 Fr. Paul M. Conner, OP
As a pre-med student and hospital orderly, I always thought about medicine as my future, until graduation
from St. Mary's College, Moraga. Then I went to France to teach English in a French high school. Slowly
that year, the deeper desire to become a priest emerged, along with the thirst to pursue the truth of life
and religion as I had experienced this thirst in the teaching and preaching of Fr. Joseph Servente, O.P.,
Chaplain and Professor at St. Mary's. I cancelled my medical school acceptance and entered the Western
Dominican Province formation program. I loved Dominican life and my philosophy and theology years at St.
Albert's College, and after a year of pastoral ministry at Holy Rosary parish in Antioch, I began teaching
theology at Mt. St. Mary's College in Los Angeles. But my thirst continued, and I next completed my
licentiate and doctoral work in Rome.
I began my 13
years of teaching at St. Albert's College (which became the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology),
at our Lady of the Rosary College at Mission San Jose, and half-time some years at our University of St.
Thomas Aquinas in Rome. During most summers I gave retreats and up-date classes in moral and spiritual
theology. Next, I engaged in more pastoral ministry at St. Dominic's in San Francisco, followed by
teaching at Notre Dame College in Belmont and Silver Lake College in Wisconsin. During my years on the
East Coast, I introduced the master's program in ethics at New York Medical College, worked at the Pope
John XXIII Center for Research and Education in Medical Ethics in Boston (now the National Catholic
Bioethics Center in Philadelphia), and finally was asked to help at the only college in the USA run by the
Dominican Fathers and Brothers, Providence College in Rhode Island. I have been here for 13 years happily
teaching my specialties of moral and spiritual theology to both undergraduate and graduate students. Thus,
my innate thirst for the truth, God's grace, and the peerless Dominican vocation have led me to a life of
fulfillment I would never trade!
Updated: September 6, 2005 |
