Fr. Mark Summers, Ordained, May 2010
Speaks about his journey …

Mark Summers, age 51, was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Columbus on May 29, 2010 at St. Joseph Cathedral in Columbus, Ohio.

Fr. Summers grew up in Zanesville, Ohio where he has been a life-long member of St. Nicholas Parish.  In Zanesville he was educated at St. Nicholas Grade School and Bishop Rosecrans High School.  Fr. Summers did his undergraduate work at John Carroll University.  He was admitted there as an Honors Scholar, being one of only eleven members of an entering class of over one-thousand chosen to participate in John Carroll’s Honors Program.  Mark majored in Economics and minored in both International Relations (a Political Science specialization) and Philosophy.  His Senior Honors Thesis on the place of Thomas Paine in the history and development of philosophical thought in the United States was directed by Dr. Ronald Pratt, then Chairman of the Philosophy Department at John Carroll.  Mark then continued his education at the University of Notre Dame Law School and a few years later would spend two more years enrolled in the Graduate School of Economics at The Ohio State University. 

In 1914 Columbia University (which at that time was “Columbia College”) Professor John Erskine published an essay he entitled, “The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent.”  Erskine’s manifesto aimed at ending “the peculiar warfare between character and intellect,” sought to debunk (among other things) the commonly held assumption that “reason and God are not on good terms with each other.”  According to Fr. Summers, Erskine’s “moral obligation to be intelligent” has ever been the ground for his formal studies.  Mark considers himself at heart a “generalist,” and is fond of quoting Nick Carraway, the narrator of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, who described himself as “that most limited of all specialists, the ‘well-rounded’ man.”

Fr. Summers took another degree in Philosophy while doing his pre-theology studies at the Pontifical College Josephinum from 2004-2006.  Bishop Campbell then sent Mark to do his theological graduate studies at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland.  Fr, Summers was graduated from there on May 7. 2010 with a Master’s Degree of Divinity (M.Div.) and a Master’s of Arts Degree (M.A.) in Systematic Theology.

It was once common to speak of men of a certain age as “late vocations.”  The term is still used, though it is more common now to hear people speak instead of “second-career vocations.”  Fr. Summers does not believe that such characterizations describe him with any degree of accuracy.

Fr. Summers felt called to the ministerial priesthood since his youth.  In the early 1980’s Mark entered the Society of Jesus thinking then that he had a vocation to the religious life as a Jesuit.  During his two years in the novitiate God led him to understand that He was calling Mark elsewhere.  Fr. Summers had begun the – what proved to be a very long – process of discerning his proper vocation to the diocesan priesthood.  The next twenty years were filled with personal successes, moral failures, genuine joys, unforgettable pains and losses, illness, health, spiritual regresses and advances, small deaths, blessed resurrections, prayer and discernment.  Mark passed not a single day in all those years without knowing in his heart, in his mind, and in his soul that God wanted him as a priest and that he wanted to be a priest.  Fr. Summers has said, “That I bowed in adoration, thanksgiving, and obedience to the will of God in 2004 is not a testament to the lateness of my vocation, but is – in fact – a testament to the lifelong existence and persistence of a vocation given me by God from birth.”