Jubilarians Celebrate Lives As Servant Leaders
They began their priestly missions celebrating Mass “against the wall in Latin.”
They have experienced every bishop in the Diocese of Evansville’s history.
They completed four years of seminary in Austria without ever calling home.
They got to that Austrian seminary from the U.S. by sailing the Atlantic on the Queen Mary in 1959!
In Austria, they lived in Collegium Canisianum a seminary residence run by Jesuits. Men of 22 different nationalities lived there at the time.
They remain today – the five living members of this group of six Evansville priests ordained in Austria on March 30, 1963 – close; a priestly band of brothers. During the annual Diocesan Convocation for priests, three of them concelebrated Mass in honor of their 50th Anniversary of ordination.
That happened after one showed the other how to create and send emails using only his voice on an iPad!
They are Fr. Ken Graehler, Fr. Leo Kiesel, Msgr. Ken Knapp (the iPad teacher), Fr. Bernie Lutz and Fr. Earl Rohleder (the iPad student).
“We decided to get together and celebrate the eighth anniversary of our ordination because none of us were sure we’d make it to 10,” Fr. Lutz remembered. “And when it came our 50th anniversary, we just knew the planning would be easy – we’d all celebrate during the Convocation. But two of the guys are busy doing other things; they didn’t make it.”
Those two – Fr. Graehler and Fr. Kiesel – joined the other three (plus deceased Msgr. Charlie Koch) when Evansville Bishop Henry J. Grimmelsman decided to send them to theology school and seminary at the University of Innsbruck, in Austria. “We finally decided he did that to save money over what it would have cost to send us to St. Meinrad at the time,” Fr. Lutz told Bishop Charles C. Thompson, Bishop Emeritus Gerald A. Gettelfinger and the diocesan priests during the Convocation Mass of celebration.
“We entered what was one of the best schools of theology in the world at the time,” Msgr. Knapp said. “Some of our teachers were the architects of Vatican II.”
They returned to America having already experienced a taste of the liturgical changes founded in the second Vatican council.
“A priest invited me to say Mass in Oberammergau, Germany, using an altar that had just been erected to face the people,” Fr. Rohleder said. “He told me that if he didn’t hear too many complaints about my Mass and the new altar, he might let it stay!”
“We got a lot of flack when we got back home,” Fr. Lutz remembered, “because the way we said Mass was ‘not up to snuff’ with the way they did things at Meinrad. But all of our bishops were very understanding of us.”
Try to imagine what these men have experienced – not only in the life of the Church, but also in the history of the world.
“We visited Berlin before the wall ever went up,” Msgr. Knapp recalled. “We were there after it went up. We watched it come down on television, and we were there after it was gone.”
Their priestly ministries included involvement in activities related to America’s civil rights movement in the 1960s, and in the upheaval that surrounded U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war. Fr. Lutz remembers being at Indiana University in Bloomington when war protests led to the closure of Ballantine Hall, with clergy serving as buffers between police and protesting students.
‘It’s interesting that all of our roles were different,” Msgr. Knapp said. “Bernie got involved in education, and Earl went into parish ministry.” “Ken was very active in Catholic Charities for many years, and Charlie was with the tribunal office,” Fr. Rohleder chimed in. You can see how they served the people of Evansville in the sidebar.
“It’s very difficult to draw comparisons between what we have done and experienced and what our younger priests face,” Msgr. Knapp said. “When we returned from Austria, we came back into a world that had real respect for where everyone was in their lives.
“Today’s world represents a drastic change,” Fr. Rohleder added. “We have a secular society where people get their values from TV,” Fr. Lutz said, “so there are no values.”
Collectively, they recognize the challenge facing priests here in the Diocese of Evansville and across the world.
“Our priests have to be so prayerful,” Msgr. Knapp said. “They must find a way in their spiritual lives to be able to walk in this new, changing world.”
It was easy to see the symbolic shift represented by these 50-year priests’ retirements.
“There certainly is a paradigm shift in the diocese as a result of our retirements,” Fr. Lutz said. “We all are very strong personalities.
“I believe Bishop Grimmelsman sending us to Innsbruck helped make this diocese very rich in many ways,” he added. “Small, but very rich.”
