Father Carl returns to U's Newman Center

Intermountain Catholic

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Father Carl Schlichte

SALT LAKE CITY —Fifteen years ago, Dominican Brother Carl Schlichte came to Saint Catherine of Siena/Catholic Newman Center for his pastoral year. He calls Utah an outpost in the Western Dominican Province, which has the majority of its communities in the West Coast states. As a California native, when he was first told that he was assigned here, he considered it "the fourth of three choices," he said.

Despite his initial reaction, in Salt Lake "I had a fabulous year. Just a fabulous year," he said. "I made a lot of friends that remain my friends to this day."

At the time, the Newman Center’s Dominican community was comprised of Father Cassian Lewinski and Father Tom Kraft, who died in 2009. Then-Brother Carl was 25, by far the youngest of the group. A cradle Catholic who was baptized by his uncle, who happened to be the diocesan priest, he was raised in Walnut Creek, Calif. The discernment for a priestly vocation came while he was in high school. The communal lifestyle of the mendicant orders appealed to him so, after two years at Saint Mary’s College of California, he applied to the Order of Preachers (Dominicans). He was accepted and finished his divinity degree before being ordained.

Fr. Carl’s first assignment was at Saint Dominic Church in Eagle Rock, Calif. In addition to the parish, the Dominicans are responsible for the campus ministry for Occidental College. Because of his experience in Salt Lake, he was put in charge of the college’s campus ministry.

When Fr. Carl’s mother became ill with cancer, with the blessing of his provincial, he moved back to the Bay Area to help care for her while serving as a parish priest. His mother died in 2001; his father had passed away two years earlier.

The next assignment for Fr. Carl was campus ministry at Stanford University. "I spent my first year being intimidated," he said, because he thought, "These kids are 18 and they’re way smarter than I am. What do I have to say to them?" Upon reflection, he decided that the students didn’t need him to be their professor, they needed him to be their priest, and he could offer them his skills in that area.

After three years at Stanford, he spent a brief period at the University of Oregon at Eugene Newman Center, then was elected as superior of the Dominican house in Portland. A change of provincials sent him back to Stanford, then he applied for the Salt Lake position when Father Peter Rogers was elected prior of St. Dominic’s, where Fr. Carl served his first assignment.

Fr. Rogers was able to partner with the University of Utah, Fr. Carl said, and during his first year here he plans to build on the good work of all his predecessors, as well as "addressing the perennial problem of intergenerational issues that people are aware of here and are wanting to solve."

While he has some ideas about how to integrate St. Catherine’s permanent community and the student community, his priority for his first year is to get to know the community, he said. He sees the need to pastor the students and provide a parish for community, but he also would like to see priests at the Newman Center become involved with the U’s intellectual community, which he said is a trend in campus ministry.