Special to the Register by Father Kenneth Borowiak
Newport, R.I. (SNR) - While his seminary classmates began their last semester before ordination as transitional deacons, Liam O’Shea-Creal was training to be an officer in the United States Navy.
The training, which took place Jan. 2- Feb. 5 at Officer Training Command in Newport, R.I., included instruction in basic military drills and military bearing. O’Shea-Creal learned basic military etiquette, how to swim to survive, on-board ship firefighting skills, classes in leadership, ethics, damage control in an unexpected emergency, and physical fitness assessments involving push-ups, abdominal workouts and a 1 ½ mile run. Uniform inspections including polished shoes were also part of the daily regimen.
O’Shea-Creal graduated top in his class in officer training Feb. 5.
O’Shea-Creal resumed seminary classes Feb. 8 at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md. where he is a third-year theologian. He is expected to be ordained a transitional deacon at the Cathedral of the Risen Christ in Lincoln May 28 along with classmates Joe Allen, Tony Schukei, Christian Schwenka and Dominic Winter.
A 2008 graduate of St. Teresa Grade School and 2013 graduate of Pius X High School in Lincoln, O’Shea-Creal said he saw the commitment to serve one’s country firsthand.
“Growing up I saw and heard the example of my father who was a Marine, and his two brothers who were Marine pilots as well as my grandfathers who were in the Navy.” Robert Creal is the facilities manager for the St. Thomas Aquinas Newman Center on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus.
These first impressions of military service developed as O’Shea-Creal matured.
“I have a passion to serve in the military,” O’Shea-Creal said. “I opened my heart to and asked the Lord to guide me.”
A defining moment for possible service in the military came when O’Shea-Creal was at St. Teresa Grade School.
“My first exposure to a priest in military service was Father Brian Kane’s going away when he left to serve as an active duty chaplain in 2005.”
Father Kane, ordained for the Diocese of Lincoln in 2000, is currently dean of men at St. Charles Seminary in Philadelphia. He has served in the U.S. military since 2003.
Kane has been deployed twice: July 2005 through Sept 2006 to Al Asad Airbase in western Iraq with the Nebraska Army National Guard’s 67th Area Support Group, and July 2010 through July 2011 at Contingency Operating Base Adder in southern Iraq along the border with Iran, with the Nebraska Army National Guard’s 67th Battlefield Surveillance Brigade.
“I was in grade school,’ O’Shea-Creal said. “The notion that a priest could be a chaplain in the military was pretty significant for me at that time,” he said.
After graduation from Pius X High School in 2013, O’Shea-Creal attended UNL for two years and then entered St. Gregory the Great Seminary near Seward to discern a vocation to the priesthood. He began studies in theology at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in 2018.
It was during his seminary studies in 2016 that O’Shea-Creal first thought Jesus might be calling him to military chaplaincy.
“I brought the idea of chaplaincy to my spiritual director,” O’Shea-Creal said. His spiritual director suggested an incremental approach in discernment.
“He told me to be open to being a good priest first,” O’Shea-Creal said. “Then ask the Lord for discernment to a military chaplaincy,” O’Shea-Creal said of his spiritual director’s advice.
O’Shea-Creal also went to Father Kane to ask him how to approach discernment to service in the military. Father Kane recommended that Liam write a letter to Bishop James Conley suggesting a possible term of service as a chaplain in the U.S. military. Father Kane then told the seminarian to “sit on” the letter for a year so that he could think and pray on it, and let the idea mature.
The year after writing the letter, O’Shea-Creal spent the summer of 2019 in Guatemala studying Spanish in an immersion program.
While in Guatemala he read the book “He Leadeth Me” by Father Walter Ciszek S. J.
Father Ciszek answered Pope Pius XI’s call for missionaries to Russia. In Poland in 1939, he was caught up in the maelstrom of World War II. Eventually taken prisoner by the Russians, Father Ciszek was interred in gulags and the infamous Lubyanka prison in unimaginably cruel circumstances in Russia for 25 years, accused of being a Vatican spy.
Father Ciszek’s books, “He Leadeth Me” and “With God in Russia” are chronicles of his time as a prisoner there.
O’Shea-Creal said he was inspired by Father Ciszek’s experiences. After returning to the United States in July 2019, he received a call asking if he would drive Bishop Conley to St. James Parish in Trenton. Although it was not a complete year since writing the letter, O’Shea-Creal decided to ask Bishop Conley about it.
“We were going to be in the car for eight hours,” he said, “so I thought now is as good of a time as any to ask him.”
After a substantive conversation, Bishop Conley gave him permission to investigate what would be involved with a military chaplaincy.
O’Shea-Creal was commissioned an ensign in January 2020 by Father Kane.
Upon returning to the seminary, O’Shea-Creal is taking classes on preaching, deacon-practicum, a class on the writings of St. John the Evangelist, canon law and two electives. In addition, he has completed the requirements for a master of arts degree in scripture. While in chaplaincy training, seminary professors and classmates facilitated classes online and took notes for O’Shea-Creal.
As a transitional deacon this summer, O’Shea-Creal wants to learn and live the life of a cleric.
“A deacon can receive vows at a wedding, baptize and officiate at a burial among other activities,” O’Shea-Creal said. “I hope to get a lot of experience in these areas,” he said.
God willing, O’Shea-Creal will be ordained a priest in May 2022. He will spend his first three years as a priest in an assignment in the Diocese of Lincoln. Following that, he will serve five years as a United States Navy chaplain in coordination with the Archdiocese of Military Services (AMS).
“Catholic chaplains are usually assigned where there is a high density of Catholics like on an aircraft carrier, in the Marine Corps or on a military base that has a lot of Catholic families,” O’Shea-Creal explained.
After ordination and experience in the Diocese of Lincoln, O’Shea-Creal hopes to share his priestly ministry with the men, women and families who are serving our country in U.S. military. “People who join the military have faith needs and a chaplain provides the opportunity to share the faith and walk side-by-side with people willing to serve our country,” O’Shea-Creal said.
Courtesy photos.
