Variety of people, experiences shaped vocation

Maryangela Layman Roman gives the fourth of five reports in our Catholic Herald on the men just ordained.

Why's James Jaeger a priest?

In a nutshell, it’s because of his mother, Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan, Pope John Paul II and the Green Bay Packers.

The first three influenced Jaeger’s spiritual life and, in the case of the Packers, the die-hard green and gold backer didn't want to live and minister in a city full of Minnesota Vikings fans.

Though there he could also make the annual joke that the color of his vestments his actually for the home team. It would just be at a different time of year.

Growing up, the family sporadically attended Sunday Mass, and Jaeger said that when he received the sacrament of confirmation as a senior in high school, he viewed that as a graduation from church.

Except that it's a family with ten children, it sounds pretty typical in our times.

... he went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for a year, but dropped out, realizing he was unsure of a major.

Another three years, and he could have been putting that uncertain major on his law school application.

Jaeger joined the Air Force, then worked as a landscaper, and as a golf course groundskeeper.

"I was the Bill Murray in 'Caddyshack,'" said Jaeger of his time at the golf course ...

He even looks a bit like him.

After a couple years of this

"I told my mother I was thinking about practicing my faith again, and she looked at me and told me, 'I think you’re going to become a priest,'" said Jaeger.

... At his mother’s suggestion, Jaeger enrolled at the Franciscan University of Steubenville and completed a degree in philosophy.

This crowd has gone deadly silent, a Cinderella story outta nowhere. Former greenskeeper and Franciscan University of Steubenville student now about to become a priest of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.