Sanctuary for flock of Rebels

By Scott Dickensheets

Friday, Dec. 10, 2010 | 2 a.m.

“I should know these by heart,” Father Albert says, referring to the six principles that are supposed to guide priests who minister to college students. He’s lived them long enough — for 43 of his 50 ordained years he’s worked on various campuses in California, Oregon, Arizona and, for the past seven years, here — that their exact wording escapes him when a nosy columnist presses him for details.

We’re standing in front of a bookshelf in his modest, sun-washed office in a light yellow building on the UNLV campus — the St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Newman Center. (It’s just to the left of the Mormon place.)

There are many different books before Father Albert Felice-Pace, including the heretical “The Da Vinci Code,” but he can’t find what he’s looking for, the one with the six principles.

(Later, he e-mails them to me. They include “educating for justice and peace,” “forming the Christian conscience” and “developing leaders.”)

Father Albert is 75, shortish, and precisely dressed and groomed; his light accent is hard to place — turns out he’s from Malta — and he has the easy laugh you might expect of someone who works with college kids.

Outside it’s warm for early December, and the campus is in the grim throes of finals (Father Albert offers a weekly “blessing of the brains” this time of year). Inside, some kind of rehearsal is wrapping up in the large room that serves as the chapel; someone is drumming a solid 4/4 beat. The first student I encounter looks puzzled when I ask for Father Pace; it’s only when I venture “Father Albert?” that he knows who I’m looking for.

I’m not here because I’m Catholic; indeed, I’m irreligious. Rather, I’m drawn to the juxtapositions inherent in the center: a place devoted to spiritual belief in the midst of an institution devoted to rationality, the pursuit of earthly knowledge and, when feasible, keggers and hookups; a 75-year-old priest ministering to collegians, often in the prime of their debauchery, who are only around for four years; a church rattled with scandal, reaching out to an audience most inclined to in-your-face questioning.

Not your typical parish posting.

“They trust me,” Father Albert says, back in his desk chair. I’ve just asked how a man keeps it real with youths who might be a quarter his age. Mostly he meets them halfway — holding theological bull sessions in a nearby coffee shop (he calls it “bean theology”; he used to do “theology on tap” but not all students were of drinking age), channeling their energy into social justice enterprises (feeding the poor, for example), and not coming on too strong.

“I’m not going to judge them,” he says. “If they live together, I’m not going to tell them don’t come to church. I won’t condone it, but I don’t judge.” There’s nothing intimidating about him.

The result is a sort of exchange, his spiritual guidance for their, let’s say, youthful animation: “They challenge me, they keep me energized,” he says.

Yet, in his telling, there’s also something curiously restrained about them, too. When I wanted to know about students’ reactions to the deep scandals within the church, his account (“I asked them: Is this affecting you? And mostly they said they were sad to see this happen”) didn’t suggest kids willing to interrogate themselves or their beliefs too deeply.

All the students have left by the time he shows me around the center, with its tiny kitchen, makeshift chapel and small room for daily Mass, maybe 20 chairs hugging the walls, not all of them filled each day. (Father Albert is spearheading a fundraising drive to build a new facility. “We have a long way to go,” he admits.)

There’s an appealing quietness to the place, a respite from the busyness of the campus. And if Father Albert and I might not agree on the origin of the sun that’s heating this unseasonably warm December day — where he sees the hand of God, I’m content to let the Big Bang explain it — I can see why a frazzled student might stop by, just to hear himself think for a minute, and maybe to have his brain blessed by a pretty cool old guy.

“I like students. I still relate to them. I tell them, if I don’t relate to you, tell me and I’ll quit!”