Five Minutes with Father: His first parish had 25,000 people at Sunday Masses

He is: Dominican Father Thomas McDermott, pastor of St. Vincent Ferrer Church, River Forest. Former provincial of the Dominican Province of Nigeria. Author of “St. Catherine of Siena: Spiritual Development in Her Life and Teaching,” and “Filled with all the Fullness of God, an Introduction to Catholic Spirituality,” just published by Bloomsbury. Ordained in St. Louis, in 1983.

Youth: “Both my parents practiced small town law in Wayne, Neb., a farming community. I have one sister who’s a lawyer at Custer, S.D. For 14 years I was an only child listening to my parents discussing the law and business. I found it so boring, being a lawyer was the last thing I wanted.

“As a freshman in high school I went to a summer camp. One of the counselors, a woman, gave us a copy of ‘Good News for Modern Man.’ It was one of the first modern translations of the New Testament in English. I started reading it at night before going to bed. When I finished it I just put it down and said, ‘This thing has the ring of truth about it.’ There was one line in particular that really moved me, ‘Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.’I think as a kid I was influenced, too, by the example of  Albert Schweitzer. I admired his work and had an attraction to service.

“After graduation I went to St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn. I wasn’t sure what kind of priest God was calling me to be, so I taught religion in a Catholic high school in Minneapolis for two and a half years, then entered the Dominican novitiate in 1977.”

Seminary years: “They were confusing times in the church generally -- so many conflicting opinions. We didn’t have anything like the ‘Catechism of the Catholic Church’ to kind of center us. I think we had the impression we didn’t know what the church believed any more. It wasn’t true, but that was the impression. A lot of my classmates left during the novitiate or during formation. But four of us were ordained and we’re all still priests.”

Mission: “Four months after ordination I was sent to Nigeria for my first assignment. Every year in the seminary I had told our provincial when he’d come for visitation, ‘Don’t forget I want to go to Nigeria.’ We had missions in Nigeria and Bolivia at the time. A few months before ordination he told me, ‘OK, that’s where you’re going.’ I couldn’t sleep well almost every night after that, because I wondered, ‘What in the world did I get myself into?’ 
“I got off the plane in Nigeria and the people were very welcoming and friendly, but it didn’t seem comfortable for about nine months. At that time we were five white Americans and one African in the community. We would very seldom see another white person where we were in Lagos. You get used to your own race and suddenly you’re thrust into an environment where you don’t see anybody who looks like you. Throughout my time in Nigeria I reflected on what it must be like to be an African American and be a racial minority in our country. How often we’re indifferent and even unwelcoming to foreigners. But I was always on the receiving end of tremendous hospitality and a warm welcome every day for the 18 years I was there.”

The vineyard: “For the first 14 years, I worked as an associate pastor and then pastor, in St. Dominick’s Parish, Yaba, Labos, where 25,000 people attending five Masses on Sunday. It’s in a section of Lagos called Yaba. I’d never seen anything like it before or since. It was very, rewarding work. I always said, ‘If a priest in America has a low self image or doesn’t feel he’s accomplishing much, he should go to Nigeria for six months and that’ll solve everything.’ The people were so responsive, many of them were poor, some were rich. Everybody would come to Mass, representing 30-50 ethnic groups -- what we used to call tribes.
“It was just different over there. For our daily Masses, we’d have several hundred people. You would look out over the congregation and usually see more men than women. And the men would be more on the younger side. 
“You have Muslims and Christians living side by side in Lagos. But there are serious conflicts with the Muslims in northern Nigeria where they’re the majority. Some have become radicalized and people are being killed every week up there, and many Muslims are also being killed.

“After about seven years I became pastor. The previous pastor, who was about 70 years old, had planned to build a new church. Then he had an accident repairing  something, and fell through the roof. He had to go home. The Archbishop of Lagos told me to just go ahead and start the project. I didn’t know anything about building or fund-raising, but we hired a company to build a church that would seat 3,000 people with an enormous balcony where half of them would sit. All the money for that church, with marble inside and everything else, was locally raised in Nigeria.

“We had money left over, so we built a five-story priory with 27 bedrooms. We got some money from the States for that, but the majority was from Nigeria. It became the Dominicans’ provincial headquarters. Now there’s probably six or seven full time priests on staff in the parish. A lot of the others who are part-time assist with confessions and Masses.

“After 14 years at the parish I was elected provincial of the Nigerian Dominican Province, and served for four years. At that time we had 125 friars in the province including seminarians, but it’s much bigger today, probably almost 200.

When my mother died in 1999, I discovered she had saved every letter I’d sent my family during the years I was in Nigeria. I removed portions not of interest to anyone else, and self-published it a few months ago, with photos, and made it available to the parishioners here. ‘From Nigeria with Love’ is a way to tell the story of day-to-day life over there.”

Post-Africa: “I was exhausted after the building project. I wanted to go to Rome and study spirituality with the intention of earning a licentiate degree. I enjoyed it so much, I got permission to stay on and get a doctorate at the Angelicum.” Afterwards he taught spiritual theology in Kenrick-Glennon Seminary in St. Louis, from 2005-2011, eventually holding the post of director of spiritual formation. “Then I had a kind of sabbatical for a year in which I wrote a book, just published last month in England. It’s called ‘Filled with all the Fullness of God, an Introduction to Catholic Spirituality.’ It was published by Bloomsbury, the publisher that did ‘Harry Potter.’” He was named pastor of St. Vincent Ferrer Church in July, 2012.

Leisure: “On my day off I usually go out with a fellow Dominican priest to places like the railway museum, Art Institute, Field Museum, the zoos or recently to Cantigny Park. I’ve never lived in Chicago before. I am also a beekeeper. I do a lot of leisure reading -- nothing that would cause me to sit up in the middle of the night and take notes.  For years I’ve read the memoirs of this country’s western pioneers -- some left diaries. Right now I’m reading Henri Daniel-Rops’ ‘History of the Church of Christ.’ It’s really excellent. I like the works of Father Ronald Rolheiser as well.”

Favorite Scripture: The line that started it all: “‘Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me,’ Mark 8:34.”