What is This "Brother" Business?

Having hardly spent 5 minutes with pilgrims in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome on a weekly tour or in any given conversation with a person outside the Pontifical North American College's (NAC for short) seminary walls of the Vatican always pops up the question, "What do we call you?" 

Father?

The first instinct of a person is usually to call me or other seminarians at my college "Father", because following the tradition of many US seminaries today we are required to wear clerics (black clothes with a white tab Roman collar) from morning prayer and Holy Mass starting at 6:15am until after pranzo (The Italian word for the main meal of the day--lunch) or our last class, whichever is later and hence when people encounter us they see what looks like really young priests. The question that follows then is why do our bishops and seminary formation insist on us--NACcers (seminarians at the NAC) wearing clerics. Unfortunately their is not just one sweet and simple reason, but multiple. The 1st is that some feel that since we have already in good faith taken major steps toward the vocation of the priesthood, we should begin preparing for it by wearing the common garb. Another reason is so that we stand out in Rome as beacons for lost pilgrims who need help and usually find priests or P-I-Ts (Priests in training) easy and friendly targets for directions. The other great reason flows from the "beacon concept" in that we are seen as youthful "Witnesses to Hope" in the 3rd Millennium, something our world never stops thirsting for and cannot survive without.

So after you get them straight on the fact that you are not a priest yet, but that you dress like one and have been told to and thus are not an impostor, some still insist on calling you "Father" or "Father-to-be" because you look like one. In a recent elementary school visit to Aussies in Sydney, a boy called me "Father" right after I explained I wasn't a priest yet. Who could blame him when that is what he has always equated clerical clothes with.

Well, then what do we call you?

Others though ask you again "that question", because no one is content with calling you "Seminarian". At 5 syllables it's too long to yell, let alone have a simple conversation under half an hour after exerting so much energy just in the greeting. In brief, it's just too much. However, for the sake of those who rightfully don't want to give your the title of "Father" yet want to be able to identify you with something more than just "David", you have to toss them something.

Your sister is a Sister?

Many readers probably know I don't exactly come from your average sized American family, but that I have 4 older sisters, 2 younger brothers and 9 nieces and nephews already (from 2 of those sisters alone). My 2nd oldest sister (#2 of 7) followed her heart to the "nunnery" of the Religious Sisters of Mercy of Alma Michigan 10 years ago this summer and made her final vows 2 summers ago after she finished medical school at George Washington University (that's right she is now Sister Doctor Mary Rachel Nerbun M.D. R.S.M.). In my 4 years of Civil Engineering studies at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. I made many visits with other students to do yard work for their 40-acre convent just outside D.C. in Clinton, Maryland and in the process began being called "The Brother" because I was one of their sisters' brothers. As if 4 sisters were not a big enough gift from God, now I have over 80 additional sisters and mothers (original sisters of the community after there re-structuring in 1973), as I am a part of their family.

Why bother with "Brother"?

This title "The Brother" took on new meaning 3 years ago when I embarked upon serious discernment of a priestly vocation for the Diocese of Charleston, South Carolina. Those who enter formation for men's religious communities are called "Brother so-and-so" either for their whole lives or until they become priests and hence in my studies to be a diocesan priest and adapting this "religious tradition", I have often been called "The Brother" or "Brother David", by those who want to address me by something more than "David". The title of "Brother" can be confusing, but it is much easier and shorter said than "Seminarian" and it reflects a similar ecclesiastical (Church) status.

Religious vs Diocesan

This poses for many a question about the differences between religious and diocesan priests. In short and in general religious priests take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience to the superior of their religious community, which has a particular charism or mission (for example preaching, teaching, defending the pope, the poor, evangelization, etc.) whereas a diocesan priest takes vows of chastity (celibacy) and obedience to a bishop of a diocese and typically will serve the rest of his life in parish ministry in the diocesan boundaries as a pastor of a church you would attend on Sundays. For my Diocese of Charleston that means I will be a parish priest somewhere in the state of South Carolina unless directed by my bishop elsewhere.

So in brief, choose your pick when it comes to how you address a seminarian, but as an uncle of mine once jokingly begged and I repeat "I don't care what you call me, just don't call me late for dinner".