I finally got my print edition of the National Catholic Register this week, and this story jumped off the page: a one-of-a-kind vocation story that proves, once again, that God does indeed have a sense of humor.
Joan Rivers kept asking Bill Quinlivan when he was going to be ordained.
Yes, that Joan Rivers. The raspy-voiced, sharp-tongued comedienne-actress turned fashion expert/jewelry designer/cosmetics hawker. The same Joan Rivers who owed part of her success to Quinlivan.
Okay, a very small part.
In his job-hopping, soul-searching pre-seminary days, Quinlivan was something of a funny man, penning a movie script, pitching a sitcom and schlepping jokes at $10 a pop to Rivers. (One of them was delivered on “The Tonight Show.”)
“She purchased just about every time,” Quinlivan recalls. “Until the last time, when I was in the seminary. She didn’t buy one.”
As Quinlivan approached the end of his studies at Christ the King Seminary in East Aurora, N.Y., he made it to a Rivers concert at Shea’s Buffalo Theater. He talked his way backstage, and the two jokesters finally met. Quinlivan mentioned his new vocation; Rivers said three times, “Make sure you tell me when you graduate.”
When the big day came in 1995, Rivers sent Quinlivan her own lines. “I’m probably the only seminarian in the history of Christ the King Seminary that ever got a congratulatory telegram from Joan Rivers,” he says.
Father Quinlivan may have left show business, but show business hasn’t left Father Quinlivan. Now pastor of Blessed Sacrament Church in Tonawanda, N.Y., the 48-year-old priest is well known throughout the Buffalo Diocese for his music ministry with parishioners and fellow priests.
Most recently, he recorded his third CD, “Priest of Mine,” 10 original songs to encourage priests, promote vocations and foster laity support.
Like a well-rehearsed Rivers zinger, his timing couldn’t be better, given the Year for Priests declared by Pope Benedict XVI that began in June. Support for priests is needed, says Father Quinlivan — something he knows firsthand.
“My ordaining bishop, Bishop Edward Head, said the priesthood is the greatest fraternity in the world,” he says. “My first year, when I would get discouraged, I would say to my priest friends, ‘Where’s the greatest fraternity in the world?’ One day I challenged myself: ‘What are you doing to be brother? You’re waiting for someone to be a brother to you.’”
He began writing to a different priest during each of the 40 days of Lent to tell them he was thinking of and praying for them. He also began providing music at priest retreats, working with the Ireland-based Intercession for Priests in collaboration with Vincentian Father Kevin Scallon and Poor Clares Sister Briege McKenna.
Now there’s his CD.
Not bad for someone who, though he has a musical ear, was so long deaf to God’s calling.
Check out the rest at the link.
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