Chugiak football player revealed his plan for the priesthood over the PA system at a game

Last of three parts

Jake Brownlee chose the night of his last football home game at Chugiak High School to let his friends and teammates know he planned to become a Catholic priest. To do it, he chose the PA announcements as each starting senior was introduced along with his plans for after high school.

Brownlee, team captain, strode across the field for the coin toss before huddling.

"I was like, 'This is our last home game. Let's go out and have fun.' And they're like, 'Woah-woah-woah-woah, are you serious about this?' In the huddle," Brownlee recalls.

"Nobody could think about the game on my team anymore. They wanted to talk to me about this. They were like, 'That's the dumbest things you've ever said, Jake. There's no way.' I said, 'It's happening, guys. I've got the paperwork in my house,' " Brownlee said.

Some friends and classmates couldn't drop it, during the game, afterward, or over the course of that last year of school, to the degree that Brownlee began to feel lonely and persecuted.

Now he has left those negative feelings behind. At 20, two years into an arduous eight-year process to become a priest, he says he is completely happy and certain of his decision, even as it separates him from the mainstream world.

"You look at what I'm doing, and it's not what the world says you need to do to be happy. I have no money. The money I have goes to schooling, every dime of it. I don't have a girlfriend. I'm not having sex. Both of those things are not cool things to do," Brownlee said.

"But I'm overflowing with joy, because of the love that I have for Christ and his people, and the love that I know that Christ has for me. To lay down my life like that was not easy for myself to understand, at first, and it's not easy for my friends and family to understand, because it's so countercultural."

Brownlee's choice seems out of step with contemporary society partly because of the church's clerical sexual abuse scandals. But the choice is becoming more common.

The Anchorage Archdiocese has half a dozen young men training to be priests, the largest number in at least 25 years. Nationwide, the number of aspiring parish priests has risen for the last decade, said Father Tom Lilly, who oversees the local seminarians, as they are called.

"I think the young men growing up, they're as idealistic as any generation has ever been," Lilly said. "I think the millennials in general have a deep sense of spirit."

For this final part of my series on traditional Christian leaders and what inspires them, I found Brownlee with his glorious certainty, which is both the certainty of youth and of deeply held belief. He's a reminder that even as church membership declines, the human need for meaning remains and will find expression, including in the form of a vigorous young athlete who gives up sports and chooses priestly celibacy.

Which, he said, "Sucks. It's as scary as you think it would be."

[Part 1: Fight for social justice could renew struggling churches]

[Part 2: Why the Rev. Jerry Prevo fought LGBT rights for 40 years]

His mother, a former football coach and an old friend all said Brownlee was always a serious kid who helped others and who now seems remarkably happy and at peace. But at age 12, he got bored with church and told his parents he wouldn't go anymore. The whole family drifted away from religion.

But as a high school sophomore, despite his popularity, sports success and a girlfriend, he felt empty. Lots of people feel that as teens, but Brownlee sought an answer by getting his brother to drive him to church so he could attend Mass on his own. The sermon inspired him. Soon he and his brother were attending church regularly, driven by their mother, Kathy Brownlee.

"He found his own way — it was nothing that I helped him do," Kathy said. "He was just down in his bedroom praying all the time. I think he heard God's voice."

Brownlee made no secret of his beliefs at school. As captain of the football, basketball and track teams, he sometimes led classmates in prayer. But he kept his calling to the priesthood secret until the night of the last home game.

"Maybe I was one of the first people to try to talk him out of it, because I thought he would make a really good father," said Duncan Shackelford, Chugiak's head football coach at the time.

Students were less polite.

"People making jokes about pedophiles and saying I was going to become a pedophile," Brownlee said. "I was really hurt, because here are my closest friends attacking me for what I want to do, and not only attacking what I want to do, but what I love, which is the church."

Seminarians go through extensive psychological testing and counseling. Lilly said today's openness about sexuality makes exploring the issue of celibacy easier. He said the church no longer treats child sexual abuse by priests merely as a sin, to be handled in the confessional and forgiven, but now recognizes pedophilia is incurable.

Catholics who felt betrayed by the church's enabling and protection of pedophile priests come from a different generation than Brownlee and his fellow seminarians do.

Brownlee feels Catholicism is as relevant as ever. His sacrifice is for the traditional church — which he says Pope Francis has not changed — and the everyday work that a parish priest does to spread its beliefs and care for its believers.

He said, "The church is still the largest organization in the world, with 1.2 billion people believing the same thing. It's still out there, and people still believe in this, and showing people that these ideas aren't going to change, and this is truth."

He's a convincing young man. As he intentionally burns all bridges behind him —his description — I had to respect his absolute certainty, even as I thought of the terrible mistakes that absolute certainty can cause, for individuals and society.

Brownlee's parents wondered if he was old enough to make his choice. But now, seeing how happy he is, Kathy said, "if anything, we're in awe of him ourselves, even though he's our son."

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