Meet Philadelphia’s very own ‘Archdiocesan twins’

By Erin Maguire
CS&T Intern

“It was around 11 o’clock and I just wasn’t happy. I had a key to my church, St. Joseph the Worker in Fallsington, because I work around the parish, so I opened up the church.
“It was dark. There were only a couple of memorial candles up in the front burning, and of course, the sanctuary candle. I sneaked up to the choir loft in the back and I started playing the organ. I started singing, ‘Here I am, Lord. I have heard you calling in the night. I will go if you lead me.’”
Stephen McCarthy struggled at first with his calling. But after that one night, he recognized the Lord’s voice.
“An interesting feeling came over me that night. I was feeling better, so I went home. The next morning I was totally calm, I was happy, and I knew what I had to do.”
The CS&T spoke to Stephen and his identical twin brother Dan, at the Philadelphia Archdiocesan Center recently. Both 21-year-old men are at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood, but they came to the seminary via different roads.
As high school sophomores, Stephen and Dan attended a vocations retreat at the seminary with their dad.
“As soon as I went in there, I knew It was for me. I was just graced,” said Dan, “Not everybody feels that instant connection ... for some people, like Stephen, it takes a little longer.”
After his experience on the retreat Dan applied to the seminary, and in February of his senior year, Cardinal Bevilaqua accepted him. He entered the seminary at the end of August after graduating from high school. “You get pretty nervous prior to the entrance,” he said. “But you just have to relax and calm down, and trust that this is in God’s divine plan.”
After he entered, Dan said, it took him only a day or two to get used to it. “I pretty much got acquainted very quickly and I’ve always felt at home there.”
While Dan was assimilating into his new life at the seminary, Stephen took a different path, and began classes at Penn State Abington, studying Elementary Education.
Still living at home, Stephen immediately felt a gap in his life. He missed his brother.
The twins had shared a room all their lives. When Dan entered the seminary, Stephen said, “All of the sudden, there’s no one else in the room. I didn’t know what to make of that. I didn’t like it at first, because usually we pretty much talked each other to sleep.
“It was hard on me not having Danny around. Then when he came back for breaks, it was weird. It was like I wasn’t able to blow my nose in the middle of the night without being afraid of waking him up — he can get pretty grumpy,” Stephen said, and both twins laughed.
Having a twin to talk to is not something that Dan and Stephen take for granted. In fact, they make the most of it by spending a lot of time arguing with each other.
“It’s great,” Dan said. “Because no one else in my family wants to debate — we hash it out.”
Stephen jumped in: “We don’t know what we’re talking about a lot of the time, but we’re learning.”
Dan continued: “It helps us with critical thinking.”
Then Stephen said: “We do have differences, definitely. But we agree on most things.”
Dan said, by way of clarification: “We just want to see how far we can take our arguments.”
Then he smiled; he knows he can usually win any argument by saying, “Stephen, I’ve spent more time in the seminary than you.”
While Stephen was at Penn State, he said, he was happy enough. He taught PREP at his parish for four years, and he liked working with children.
“But the more I did it, the more I felt like something was missing. It got to the point where it was beyond just my brother.” After struggling with this notion for a while, Stephen heard his call to enter the seminary the night he played the organ at St. Joe’s.
“I didn’t tell anyone … because I wasn’t ready to deal with the pressure. People — they’re curious about this kind of stuff, because it’s rare. So I didn’t tell anyone at first, not even my family,” Stephen said. But then, the next night, Danny called. “And that’s when I said, ‘Danny, I think it’s time.’”
Stephen remembers that he told Dan to talk to Father John F. Babowitch, who was vocations director at the seminary, but he also pleaded, “Don’t tell anybody, don’t tell anybody.”
“Well, of course,” Stephen said, “he told everybody.
“I slowly started to tell my family, then I started to tell my friends that I was in the application process. There were only two people that had a genuinely negative reaction. Unfortunately, both of them were family members … not our parents of course. My parents are, and always have been, very supportive.”
In revealing his call to the seminary, Stephen was bothered by one question.
“People at church loved it, but everyone seemed to be asking the same question: ‘Are you going in because of your brother?’” he said. “The answer is no.
“It’s difficult to say this, but I probably wouldn’t be entering the seminary if it wasn’t for his going in first … I don’t want to give the impression that I’m going in because he’s in there, [but] I would never have known anything about the seminary — that becoming a priest was even a possibility — if he hadn’t gone in first.
“When he went in, that planted a seed in my mind,” Stephen said, “I knew it was possible.”
Stephen knows his journey was different than his brother’s.
“When Danny walked in there the first time, he was ready, he was gung-ho about entering. I wasn’t,” Stephen said. “It felt really awkward to me. And I think a lot of people might feel awkward walking in there the first time, because you see all these people in these long black cassocks with the white collars and you think, ‘Wow, these are holy people. These are people that are more spiritual than I am.’ It’s intimidating.”
Despite his discomfort in the beginning, after so many visits to see Dan, Stephen became acquainted with St. Charles.
“Once I got familiarized with a lot of the seminarians, I started feeling a lot better about going into the seminary,” Stephen said. “And, well, the seminary began to feel like my home away from home.”
“We’re all brothers,” Dan said of his class of third-year seminarians.
“There are many different ways that God calls,” Dan said. “It’s a formation process — a process of becoming a person of Christ. Everyone at the seminary went through feelings of anxiety and doubt about vocations. You’re surrounded by people who’ve experienced that.”
Stephen added, “Whether or not I am going to become a priest, that’s God’s discussion, not mine. I entered the seminary because I wanted to give it a chance.
“I knew I wasn’t happy, and you can’t be happy in life unless you know God is pleased with where you are in life,” Stephen said. “So no matter how much I wanted to graduate from Penn State and become an elementary school teacher, it wouldn’t have meant anything at all if it wasn’t the will of God.”
Now both are enrolled in the seminary. Dan will be continuing with his third year, and Stephen, who is in his third year of college, will be entering his first year as a seminarian. Once again, they can argue, and finish one another’s thoughts.
“The devil doesn’t want priests,” said Stephen.
“Priests bring the Eucharist,” Dan said.
“But if you give up, the devil’s won,” Stephen said.

Erin Maguire is the 2003 recipient of The Catholic Standard & Times journalism scholarship. She is a sophomore communications major at DeSales University in Center Valley, Pa.