Many current students and graduates of Wyoming Catholic College are seriously discerning vocations to the priesthood or consecrated life.  For some of them, the decision to attend college before entering a seminary or religious community seemed like a detour…but a very necessary one, and for a few reasons.

God calls all men and women to holiness, but He especially invites His priests and religious into deeper union with Him through more time given to meditation in PRAYER.  The invitation to celibacy or virginity is always an invitation to absolute companionship with Our Lord even in this life.  Prayer involves the skill of silencing the world and allowing God to speak.  At Wyoming Catholic College, students cultivate this ability to be silent and to listen, starting with 3 weeks in the wilderness.  For many, it’s hard even to imagine 21 noiseless days, but in the wild, Our Lord speaks through the beauty of nature and through the small community of peers on expedition.  Upon returning to campus, students intentionally “fast” from cell phones and television to focus on their work and on each other.

But if our students cultivate the ability to be silent at certain times, they also cultivate the virtue of speaking up at the right time.  On a wilderness expedition, if a leader has convinced a group to attempt a peak ascent in a lightning storm, or to ski down a slope with subtle signs of avalanche danger…would most of us have the courage to take a stand against the entire group?  Our students are guided and tested by instructors in these situations, and build up their own abilities to respond with wisdom.  Our students learn to lead many different personality types (not to mention the necessity of wrangling with their own personal strengths and flaws).  These brave and self-aware men and women are precisely the leaders the Church needs in MINISTRY or THE APOSTOLATE.

Ultimately, the maturation that happens at Wyoming Catholic College gives students even more ability to receive good formation in seminary and/or the tough “school” of community life.  This is why we make it extraordinarily easy for students to transition into their vocation, with the promise that we’ll suspend all their student and parent loans while they’re in formation, and efface all their debt when they make final profession or ordination.

Current Alumni Vocations:

Father Trevor Lontine, ‘14 (Archdiocese of Denver; Ordained May 14th, 2022)
Cody Lee, ’18 (Silverstream Priory, Ireland)
Will Stivers, ’19 (Holy Trinity Seminary, Diocese of Austin)
Deacon Andrew Westerman, ‘19 (Pontifical North American College, Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter)

Rebecca Lind, ‘12 (now Sister Mary Laetitia of the Sacred Heart, Carmel of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Valparaiso, Nebraska)
Catharine Carlin, ‘13 (now Sr. Catherine-Marie Carlin, Abbey of St. Walburga, Virginia Dale, Colorado)
Megan Oborny, ‘13 (now Sister Mary Agnes, Norbertine Associate of St. Joseph, Tehachapi, California)
Sarah Secrist, ’15 (now Sr. Maria Filomena, Trinitarians of Mary, Lowell, Michigan)
Eilis Brooks, ’19 (now Sister Maria Angelico, Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, Ann Arbor, Michigan)