50 years of devotion
Father Kern views priesthood as an abundance of blessings
Father Joseph Kern smiles as he celebrates Mass at St. Margaret Mary Church in Terre Haute, part of the joy that has marked his 50 years as a priest. (Submitted photo)
(Editor’s note: Four archdiocesan priests are celebrating their 50-year jubilees in 2007. This week, we feature Fathers Donald Schmidlin and Joseph Kern. We will feature Msgr. Bernard Schmitz and Father Joseph Sheets in an upcoming issue of The Criterion.)
By John Shaughnessy
He is sometimes called “the dancing priest”—a reference to the way Father Joseph Kern often taps his feet and sways to music as he celebrates the Mass.
Still, if you want to see the true joy in Father Kern’s 50 years as a priest, it’s in the extra moves he seems to effortlessly make for other people.
Consider this story about the 76-year-old retired priest who still serves as the dean of the Terre Haute Deanery:
“About three weeks ago, there was a lady in the hospital,” recalls Jerry Moorman, the pastoral associate at St. Margaret Mary Parish in Terre Haute. “It was a Sunday night, and she had experienced kidney failure. They didn’t think she was going to live, and the family couldn’t get a hold of the parish priest. The family was distraught. They called me, and I called Father Joe. He came right away. That meant so much to the family. He’s a walking saint.”
And a dancing priest.
“He’s very musically inclined,” Moorman says. “When he was our administrator at St. Margaret Mary, he’d be tapping his feet and swaying back and forth to the music. People who came to the Saturday Mass at five o’clock would sometimes ask, ‘Is this the parish with the dancing priest?’ ”
For Father Kern, it’s all part of his blessing in being a priest.
“Once I decided to become a priest, I never doubted it at any time,” says Father Kern, who was ordained on May 3, 1957. “Being a priest means everything to me. It’s my life. It’s a joyful life. We don’t have a lot of things other people have, but we have abundance in many ways. Someone once said, ‘You can’t out-give God. Every time you give, you receive something more in return.’ That fits in my life.”
His gift for giving grew when he was a young priest. As a child, he wanted to become a missionary but health problems forced him into a different way of serving God and people. After earning a master’s degree in special education, he served as a chaplain at a state hospital, where he often worked with mentally handicapped children from 1965 through 1972.
“Some were mentally ill. A lot were physically disabled, too,” he says. “Some were disfigured or deformed in some way. They were developmentally slow, but they could have beautiful personalities. One thing I learned from that was to look past the exterior to the interior with everybody. Try to see the person as a child of God, a human being. Wherever I’ve been, I look at people as the people of God.”
That philosophy has also guided him in his ministry at the Rockville Correctional Facility, a women’s prison, for the past 13 years.
“The experience at the hospital has helped me in doing prison ministry,” Father Kern says. “It’s helped me be more accepting of people that others might not accept.”
“Father Kern will do anything to be present to people,” says Father Rick Ginther, the pastor of St. Patrick and St. Margaret Mary parishes in Terre Haute. “He’s never unwilling to go visit someone, anoint them, listen to them. He’s truly a man of God, a servant who is always ready.”
His path as a priest has also taken him all across the archdiocese as an administrator, an assistant pastor and a pastor for parishes that include St. Michael in Brookville, St. Paul in Tell City, St. Pius V in Troy, St. Michael in Cannelton, St. Joseph in Rockville, St. Lawrence in Lawrenceburg, St. Jude the Apostle in Spencer and Most Sacred Heart of Jesus in Jeffersonville.
“It’s good to mix with the people, listen to the people, respect the people, and be open to them and their ideas,” he says.
Father Kern’s deep concern for people is reflected in the way he reaches out to people even in difficult situations.
“The most challenging part of being a priest is reconciling with people I have offended,” he says. “The intention was not to offend, but sometimes it was taken in that way. When I found out about offending someone, I tried to reach out and reconcile. The ones I’ve reached out to we’re friends now.
“The best part of being a priest would be leading the assembly at the liturgy and being of service and help to people. My advice to young priests is to remember it’s a marathon, not a sprint. You have to pace yourself. You can’t do everything. You have to live within yourself.”
For Father Kern, life as a priest has enhanced his understanding of God’s presence in our lives and the world.
“I’ve learned over the years to be aware of God’s presence everywhere—that God is in everything. I can be aware of God’s presence in the trees, the suns, the stars, in everyone. I figure God has given gifts to everybody. You just have to be aware.”
Father Joseph Kern
- Age: 76
- Parents: Henry and Rose (Seiter) Kern
- Parish where he grew up: St. Philip Neri Parish in Indianapolis.
- Education: Seminary at Saint Meinrad School of Theology. Bachelor’s degree in Church history at Saint Meinrad; master’s degree in special education at Indiana University in Bloomington; master of divinity degree at Saint Meinrad
- Hobbies: Walking, reading and listening to music, including classical, jazz and Broadway show tunes
- Favorite Scripture passage: “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you. See, upon the palms of my hands, I have written your name” (Isaiah 49:15-16).
- Influential author: The late Henri Nouwen. “He’s from the Netherlands. They’re spiritual books. He’s down-to-earth, and he makes you think in some new ways.”
