2012 Touchstone Nominated Story. The following story from the Toledo City Paper was nominated for the Press Club of Toledo's Touchstone award for Excellence in Journalism.
Father James Bacik wrote those words 25 years ago, in an essay reflecting on the 25th anniversary of his ordination as a 
Roman Catholic priest. It was a moment to look back, to consider the shape of a 
career. But it was truly only the end of the 
beginning. Next year, Fr. Bacik will celebrate 50 years in the priesthood, and face a transition to the next phase of his life, as he eases out of day-to-day work at the University of Toledo and its Corpus Christi Parish, where he has been the pastor and guiding light since 1982. His pending retirement is a turn of events that’s left the parish and the wider community saddened. Bacik, a 
beloved pastor and renowned scholar, is still healthy and eager to do his pastoral work. On the surface, his departure is mandated by the church’s retirement policy. It may have just as much to do with changes in the church that have left Bacik’s progressive views on the outside looking in. But 
looking back, he still feels the hope, the 
mystery and above all a sense of gratitude.
The accidental minister
It’s been a long journey, and one that Bacik never expected to take. The priesthood certainly wasn’t on his mind during his Toledo boyhood. His family belonged to St. Catherine’s Parish in West Toledo, and he remembers the time fondly.
“It was a wonderful time to be there,” he recalls. “It was our spiritual home.” But at the same time, the church was simply part of the unexamined background of his life. Certainly it took a backseat to his real passion — baseball. “I always wanted to be a baseball player,” he says. “It was my calling. It wasn’t until my senior year in high school (at Toledo’s Central Catholic) that I realized I wasn’t good enough. It was a hard moment.” He laughs dryly at the memory.
But incredibly for someone with such a long and successful career in the Church, Bacik fell into the vocation seemingly by accident. “I was all set to go to the University of Dayton,” he says, “but the next thing I knew I was in the seminary. (At southern Indiana’s St. Meinrad Seminary.) How that happened is totally mysterious.” Was it the urging of a mentor? A burst of divine inspiration? Bacik genuinely can’t remember, and won’t offer any easy platitudes. But that seemingly arbitrary decision would set the course of his life.
It wasn’t a smooth start. The young Bacik struggled in the cloistered and regimented seminary environment. 
“I didn’t fit in too well,” he says, 
ruefully. “I didn’t find the life to be intellectually stimulating; it was narrow and closed.”
A breath of fresh air
But though Bacik and his fellow seminarians were insulated from the changing outside world, change was coming. By chance, Bacik had come to the priesthood during a time of 
intellectual ferment that would lead the Catholic Church to its greatest 
period of reform in centuries, centered around the Second Vatican Council convened by Pope John XXIII in 1962. Old practices like the mandatory Latin mass, which kept people at a distance from spiritual experience, were swept away in a new climate of open inquiry and questioning. “I 
remember writing a paper at the time,” Bacik recounts, “predicting that nothing much would happen (as occasioned by the reforms). It would be hard to be more wrong.”
While he was generally receptive to the new ideas (his parents had been quite open-minded and liberal for the church of their day), Bacik didn’t quite make the leap to what he would become until he encountered Eugene Maly during his graduate studies at Mt. St. Mary’s Seminary in Cincinnati. When Bacik questioned the wisdom of applying new theories of criticism to the New Testament — couldn’t that endanger peoples’ faith? — the theologian was firm. “’Young man,’ he told me,” Bacik remembers, “’we have nothing to fear from the truth.’ It was the most significant lesson I learned.” He repeats the words, savoring them. Nothing to fear.
An intellectual life
It was that search for truth that would lead him for the rest of his career, as a parish priest, as a teacher and as an intellectual. While at the University of Toledo, Bacik remembers teaching a course on “Belief and Unbelief,” along with Robert Galbraith, a “brilliant agnostic.” Trying to hold his own, Bacik knew that he “needed to deepen (his) own understanding” of his faith. That led him to seek his doctorate from Oxford 
University (which he earned in 1978), and to his lifelong study of the great German theologian Karl Rahner. Rahner’s views on the Church’s move away from its rigid past, and his thinking on the relationship between God and humanity, fit well with Bacik’s own. Meeting Rahner, and 
having him write an introduction to one of Bacik’s books, was the supreme honor of his life.
“He was volatile,” Bacik remembers, “like an energy force; he didn’t hide his emotions. But he loved ordinary things — finding God in the ordinary. In new 
cities, he’d want to go to the mall.”
Since 1980, Bacik has written eight books and dozens of articles, and taught at Notre Dame, Fordham University, Bowling Green State University and 
others. But it’s his pastoral and teaching work at Toledo of which he seems the most proud. Bacik developed the Christian Leadership Program, through which 12 undergraduates per year receive $5000 scholarships. Of course, part of the deal is taking Bacik’s introduction to theology — based in Rahner’s work — and Bacik’s pleasure in teaching it matches his 
mentor’s love of the ordinary.
“I enjoy that class because I learn so much from (the students),” he says. “It’s wonderful to see how they’re learning what’s important to them, how they’re dealing with the big questions of life.”
Bacik was instrumental to creating the University’s Thomas and Margaret Murray and James J. Bacik Professor of Catholic Studies. Dr. Richard Gaillardetz of Boston College who held that chair from 2001-2011, says that the post “has done much to further the integration of Catholic studies into the conversation of the University,” and has been a model for other universities. It’s been a chance to establish the Church in the community as not just a spiritual resource, but an intellectual one.” Father Bob Wilhelm, a longtime friend, agrees. “He has this wonderful ability to seek out people whose positions he doesn’t hold,” Wilhelm says, “and to listen to them and be able to deliver objectively what they have said without his own prejudice or his own ideas getting in the way. It’s been a hallmark of his ministry.”
Bacik’s Christian Service Program offers students the opportunity to engage in service projects in the area, and once a year, during Spring Break, a group participates in a Habitat for Humanity project, building home for the needy.
He is especially proud of the parish’s move to the current Corpus Christi building on Dorr Street, which was completed in 1998, largely through generous private donations. He speaks rapturously of the building’s beauty, especially the 12 striking tapestries in the main worship space, by renowned artist John Nava. The tapestries depict spiritual leaders throughout history — and not only Catholic ones. (Gandhi made the cut.) Parishioners were allowed to vote on which subjects would be chosen. “People come from all over to see it,” Bacik says. Modestly, he does not say that it was largely his reputation that made the funding of the church (and so many other projects) possible. “I do not know that I’ve ever met someone so 
utterly without ego,” Gaillardetz says.
“With a doctorate at Oxford and 
numerous books and articles to his credit, Fr. Bacik’s academic credentials 
exceed not only those of most priests in the U.S. but also those of virtually every bishop in our country,” Gaillardetz says. But his flock sees more than an intellectual. “What I love about him,” says Lisa Tarquinio, who has attended Corpus Christi with her family for over a decade, “is that he’s so relatable. When he speaks, he speaks on a level that people can understand, and gives them something to think about during the week.” Bacik and his progressive beliefs have created a welcoming, flexible environment that’s led to a parish with a strong and vibrant sense of self. “You feel that you’re with other people who are thinking about the big picture,” Tarquinio says. “It’s this 
beautiful community where everybody benefits.”
Home, and the road ahead
Bacik’s connection to Toledo runs deep. “I grew up here,” he says. “I have many friends and connections, many people who I’ve served, many people who have been generous to me. My roots are here.” But the renowned theologian can’t resist 
thinking of sports. “I’ve been coming to athletic events here for 70 years,” he 
remembers. Mud Hens games. Federation Baseball. He remembers the first UT football game at the Glass Bowl, in 1946, a loss to Bates College. “LSU it wasn’t,” he laughs. (And again, the pastor is modest, but his sterling golf game is legendary to those in the know.)
Everyone’s future is unknown. But everything ends. And after 50 years, 
Bacik’s time as a working priest will end, mandated by the Church’s policy of retirement at age 75. “Nobody wants to see him go,” Lisa Tarquinio says. “Everyone’s in denial.” It’s clear it saddens Bacik, too, but he wants to focus on the positive. “I don’t like this billed as a retirement,” he says. “We’re celebrating 50 years; we’re not having a ‘retirement party.’ If it were my own (decision) I’d like to continue doing what 
I am, but I don’t decide. My goal is to make this last year a great year, and so far we’ve done it.”
Not everyone is so circumspect. “Canon law requires only that a priest offer 
his retirement at the specified age,” Gaillardetz points out. “The bishop is not 
compelled to accept that offer, and, in many cases, in Toledo and elsewhere, bishops have invited pastors in good health to continue on in active pastoral ministry. It is a shame, given our chronic shortage of priests, that (Toledo) Bishop (Leonard) Blair chose not to accept 
Fr. Bacik’s invitation to continue as 
pastor beyond the retirement age.” Other sources seemed to feel similarly, though most preferred not to be quoted. 
Do Bacik’s progressive views and 
impressive reputation simply have no place in the Diocese under Bishop Blair, who took the reins in 2003? It may not 
be that simple. But the Catholic Church is a highly ordered structure, and obedience
comes with the territory.
Far from bitter, Bacik views his life with a mix of surprise and overwhelming gratitude. The young man who came to the Church with deep misgivings and “dark foreboding” is now a pillar of the community, a respected scholar, a beloved teacher — in his words, a “servant leader.”
“Given how I came to this,” he muses, “it couldn’t have worked out better.” 
He laughs. “How lucky can you get?” Then he catches himself, his teacher’s 
formality slipping back into place. “Just say I feel enormous gratitude.” But the 
underlying joy is still there.
