Honor with the title of monsignor in Mail for him may be sent to Donnelly College, N.

What drew you to the priesthood? How did you know you were being called? Who has been the biggest influence on your vocation and why? How are you a different priest today than you were 25 years ago? What has given you the most joy in your priesthood? Talk about your prayer life — what feeds you for your ministry? How has priestly ministry changed in the last generation?

What Scripture passage sums up your ministry? Donnelly CollegeMsgr. Stuart Swetlandsilver jubilarian. The episode is illustrative of both the seriousness with which Swetland embraces his Catholicism and of the seriousness with which, at times, he challenges his own presumptions. It may also be such seriousness that is behind his belief that the post-Cold-War era is summoning the church, especially the church in the United States, to rethink some fundamental points about war.

The opinion has roots in another Navy experience, much earlier than the episode in the Aegean. It occurred when he was deployed to a ballistic missile submarine for the summer as a midshipman. It was the first time the young cadet confronted questions about the wisdom and morality of nuclear deterrence. For someone regularly pestered by big ethical issues, the questions were unavoidable: The sub carried 16 missiles, each with the potential to have 10 warheads and each of them could be targeted independently.

Each warhead, he said, was 10 to 30 times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II. Deterrence only works, he said, "if you have people who are willing to turn the key and push that button. I wasn't even thinking about becoming a Catholic, but I was reading a lot of philosophy, and most moral philosophy would say your intention has a lot to do with the morality of the act, and is determinative.

They're just waiting for the conditions to be met. Which is totally external to their choice. It's when they're ordered to do so. That is how, in the belly of a nuclear sub, the summer he turned 20, Swetland came to a conclusion. So I quietly made the decision I wouldn't be a nuclear submariner. In time, he decided to leave the Navy career behind.

Soon after becoming Catholic, he had thought of becoming a priest, but a priest adviser told him, "That's the zeal of the convert. If it's still there in three years, then you can do something about it. He went back to serve in the Navy following Oxford, "and three years later it hadn't gone away, so I said, 'Maybe I need to do something about this.

Ultimately, he managed to convince the Navy to allow him to pursue the priesthood while still owing the service several years for his time at the academy and at Oxford. Now as a Catholic, a priest and an educator, the questions continue to press. What may have been justified in the s at the apex of the Cold War seems excessive now. By the end of that decade, a major symbol of the war, the Berlin Wall, had fallen and the Soviet empire soon collapsed.

What didn't collapse was U. Catholic church's tolerance for deterrence as outlined in the U. Swetland said he understands "why they pulled their punch" amid the Cold War and because "Pope John Paul II said, 'Well, if you're moving toward disarmament' " then deterrence was at least temporarily acceptable. There's no need to reinvent the church's position, he said.

We just pulled our punch [and allowed for deterrence] in the end because we didn't want to make the logical conclusion from what had been said. He also would urge the church to push selective conscientious objection. While the military recognizes conscientious objection of religious groups that oppose all war, "one of the things that the American military has never accepted that Catholic social teaching and the standard ethic on war and peace demands," he said, "is the ability of individuals to make selective conscientious objection.

He would also like to see an examination of the role of military chaplains, a rethinking of the American "formal policy requiring unconditional surrender," something the just war theory "has never recognized as a just demand that you can make upon your enemy. It is difficult terrain, he has come to understand, even when popes are in agreement. His objection to the Iraq War as unjust, for instance, brought stinging rebuke from conservative quarters.

More recently, when he weighed in to counter a disparaging characterization of Islam from some Catholic quarters, he ended up in a debate on Relevant Radio, where he has his own daily show, "Go Ask Your Father," and generated a fair internet storm over the msgr stuart swetland biography. Stuart Swetland msgr stuarts swetland biography audio equipment in his office at Donnelly College.

The submariner for a summer who had contemplated the worst case believes the United States could send a strong message to the world by reducing military spending. He notes the familiar statistic that the United States spends more on the military than the next six countries combined and that most of those countries are allies. I think our bishops could take a lead on this if they would say, 'Enough!

The influences keeping the military industrial complex functioning at a high level have as much to do with the Pentagon spending that occurs in almost every congressional district as it does with foreign threats. The complex, said Swetland, is aimed at keeping a strong triad -- missiles on subs, missiles on land, and missiles on bombers in the air.

If the U. A lot of these weapons systems are getting to the end of their planned usefulness. We have to either update them or refurbish them. The timing is right, he said, for us to ask, "Do we really need this kind of deterrent, and is it the moral thing to do?