Rev. Robert Joerger, C.P., and Rev. Beck, C.P. are Manhattan University’s new chaplains.
@MANHATTAN.EDU / INSTAGRAM
By Mary Haley, Marketing Chair / Asst. Features Editor
Manhattan University appointed two new campus chaplains, Rev. Robert Joerger, C.P., and Rev. Edward Beck, C.P., on Sept. 18. The pair also serves as co-directors of Campus Ministry and Social Action.
The new campus chaplains conduct masses every Sunday and offer spiritual advice on campus. Both Joerger and Beck are a part of the Passionist order of priests, which was founded by St. Paul of the Cross and strives to tend to the suffering of marginalized and disenfranchised people, and seeing how those qualities connect to the suffering of the cross. They also have a unique focus on environmentalism and caring for the earth.
Not only are Joerger and Beck of the same order of priests, but they also entered into the priesthood in a similar way.
Both went to the same high school, Xaverian High School in Brooklyn, where they embarked on a retreat to the Passionists’ retreat house on Shelter Island, during different years. There, they were both inspired and felt a certain connection to what they experienced, and after a few more visits, both decided to enter the priesthood.
“I thought the priests and brothers who led that retreat had a special kind of connection and power that I saw, even as a highschool student,” Beck said. “So in college, when I was having that kind of disillusionment with studying to be a broker and [realizing] that would not be quite satisfying, I called up that retreat house and said ‘can I come back and visit for a weekend?’ [The priest] didn’t tell me there was no retreat that weekend, so it was just me and five Passionist priests and brothers. That same sense that they had something I wanted that I didn’t feel had returned, and I thought, ‘I have to investigate this, what is it?’ By the end of college, I decided yeah, I was going to do this, and I went to the novitiate and took vows when I was 21 years old.”
Beck’s 40 plus years in the ministry has not only consisted of working at churches. He also worked in mainstream media for over 20 years, working at ABC News, CBS News and CNN News as their faith and religion commentator. Beck explained to The Quadrangle that he’d never expected to go back to working in campus ministry, especially as he preaches at St. Monica’s parish on the upper east side of Manhattan.
“I didn’t really intend to do campus ministry at this stage in my life,” Beck said. “So it kind of found me in a sense, which I always think is probably the hand of God when I was not looking for it, or I didn’t try to control it. If you asked me a couple of months ago, would I be doing campus ministry, I would have said ‘you’re crazy, no.’ So the fact that I am liking it and connecting with people has been very special, but I think I didn’t choose it, it chose me.”
Although they came from the same high school and religious “origin story,” Rev. Joerger went on a slightly different path over his 47 years as a minister. For the past three years, Joerger has worked as a chaplain at the Bronx Calvary Hospital, a 200-bed end-of-life palliative care hospital.
After preaching around the Bronx and Westchester for many years, Joerger explained how coming to Calvary Hospital was a different kind of ministry when conducting spiritual guidance to patients who were at the end of their lives.
“A predominant number of patients [at Calvary] are Catholic, so they want to see a priest and get anointed and those kinds of things, so it is quite a beautiful ministry,” Joerger said. “It does not get more real than when you’re in the last, sometimes days or weeks of your life. It is beautiful in the sense that you get to the real stuff with the patients. You’re coming to peace with your life. It was a very healing kind of ministry, but I needed to step away from it for a while. So [campus ministry] is completely different, but you’re never far away from grief with people grieving and students who have lost parents and things like that.”
In his six weeks at Manhattan University, Joerger has seen many similarities of the mission of the Lasallian brothers and his order of Passionists in the campus culture and the engagement of the many Lasallian brothers on campus.
“I see the kind of student that goes to a [Lasallian] brothers school, and how they are with the brothers all the time,” Joerger said. “[The brothers] have a wonderful way of engaging with students. [The brothers] were founded to educate the children of the poor, and while some other universities, not to compare them, might be kind of ‘elite,’ but the students here might be first generation to get a college education, and I just think that shows that the brothers dedicate their lives to making sure they do well. That is what happened to me as well in my education.”
As for the social action area of campus ministry at Manhattan University, community involvement and engagement with students are both reverend’s top priorities. With the official opening of the new migrant shelter near MU’s campus on Waldo Avenue and more resources at the Friendly Fridge on Post Road, the opportunities for community and social action are abundant.
“We are trying to do an opening to the [migrant shelter] for the migrants, even though right now they are in need of non-perishable food and mostly toiletries,” Joerger said. “We also started a conversation with the two women who run the Friendly Fridge, and it looks like it’s going to be a really good ministry.”
Beck and Joerger hope that community engagement, not only around Manhattan University, but also within campus culture, flourishes. Beck recalled meeting a student at a pizza social event with CMSA who was Hindu but had been going to mass at the Chapel of De La Salle for three years.
“A young man came up to me after mass [at the pizza social] and said ‘I’m Hindu,’ Beck said. “I said, ‘well why have you been coming to mass then?’ He said ‘because I feel a sense of peace and connectedness to other people praying. I think we all pray to the same god, and this is here every Sunday but the Hindu temple is not, so this is where I find my space.’ We realize it is a Catholic liturgy, but we’re also going to create prayer experiences that are interfaith like we did for Oct. 7. But I really feel that if Sunday evening mass can grow and that all can feel welcome there, that can be our greatest potential at creating a connected community.”
Music ministry is a large part of the weekly Sunday evening masses, where student vocalists and instrumentalists are directed in singing and playing religious songs and hymns. These students are directed by Andrew Bauer, director of performing arts and adjunct professor. Bauer reflected on how music ministry further provides a feeling of welcomeness into the masses, regardless of a student’s faith.
“You certainly don’t need to be Catholic to enjoy music ministry,” Bauer said. “I would say the majority of [music ministry] students are not Catholic, but it attracts people of all persuasions, we’re very open to other faiths. We don’t close the door to anybody, and I think everyone can gain some positive spiritual experience, whether you’re religious or not.”
Bauer commented on the addition of the new chaplains.
“We’re just so thrilled to have both of them, and I will tell you that their homilies are really great,” Bauer said. “I’ve celebrated liturgies with them now all through September and they give wonderful homilies and they’re very engaged. They want to work with the community and really become a part of Manhattan University.”