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three diocesan priests retire with 130 years of ministry to diocese

Story and photos by LIZ QUIRIN
Messenger editor

Father Jim Dougherty, 65, celebrated his 40th anniversary this year and is retiring July 8.
He’ll spend time reading and some time helping out at diocesan parishes and would be open to teaching some adult education classes. Church history has been his “specialty.”

The road that leads to his retirement began during his early years as a child growing up in Cairo and attending St. Joseph’s School.

While his Catholic education was important, it was his parents’ faith and commitment that ultimately led Father Dougherty to the priesthood.

He grew up at a time when parents may not have spoken about their faith but they lived it. The family prayed the rosary every day, he said. “When the television came on, we had to decide what TV program to skip” when they said the rosary.

Like many families, they prayed the rosary in the car when traveling. “I wish we had spent time reading Scripture and talking about it,” he said, but that would come during a different, future era in Catholic family lives.
Father Dougherty said he remembers the seminary as a time of immaturity but no crisis. “I wanted to stay.”
He attended the former St. Henry’s Seminary in Belleville and then St. Meinrad Seminary in Indiana.
After six years at St. Henry’s, Bishop Albert R. Zuroweste “announced from the pulpit where we would go for the next six years,” he said.

St. Meinrad’s would have been his choice “because of the Benedictine tradition. I was not afraid of the adventure (of school) away from home.” Father Dougherty was ordained June 1, 1968 at St. Henry’s Church in Belleville because the cathedral was being renovated.

Those were turbulent times. The Vietnam War was raging; Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., had been assassinated; racial unrest was being felt all over this country, and the reforms of Vatican Council II were being implemented in the Catholic church around the world.

The church in which he was raised was changing along with the rest of the world. In earlier years, the parish priest may have been more distant, more reserved, but “priesthood was valued.”

He was ordained during a cultural revolution when many things would change — people were becoming more cynical, less trusting, but hope overpowered the cynicism with the changes wrought by the Council.
The first few years, Father Dougherty taught adult education classes that were well attended. People were learning about the changes in the liturgy among other things. “Everything was brand new. I was excited about it.”

Now 40 years later, Father Dougherty sees that people no longer go to liturgies out of fear of hell but because of the community, the sharing of the Eucharist. “Mass is a place of choice; we need good liturgies, good homilies, so that people who are looking can find a home as a eucharistic community,” he said.

Joining and strengthening the community can lead people from the table of the Eucharist out into the broader world to “get more involved in social justice issues,” he said.

During his priesthood, he was happiest when he was “invited into people’s lives” during important and emotional times for weddings and funerals. He became one of their family, then, offering support in joy or in sorrow.
The worst times, for him, were times “when I had to bury good friends.”

After the liturgy, the committal, families go home and embrace one another in their grief. Father Dougherty said he would go home to “weep alone.” It was difficult not to have someone with whom he could share his sorrow.
Sometimes, he said, he would go to the church and shed tears as he sat in a pew alone.

As he finishes packing and moving to St. Louis, he looks forward to “being bored” in retirement some of the time. Eventually he wants to get involved in volunteer work. He will be “exploring the possibilities,” he said.
Disappointed that the reforms of Vatican II have not been given an adequate chance, he smiled and said: “But you can never stop the Holy Spirit.”

Living three blocks from St. Edward Parish in Fairfield, Father Henry Ray Engelhart, 70, was called on to serve daily Mass as a youngster. When he entered the church, he said: “I always felt Somebody was there.”
He became interested in the priesthood, and finally “it caught me.” He wanted to study for the priesthood and went home to tell his parents.
His dad thought it “a great idea,” and both parents supported him. At 13, he went to St. Henry’s Seminary in Belleville where he remembers the first night as “everybody crying” with homesickness. “You wanted to stay, so you just cried.”

After St. Henry’s, Father Engelhart completed his studies at St. Meinrad Seminary in Indiana and was ordained June 1, 1963 at the cathedral in Belleville by Bishop Albert R. Zuroweste.
He remembers with special fondness his first assignment as an associate at St. Mary’s in Carlyle when he was assigned to teach at Mater Dei High School in Breese.

So many priests — “I was one of 12” — were assigned to teach at the Catholic high school, he said. He bonded with the freshmen students in his religion classes. They were open and honest and accepted him as he was, he said.
Throughout his priesthood, especially in the early years, Father Engelhart said he wrestled with personal problems stemming from an accident when he was 6 months old. He was burned when he was hospitalized a

s an infant when a humidifier caught fire. It took a long time to heal physically and even longer for him to recognize the emotional scars that he continues to confront even today.

Through the years there have been “extremely difficult but also good times.”
In particular he remembers the support and care of the people of St. Mary Parish in Mt. Carmel, St. Andrew Parish in Murphysboro and the 10 months he spent at the now-closed House of Affirmation in St. Louis.
At the House of Affirmation he began to find the help and support he needed to begin the emotional healing that would take years.

In 1970, he received an assignment at St. Clement Hospital in Red Bud. “It was everything I ever wanted — complete. But I had just come out of the hospital the year before and spent six months on leave, working in St. Louis, then a few months in Breese at St. Augustine, and I just did not have it back together. I felt like I was becoming a negative influence and needed to leave for the common good. It was one of the biggest heartbreaks of my life.

“But Yahweh was good to me when I went to Murphysboro; it took away a lot of the sting,” he said.
Father Engelhart again took on a chaplaincy at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Murphysboro.

In 1978, he became chaplain at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Belleville. It was a dream come true for him, that he said eventually morphed into a nightmare because “it was too big for me. I didn’t have the ability to handle the demands and the pressure” at the time.

His assignments up to this time had lasted no more than three years. Since his ordination in 1963 he had nine assignments. It was now 1982, and time for some help.

After his stay at the House of Affirmation, his life turned around. He was given the tools, he said, to deal with problems that arose in childhood that had been suppressed. He described it as having post-traumatic stress disorder from his childhood.

His later pastoral assignments at St. Anthony’s in Lively Grove, St. Mary’s Shawneetown and St. Patrick’s Pond Settlement, and St. Edward’s and St. Sebastian, have all stretched for six or more years.
Looking forward to retirement, Father Engelhart will take up residence at the Hincke-Sense Home for retired priests in Belleville.

He has been a priest for 45 years. “The priesthood was my salvation,” he said.

Father Jim Long is looking forward to many days of golf in his future as he retires from active ministry.
Describing himself as semi-retired for the last five years, Father Long stayed in active ministry while his former parish of St. Albert the Great in Fairview Heights was merged with Our Lady of the Assumption, also in Fairview Heights.
The new parish — Holy Trinity — combines the two parishes with a new school which youngsters from St. Stephen’s in Caseyville also attend.

“I stayed until the parish was merged,” he said. He expects to help out at the parish in his retirement.
As a child growing up in Blessed Sacrament Parish in Belleville, he remembers Msgr. Louis Ell as his pastor. “I was close to him.”

After eighth grade, he went to St. Henry’s Seminary, also in Belleville for one year and decided he didn’t want to be a priest.

After graduating from Cathedral High School, he went to Washington University in St. Louis

to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a chemical engineer.

During his freshman year he had surgery on his leg and “got behind in math,” he said.
He also began going to what would have been the student center to play cards and talk. When the conversation worked around to religion, he realized he didn’t know as much about his own religion as he thought.

Deciding he wanted to return to the seminary after his second year at Washington University, Father Long needed to catch up on Latin. All of the classes at Our Lady of the Lake Seminary in Mundelein, Ill., were taught in Latin.
He spent one year at a Latin school in Springfield, Ill., before going to Mundelein where he finished his studies and was ordained June 1, 1963.

After two months at St. Dominic Parish in Breese, he was assigned to St. Joseph’s in East St. Louis for two years.
His first pastorate was Our Lady of Good Counsel in Renault. How did a young man from the city like his assignment in the country? “I loved it,” he said, adding that he also taught at Gibault Catholic High School in Waterloo.

Each parish was different, he said, and they were all good.
He spent 10 years at St. John’s in Smithton and 22 years at St. Albert’s in Fairview Heights.
For the time being, Father Long said, he will “practice doing nothing.I enjoyed it all,” he said of his priesthood. “It was exciting, fun and challenging.”