You Are Never To Old To Become A Jesuit!

Rev. Scully to take his final vows
Le Moyne history professor will solidify his status as a Jesuit at Mass on Sunday.
Saturday, September 01, 2007
By Renée K. Gadoua Staff writer

A Le Moyne College history professor will take his final vows as a Jesuit on Sunday. The Rev. Robert Scully, 52, took first vows - a perpetual promise of poverty, chastity and obedience - in 1988 and was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1996. He has taught at Le Moyne College since 1996. During a 1 p.m. Mass at Le Moyne's Panasci Family Chapel, Scully will make a solemn renewal of his first vows and add a fourth vow of obedience to the pope to undertake mission assignments. Scully said his life as a Jesuit and a priest has been happy. "I've been able to engage in so many kinds of ministry," he said. "As a teacher, I can share religious values. As a priest, often people come to you and share some important personal dilemmas they might not share with others." The Jesuits are known as the Society of Jesus, and, with 19,564 members, Jesuits make up the world's largest Roman Catholic men's religious community. Ignatius Loyola, a Spanish nobleman, founded the Jesuits in 1540. The community's presence in Central New York dates to the 1650s, when Simon Le Moyne recorded the existence of salt springs near Onondaga Lake and helped mediate disputes between the Mohawk and Onondaga nations. The French missionary is the namesake of Le Moyne College, founded in Syracuse in 1946. Seventeen Jesuits, including Scully, belong to the Le Moyne Jesuit Community. Five of the local Jesuits are administrators and eight teach at the college. In addition to teaching history, Scully is chaplain of Foery Hall, a student residence hall where he lives. On Aug. 11, three men of the Maryland, New York and New England Provinces professed first vows as Jesuits following a two-year probationary period based at St. Andrew Hall, a novitiate on Le Moyne's campus. Like diocesan priests and religious sisters, the number of priests in religious communities such as the Franciscans and the Jesuits has declined since Vatican II. In 1965, there were 22,707 priests in religious communities, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. In 2006, there were 13,495 American priests in religious communities. According to the Society of Jesus, in 2006 the total number of Jesuits was 19,564, a decrease of 286 over the previous year. That includes priests, brothers, scholastics and novices. "In the pre-Vatican II church, many people went into the religious life because there was so much pressure to go in," Scully said. "Now we've gone the other way and there are a lot of cultural pressures against the (religious) life."

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