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On Sunday, September 13, 1959, Steve Duplantier and Jim Krefft and 60 plus other classmates entered St. Joseph Seminary in St. Benedict, LA, just north of Covington, LA. Steve was 14, and Jim was 13. At the time “St. Ben,” as it is commonly known, was the six-year minor seminary for the Archdiocese of New Orleans, but it also educated seminarians from other deep-south dioceses.
Steve and Jim spent six school years at St. Ben and then advanced to Notre Dame Seminary, a major seminary in New Orleans, LA. Jim studied there for two years and left the seminary, after eight years, in the summer of 1967. Jim married Lynn Resor. Steve stayed through the second year of theology, and left in the summer of 1969, after ten years in the seminary. One year later, Steve married Kathleen Bordelon.
These interview highlights are extracted from full-length interviews conducted by their wives and co-authors of Visiting Sunday. Kathleen interviewed Steve, and Lynn interviewed Jim. To view the complete interviews, click on Steve’s interview or Jim’s interview
See sidebar for links to the reciprocal interviews by Jim and Steve of their wives.
Why did you go into the seminary?
Steve: I was benevolently brainwashed by nuns, one in particular. Then I got double-teamed by our parish pastor, who lavished attention and special outings on eighth-graders who were targeted as potential seminarians. I was a malleable 13-year-old in the late 1950s, but it was not just me who was targeted. Many of my friends in eighth grade miraculously got vocations too. To this day I wonder what those priests and nuns of the 50s and 60s thought they were doing when they told so many young boys that God was calling them. It wasn’t God.
Jim: Mostly it was out of idealism. From an early age I got it in my head that priests do God’s work, and to me that seemed a desirable occupation. A negative reason for entering the seminary was my parent’s bad marriage. My father was an alcoholic, and he and my mom from time to time fought intensely, sometimes physically. I began to see marriage as not particularly attractive and came to the position that I wanted to avoid it. I might add that I never felt that my parish pastor or any priest or nun had targeted to recruit me to enter the seminary.
Why did you stay in so long?
Steve: An easy answer is that I liked it. But my six years in the minor seminary were a combination of faulty logic and the fact that it was good place to go to school. The faulty logic went like this: since I have a vocation to be a priest, this is where I have to be. So if you stay, then you must have a vocation, and if you have a vocation, then you stay. But it was an interesting place to be, alluring to a teenager. There was this amazing environment of 1,500 acres of woodlands full of wildlife, especially snakes, which I really loved, and also prehistoric Indian sites, a pristine river running with cold water, lakes to fish in, and a farm, a dairy herd, and huge smelly pigs that ate the slop of the monks and seminarians. I also liked the medieval ambience of the monastery.
Jim: My reasons changed over time. In my early high school years I stayed, as silly as it sounds now, to prove grammar school buddies wrong about their doubts about my vocation. By the time of my late teens my father’s alcoholism had become rampant, and so I saw living at home as being more intolerable than returning to seminary every September. A large number of my classmates quit after high school, and so when I came back to Fifth Class, I fell into a deep depression for not having quit with them. I was paralyzed. Hated staying but couldn’t summon up the gumption to quit. By the time I got to major seminary, I had pretty much made up my mind that I was going to quit, but I had not figured out the timing. So my decision to stay went from hard headedness to loneliness to practicality.
Describe a good or bad memorable experience from the seminary.
Steve: The best thing I did at the seminary was to volunteer for two summers to go a monastery at Esquipulas in Guatemala. I worked in remote mountain villages, mostly hanging out with the villagers. This was a life changing experience for me. The significant events were my awakenings in the political sphere (Guatemala was in the midst of a civil war after the political murders and a coup by the CIA and corporate interests especially the banana companies.) I also had an anthropological awakening by living with ladinoized Mayans in a small village. Later I studied anthropology in graduate school, trying to make sense of the experiences. I think about my friends in those mountains frequently.
Jim: The most memorable thing was the animated discussions I had with other seminarians. I learned the art of “vibrant dialogue.” My classmates were bright people with fast minds, widespread knowledge, and sharp tongues. The debates we had about literature, philosophy, and theology were incredibly stimulating. I do freely admit and acknowledge that these cerebral jousts were a poor substitute for getting laid, but they were nevertheless gratifying. We all spoke our minds precisely and passionately, whether the topic was Samuel Becket's Waiting for Godot, or Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, or the semantics of epistemology. Yes, I get off on metaphysics, ontology, and the pureness of being. I’m so glad to get that off my chest.
What do you think of celibacy, then and now?
Steve: In the minor seminary I didn’t think of celibacy at all, as I also didn’t think of marriage at all. When talk of changing the customs regarding celibacy for priests began circulating in the mid 1960s as a result of Vatican II, there was a moment of exhilaration for seminarians. Maybe it would be possible to be priests, to do important work in service to people who needed help, and still find a beautiful wife as a life partner. But that utopian dream did not last long, as we know. Celibacy is a huge mistake. It mocks marriage and has been he root cause of so much corruption and evil in the church. And the Vatican establishment is a self-perpetuating evil virus that will never change. The current Pope is an example of the kind of leaders the church will continue to have.
Jim: As a compulsory precondition for doing God’s work in the religious life, it’s utter nonsense. Part of the reason I hung around for major seminary was the hope that Vatican II would set aside celibacy as mandatory. As it turns out, in my second year of major seminary we began to hear that Pope Paul VI was going to go against a bishops’ recommendation to make celibacy optional and reaffirm it as a requirement for ordination. The encyclical reaffirming mandatory celibacy for priests was issued that summer, 1967. I quit later that summer. I thought about celibacy in the priesthood a lot during those first few years after I quit. Although its one of those who-can-ever-tell “what if’s,” my best guess is that if that encyclical had gone the other way I would be a married priest today.
Why did you leave the seminary?
Steve: I had decided to quit before I met Kathleen, but after I met her I knew I had made the right decision. If being in the seminary means I was called by God, when I decided to leave I guess it meant that God said, “Never mind.” I left in May 1969. The year before was a scary one. I was heavily involved in the anti-war movement and general anti-fascist activities. I went to a liturgical conference in Washington that was a hotbed of progressive, antiwar talk and activism. I joined a group that went to Chicago to protest the war. In theologyville, the same kind of reactionary, fascist thinking that was against freedom and liberation around the world from Prague to Chicago also was at work in the Vatican.
Against this dismal backdrop of world political crisis and a surreal, absurd Catholic church, I knew that I could never make it as a priest. I wasn’t even sure I could make it in the United States, since quitting the seminary would make me 1-A in the military draft. I had planned a long trip to Europe, where I met and fell in love with my wife, Kathleen. When I returned to the states, my draft situation was not yet clear. I turned 25 before my number came up, and I was no longer 1-A. Kathleen and I got married a few months later. What a long strange trip it had been. From the minor seminary still in the shadow of the Council of Trent, to my awakening in Central America, to the radical days and nights of the assassinations, riots, wars, and revolutions.
Jim: I fell in love. In my second year of major seminary, I met a young nun who was sexy, bright, and needy. I was handsome, bright, and needy. What a match. I had already pretty much resolved to leave once I had gotten my bachelors degree, but she put me over the edge. Over the years my disaffection for married life had eroded, principally because I came to see that I could be happily married even if my parents had not been. At some point on the way, and I can’t really pinpoint when it happened, I began to tell myself, “I’m not going to let my parent’s bad marriage prevent me from having a great marriage.” In fact I went in the opposite direction and swore to myself that when I finally got married I would make sure that I would never treat my wife the way my father treated my mother. I was determined to break that cycle of self-destruction.
I'd be lying if I did not add that the Vietnam War played a major roll in when I left the seminary. I knew that within two weeks of notifying my draft board that I was no longer a divinity student, I would receive my 1-A classification. So a part of why I stayed so long that I did not mention above was to preserve my draft exemption as a seminarian.
Krefft and Duplantier were students at St. Josph Seminary in the late 50s and through the mid 60s. Cardinal Bernard Law was also a student here a few years before.
Read the complete interview with Steve Duplantier
Read the complete interview with Jim Krefft
Interviews with Lynn Krefft and Kathleen Duplantier
