Deacon Robert Slaton will bring 2012 class to four Sept. 29

DETROIT — The Archdiocese of Detroit will get another new priest Saturday, Sept. 29, when Archbishop Allen Vigneron ordains Deacon Robert J. Slaton to the priesthood at St. Andrew Church in Rochester.

The 11 a.m. ceremony is open to the public.

Deacon Slaton is being ordained at the parish where he has served as a transitional deacon. His ordination is taking place at this time of year because his seminary graduation date was out-of-sync with that of the three other new priests ordained this year.

Deacon Slaton, 35, was baptized at Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Grotto) Parish in Detroit, but mostly grew up at St. Gertrude Parish in St. Clair Shores.

He is the son of Larry and Linda Slaton, who are still members of the parish — now Our Lady of Hope Parish since its 2009 merger with St. Germaine Parish.

The young Robert Slaton attended St. Joan of Arc Elementary School and Lakeshore High School, both in St. Clair Shores, and went on to take courses at the Recording Institute of Detroit.

After several post-high school entry-level jobs, he worked as a recording engineer and a short-order cook and restaurant manager.

He began attending Sacred Heart Major Seminary to learn more about his faith, but then entered the priestly formation program as a seminarian. Deacon Slaton earned a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy, a Master of Divinity degree and a Baccalaureate in Sacred Theology from the seminary.

Deacon Slaton said he fell away from the Church in his late teenage years, but began a period of “re-questioning” when he was 26. “I couldn’t make sense of life without some principle of order and morality in the universe,” he said.

And when he began that process of questioning, he believes “God just put me in the right place at the right time.”

“I started going to church much more seriously, and started falling in love with the truth and the hope Jesus was offering the world through the Church,” Deacon Slaton said.

He became involved with a small study group that met at an area nursing home and used the study materials written by the late Jesuit Fr. John Hardon.

“The next thing I knew, one member of the group had talked me into teaching catechetics at a parish, which turned out to be my old parish of St. Gertrude,” he recounted.

And the director of religious education at St. Gertrude recommended he take courses at the seminary. That experience helped feed a growing fascination with the priesthood.

“I wanted to know who were these guys, and what made them want to give themselves so completely to Christ,” Deacon Slaton said.

One thing led to another, and — as he puts it — “I tripped and fell, and landed in the seminary.”

Deacon Slaton said he sees the greatest challenge facing the Church to be “trying to bring the message of the Gospel to a secular world that doesn’t want to hear it.”

“Too many people have kind of deluded themselves into thinking they don’t need anything else other than what the world offers them,” he said.

But there is always the hope that, one way or another, “they will come to realize that they definitely do need something more, that they definitely need a savior, and hopefully the Church will be there for them when they realize this need,” he said.

As to his aspirations for his priestly ministry, Deacon Slaton said, “I just hope to be an effective minister of the Gospel — to bring people to Christ, rather than being a hindrance to them.”

Deacon Slaton was in Steubenville, Ohio, on Sept. 10 for the episcopal ordination of Bishop Jeffrey Monforton, who is leaving as pastor of St. Andrew. Bishop Monforton says he, in turn, plans to return for Deacon Slaton’s ordination at the Rochester parish.