Feature Story

Faith Seeking Understanding

Fr. Tim McFarland, C.PP.S., sat at his desk grading a stack of papers, undistinguishable, perhaps, from the other stacks of papers all around him. He wanted to travel with the track team to its away meet that weekend, but before he could go he had to get through those papers, and record mid-term grades on his computer. At 51 years old, Fr. McFarland was still doing homework.

After 21 years of teaching, he knew that few of the ideas he would encounter in the students’ papers would be new to him. Still, as he talked about what they had written, his voice grew animated and his eyes lit up. Through those papers, the students had hunted down an idea, and had snared it. And Fr. McFarland found himself once again caught up with them in the thrill of the scholarly chase.

The life of the mind, the life of ideas, theories, arguments and positions – that is the world where he feels at home. Fr. McFarland is an associate professor of religion at Saint Joseph’s College in Rensselaer, Ind., which is sponsored by the Missionaries of the Precious Blood. The liberal arts college has over 1,000 students on its picturesque campus in northwest Indiana, and many of them, before they graduate, will find themselves eye to eye in a classroom with Fr. Tim.

As he worked his way through the papers on a crystal clear morning, he knew it would probably take more than one session of desk work to complete them. “There is no typical day for me. My office door is usually open, so interruptions are just part of my schedule,” he said.

He is as likely to be interrupted by faculty as by students; Fr. McFarland is also the college’s associate vice president for academic affairs. His days are full as the college whirs through another academic year. As a priest on campus, Fr. McFarland also has responsibilities that other professors do not. He presided at a Friday afternoon Mass during Lent and at as many weekend Masses in the twin-spired college chapel as his schedule will handle. Students often ask after Mass, “Hey, Fr. Tim, will you hear my confession?” And he tries, always, in as many ways as he can manage, to embody the spirit of his religious Community in the hallways and on the walkways and everywhere on the Puma campus.

A college campus is rich missionary ground for a philosopher priest and theologian, he said. Students are often questioning their own beliefs, wandering away from what their parents have taught them towards something else, something that can sustain them for what’s coming next: a career, marriage, a new home, a new life. Fr. McFarland encourages their questions, and walks with them toward the answers.

“St. Anselm said, ‘Theology is faith seeking understanding,’” he said. “Spiritual questions are on a lot of my students’ minds. They’re asking, ‘What gives meaning to my life? What’s going to give me fulfillment?’”

Those questions are perhaps more likely to come up at Saint Joseph’s, where students are required to complete a unique series of courses, called the Core, that guide them through spiritual, ethical and philosophical discussions that examine their faith, their history and their culture. Core classes place a student within the context of a world of God’s light and justice, so that as young adults they’ll be able to face difficult questions with a confident spirit. They’ll have faced those questions before, in Fr. Tim’s class.

“In my Core 10 class for seniors, we’re trying to get students to apply the ethics we’ve been talking about in previous Core classes and their studies in their major program,” he said. “I tell them, if you don’t bring any of your ideals along to the career you’ve chosen, nothing is ever going to change. If we can’t see a new vision of how the world can be, nothing is ever going to change.”

He can easily remember a time in his own life when he was faced with the same questions: who am I, and who am I to become? He grew up the oldest in a family of five in Ottawa, Ohio, where he was inspired by the Precious Blood priests who ministered in the parish. He graduated from Brunnerdale, the Community’s high school seminary in Canton, Ohio, but when he then went to Saint Joseph’s, he struggled. Then, during a retreat in his junior year, he felt a defining tug that he knew was coming from God.

He went on with his studies before ordination, picturing himself working in a parish. Ordained in 1983, he later received his doctoral degree in philosophy from St. Louis University. Still, he did not see himself as an academic. “The education part was not always on my radar,” he said.

Then, during his time as director of college formation for his Community, he was living once again at Saint Joseph’s and was asked to teach a class there. He found himself caught up in the experience. He found a home on the college campus, and in the years following has made himself part of the institution’s mind and soul; last fall at the SJC homecoming banquet, he received the alumni service award.

After over two decades of teaching, the sense of delight and discovery has not left him. “As a teacher, I loved that sense of learning new things right along with my students, of keeping my mind going,” he said. “I really enjoyed doing research, of tracing an idea back to see where it began, and forward to see where it leads. I enjoy watching the light go on for my students, when they become excited by an idea, or in some cases challenged by it.”

Challenging his students is part of his job, as Fr. McFarland sees it. “I want to help them take on an adult faith, to become critically thinking people of faith,” he said. “For a lot of them, they believe what they believe because their parents believed it. I tell my students, “I want you to understand what you believe. If you’re going to be a Christian, then know what you are believing, and if you reject it, know why you are rejecting it.’ We talk about a lot of things in my classes. We deal with the bigger questions of good and evil, and I really challenge my students to think. The greatest compliment they can give me, at the end of a class, is ‘My head hurts.’ Then I know I’m doing my job.”