The corporate lawyer who became a Dominican friar

Fr Benedict McGlinchey

“Do you judge them to be worthy?” is a question that the ordaining Bishop asks during the Rite of Ordination to the priesthood. It is unlikely that any newly ordained priest really feels himself worthy of the gift of priesthood that he has received. But that sense of unworthiness sits alongside a deep conviction of being called to be a priest, a sense of joy and excitement as priestly ministry begins, and an awareness of the need for God’s grace for the challenges ahead. Such has been my experience in the short time since I was ordained as a priest in the Dominican Order by Archbishop Augustine Di Noia OP on July 6 in Dublin.

That journey towards ordination began formally in the Dominican Novitiate in Cork in 2017. But the story starts much further back. While many of our brothers enter the Order shortly after school or university, I had worked as a corporate law partner in a large international law firm before discerning a call to religious life. Specialising in cross-border mergers and acquisitions and equity capital markets, I spent my career working between the City of London and the international offices of my law firm. Extensive travel and interesting work took place in a highly competitive and intense working environment, which brought both challenges and rewards. While the demands of work were all-consuming, I had the privilege of working alongside highly committed colleagues who were experts in their fields and, perhaps surprisingly for those who take a negative view of the business world, who maintained high standards of integrity in how they did business.

Vocation

But working in this area of corporate finance involves sacrifice, and after some years of working in the area, I began to wonder if I really wanted to do this for the rest of my life.  I had become increasingly involved in the life of the Church, and interested to know in greater depth the teachings of the faith and the impact they have on the personal lives of individuals when lived out. Gradually I began to realise that my interest in pursuing my career was waning, and that what increasingly absorbed my interest was the spiritual life and the life of faith. The idea of priesthood had come to me intermittently over a number of years and having taken a sabbatical from work, I decided eventually that if I did not at least try out a religious vocation I would spend the rest of my life wondering, “What if?”

“Going from managing transactions and a team of lawyers to being, as it were, at the bottom of the ladder, was a big change to say the least”

I had first met the Dominicans when I was studying in Oxford. What I saw of them there interested me. Many of them were grappling with the sorts of questions that young adults struggle with. The big questions – whether there is a fundamental meaning to existence, whether there is a point to the universe, indeed whether there is a point to our lives. These were the questions that interested me and my contemporaries. With this memory in mind, it was to the Dominicans in Ireland that I turned when I began to consider more seriously the issue of religious life and priesthood. I found there a community of brothers, many of them younger men, committed to that same search for truth that had first interested me in the Order.

Entering religious life meant a big change in life and in lifestyle. Going from managing transactions and a team of lawyers to being, as it were, at the bottom of the ladder, was a big change to say the least. But while it was undoubtedly a challenge, I have no doubt that it was God’s grace that enabled me to adapt to it over time, and to grow to love a way of life that was initially challenging. It is true that religious and priestly life has a sacrificial dimension. Yet at the same time, it is a life marked by an easy joy and happiness and an experience of God’s grace.  And that is a joy that comes from an encounter and friendship with Jesus Christ.

Formation

While Christianity is no longer the prevailing cultural norm in the contemporary world, the man in formation will find in the Church many great people who support and encourage him. He will be surprised to find an interest in spiritual matters from people he least expected. His decision to discern a vocation will open up conversations with people not committed to the Catholic faith who are curious to know why he decided to pursue the path of priesthood, in a world in which it seems to bring little visible reward. He will be taken aback when his former colleagues and his friends start to ask him for advice on struggles they face in life. And he will be humbled by these experiences.

“Among young people, there is a resurgence of interest in the intellectual tradition of the Church”

A man discerning a vocation to the priesthood or religious life will take part in a formation programme covering many areas: prayer and the spiritual life, as well as religious and intellectual formation. I studied Philosophy at Maynooth University, and then Theology firstly at the Dominican Studium in Dublin, and then at the Angelicum (the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas) in Rome. Our Dominican intellectual formation is rooted in Thomism, the systematic thought of St Thomas Aquinas, while drawing also on more modern thinkers. It has been enriching to have been exposed to the great intellectual tradition of the Church and to experience the beauty of the Catholic faith through that tradition. This is not something of merely academic interest. Among young people, there is a resurgence of interest in the intellectual tradition of the Church, driven in part by their experience of liquid postmodernity. They see it as something that can offer credible answers to the great questions of our time. For a new priest today, one of the challenges we face is to equip ourselves for this task and to be able to help people to think through the questions they have and, in that process, to point them towards Jesus Christ.

Challenges

That is just one challenge that the new priest faces.  There are undoubtedly many more. Human nature does not change that much fundamentally, and so the perennial challenges of human life remain. The sense of excitement that I have as I start priestly ministry is not based on naïveté about human nature, or an unrealistic view of the challenges ahead. It is based on a lived experience of the challenges of life that people face, a realistic understanding of the human condition and a firm faith that despite everything we see before us, we have reason to hope. That hope is grounded not on human optimism but in the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and on His power to transform lives. And it is for that that the priest is called to a life of service.