New President-Rector

The seminary I graduated from has recently elected a new president. There is a great article on the outgoing one, Fr. Bob Leavitt, that you can download from their website. I had Leavitt for a class, and he was a superb teacher. He was a student of Yves Congar and Raul Riceour among others, and he had some funny stories about various scholars (I remember a really good one he once told about the New Testament scholar Ernst Kasemann). He lead St. Mary's with dignity and poise through some rather difficult times. For example, in the middle of the sex abuse scandals he managed to raise gobs of money, endowing several faculty chairs. He also vastly expanded the physical plant, and academic and spiritual offerings of the school, as well as instituing other important changes. But the bad side is that under his tenure enrollment at the nation's first Catholic seminary drastically dropped (from 400+ to under 100). Meanwhile, Mount St. Mary's in Emmitsburg (which my classmates called "Vacation Bible School" because it was so much easier than Roland Park) has so many students that they had to build a new dorm building. In fairness, I guess enrollment at all of the seminaries dropped after the council, but this was huge. So I don't know how you gauge success in this instance... lots of money but few students, or lots of students but less money. Both students and money are important for academic institutions to prosper. Luckily, before all of these other funds were raised, the seminary was basically propped up by their night school, the Ecumenical Institute of Theology, which was started by the Roman Catholic archdiocese and the Episcopal diocese. What the future holds for St. Mary's is anyone's guess.