FINDING GOD ON PARK STREET
Dive into the heart of the Catholic experience at Yale University with host Grace Klise, Director of Alumni Engagement at Saint Thomas More. In each episode, Grace and her student co-hosts engage in conversations with students, alumni, faculty, staff, and community members. Together, they discuss the nuances of living out the Catholic faith in today's world, culminating in the question, "Where have you found God?" This podcast offers a space to explore the intersection of spirituality, community, and education, providing listeners with personal insights and meaningful perspectives. Subscribe now to join the journey of discovery and connection.
FINDING GOD ON PARK STREET
Joe Connolly: The Vocational Call to Serve
Have you ever wondered how to keep a place like Saint Thomas More up and running? Join us as we sit down with Joe Connolly, the Executive Director of Saint Thomas More Chapel & Center at Yale University, who shares more about his day-to-day work leading Saint Thomas More and the providential path that led him here.
Discover how he sees his work as part of his vocational call to serve God and serve the Church, which is a call that he's been discerning for most of his life. Joe regales us with heartfelt and humorous stories that shaped his spiritual path. Learn about the profound impact of his faith growing up in a large Irish Catholic family and hear about his time at Boston University, despite its secular nature, offering a vibrant and inclusive faith community that played a pivotal role in his development. Through his reflections, Joe seamlessly weaves his personal faith with his professional endeavors, providing listeners with a rich tapestry of experiences.
Navigating life's unpredictable turns, Joe opens up about his professional transition from the field of Catholic healthcare to his current role at Saint Thomas More. He highlights the significance of spiritual discernment, the influence of supportive mentors, and the unexpected places where he finds God. This episode offers a profound exploration of humility, love, and faith, encouraging listeners to seek God's presence in all aspects of life. Don't miss this inspiring conversation that kicks off Season 3 of the podcast and encourages us all in our own spiritual journeys.
This is a podcast from Saint Thomas More Yale's Catholic Chapel and Center. I'm your Grace Klise, with my student co-host, Zach Moynihan. Thanks for joining us for Season 3 of Finding God on Park Street. In this season of the podcast, we bring you conversations with people on campus students, Yale faculty and staff, and even members of our own staff at Saint Thomas More. These are people who work, study and pray around campus and, lucky for us, people whom we get to see often on Park Street.
Grace Klise:First up is Saint Thomas More's executive director, Joe Connolly. You may see him in the pews at Mass, stopping by a student event or chatting with soup kitchen guests, but there's so much more that Joe is doing and thinking about each day as he leads STM's team. In this conversation, he shares more about his role, the skills and the mindset that he brings to work and the path that led him to Saint Thomas More five years ago. He sees his work as part of his vocational call to serve God and serve the Church, which is a call that he's been discerning for most of his life. Yet, as often happens when following the Spirit's nudges, that call to serve has manifested itself in ways that Joe never could have imagined as a husband, dad and lay leader and, as Zach points out, whose sense of style is noticed by students. Let's dive in.
Grace Klise:So here we are, back in the studio. Joe, you've been an early listener and fan of the podcast, but how does it feel to be in the space where all those conversations have?
Joe Connolly:Taken place where the magic happens. Right, that's right. You are right.
Joe Connolly:I've absolutely been a huge fan since the start and I'm very happy to be in the space where all those conversations have taken place where the magic happens.
Joe Connolly:Right, that's right, you are right. I've absolutely been a huge fan since the start and I'm very happy to be here.
Grace Klise:Awesome. Zach and I are excited to be back in the studio as well. You, in your day-to-day role as executive director, are dealing with both the macro and the micro aspects of life at Saint Thomas More. Can you give us a day in the life? Look at what it means to be executive director of Saint Thomas More.
Joe Connolly:I'll do my best. It's interesting because a day in the life, the days are so different. You know, which is one of the things that I really like about Saint Thomas More is it's a very dynamic environment and there's a lot of different things. But in my thoughts of this, this has evolved right. But to me it's more and more about like trying to create an environment where other people can thrive and flourish, and whether that's first and foremost the students, but then obviously it's the staff and bringing that experience to the students that we have.
Joe Connolly:But for me, day to day, one of the things that people might not realize is that I report directly to, and am responsible to, our board of directors, and at the same time it's more as a separate not-for-profit corporation with our own board of directors, and it was the board that hired me and it's the board that I work closely with. So I spend a fair amount of my time thinking about the board, trying to communicate effectively with the board, trying to interpret what the board says and translate that in ways that work. So in my day-to-day work, you know, quite a bit of that is thought is thinking about the board I talk about. My responsibilities are all administrative and organizational oriented and a big part of that is the finances. You know we were very blessed with our financial situation at Saint Thomas More.
Joe Connolly:So really keeping an eye on that and I personally I can tell you I take it like super seriously, like I literally think, like if I was sitting down with Tom Golden, what I like, how would he feel about what we're doing, you know, and so I really try and think about the people that have been so generous, and so Tom Golden and I think about Father Bob and all the people, because I think that there's clearly, in my view, there's a line that connects that.
Joe Connolly:So, I think the finances take up a fair amount of time in trying to be a good steward of that. And then it's working with the staff. And the staff. You know there's certain people on our team, as Grace, you would know that report directly to me. We don't have a good name for it quite yet because sometimes I call it the administrative functions, but sometimes I call it the support functions. But you know the facilities and communication and finance and development, all the things that aren't, frankly, the chaplaincy report to me. So I really try and work closely with those folks and create that environment for us all to thrive.
Grace Klise:Yeah well, Zach, you know as a student that every day at Saint Thomas More does look a little different.
Zach Moynihan:It definitely does. You never know what you're going to get day to day. But it's nice that we have things like the Student Scoop to give us a little overview of the week so that you can plan ahead, because you need to. There's so many events and offerings throughout the week that I find it really helpful to map it all out. So I know my movements throughout the week, like most Yale students do. But it's helpful to hear about those behind the scenes aspects of life at Saint Thomas More, because I think a lot of us sometimes take for granted a lot of the hard work that goes on behind the scenes to create the space that we're so thankful for on a week-to-week, day-to-day basis, and so I've only been here for three years now. I've seen the space grow in so many ways. I'm wondering what has that looked like even before my time, and what have been some of the best moments that you've seen over the course of your time here?
Joe Connolly:When you talk about best moments, I think that for me it was gradual, but then it felt abrupt coming out of COVID, you know, I was only at Saint Thomas More for a few brief months until COVID hit, and then all of a sudden, you know, quite literally, the whole world around us changed, as did we, and so that was a pretty intense period. And then we went into lockdown and, you know, Yale took the lockdown measures very, very seriously, appropriately, and we followed Yale's lead and the State's lead. So we were shut down for a long, long time. And then, all of a sudden, you know, and people would say to me oh wait, you know, this isn't really what it's like. You don't really know what it's like. You know, you can't understand what it's like until you see what it's like.
Joe Connolly:And then, when we started to come out of COVID, I think that that was a really big deal and then it felt like at some point it sort of went from night to day, if you will. It was like, all of a sudden it was like yeah, this is very different, this is very, very different, even in that sort of middle ground where we were sort of doing a little bit of both things. So, when you talk about in terms of moments or memorable things like coming out of that, and for me that coincided with my third year here, and I remember saying the line that I use all the time was this is my third year, but it really feels like my first year because I was doing things that you would expect to do in the first year but you couldn't do them in the first year, you know. So, getting to know people, getting to understand things and so on. So I think that that's one.
Joe Connolly:The other thing that I think is tied to that, and it's a realization that we're, you know, coming to and trying to embrace more and more and more the people who preceded us all at Saint Thomas More, the people who, frankly, were responsible for the building of the Golden Center, which is, as we know, that's sort of so much a part of Saint Thomas More. You know, we take our physical space very, very seriously, but I think that what we're realizing is that we need to take our virtual spaces as seriously as we take our physical spaces and we need to give them the same sort of care and attention. And, as I think about that, the fact that we're doing this podcast, that it's going to go out like we're, in a way, it's a virtual space that we're going to be communicating with people. So I think there's a realization among the team and among the board that we need to continue to sort of make our virtual spaces be as impactful, if you will, as our physical spaces, and I think that's something that is evolving continually.
Grace Klise:Something that we learned during COVID as well as ministry went online. You know just in time learning right.
Joe Connolly:We all went from like having no, just-in-time learning right, exactly. We all went from like having very, very little I can't say zero experience, but like very little experience with live streaming and broadcasting and all those things to like doing it all the time. I remember distinctly. Like you know, it happened in March, like Easter was not that long after, so we had like a couple of weeks of live stream Mass under our belt and then suddenly it was the Triduum. It was like whoa high stakes learning.
Joe Connolly:I remember sitting in the back of the Church at the Easter Vigil, thinking we have to get this right. So yeah, very interesting times.
Grace Klise:Yeah for sure. Well before your time at Saint Thomas More, before pandemic, can you take us back to growing up in Connecticut? You were Connecticut, born and bred from an Irish Catholic family. Take us back to your childhood. What was young Joe like and how was faith a part of your upbringing?
Joe Connolly:The young Joe part? I'm not sure, but the faith part is and was so prominent. I could definitely speak to that because you know, I grew up in an Irish Catholic family. As you said, I'm the oldest of five. My mother came from a large Irish Catholic family. Interestingly enough, like my maternal grandmother came over here with three sisters from Ireland and two of the sisters married two brothers. So, like my mother's extended family is super tight knit. So it was a very, very family oriented environment but a very, very Church oriented environment as well. And my mom is certainly a very faithful person, very devout person, very committed.
Joe Connolly:But my father was actually a church organist. My father was a lifelong musician, did lots of different things musically, sang in different choirs and as I was thinking about that you know, in a weird way I'm not doing the same thing at all, but like he was literally sort of as a lay person, working for and with and inside the church, which is very similar to what I'm doing in my own way, in a different way, but because my dad was a church organist, like the church was very interwoven into our lives and so like the rhythms of the liturgical year and you know, Lent and Advent and Easter and all that comes together. It was very much a part of our lives. You know we always had the Advent wreath out and you know Sundays of Advent were a really big deal. My brother, I'm the oldest, my brother's the youngest there's three girls in between he was born on the first Sunday of Advent, so that sort of turned it into like a high holy day for us.
Joe Connolly:We elevated that in the Connolly family. The first Sunday of Advent is a really big deal because then my brother was born that day.
Joe Connolly:So at any rate, all that stuff, but I do have one like anecdote that to me sums up all this, and that was that you know, my father was a school teacher. He eventually became a principal, but when I was young he was a teacher and we had five kids living on a teacher's salary. So we used to go camping and go to the beach. So we'd go camping in various areas and we spent a lot of time on the Jersey shore and we'd go to the beach all day and go back to our tent at night literally and like cook out on a fire and the whole thing. And I don't know how we did it, but we always went to church and it wasn't like Google it and figure out where you're going. But so one day in the middle of vacation we were going to go to the Saturday vigil.
Joe Connolly:So we roll up on this church in the station wagon, mom and dad in the front, five kids in the back, and as we roll up on this church everyone is spilling out of the church and my father gets a little jittery. He's like what's happening here and, just like Father Ryan standing on the street on the sidewalk. The priest walked over and he goes hello, can I help you? And my father said well, father, we're here for Mass, but we must have got the time wrong. And the priest said oh no, we changed the time. We have summer hours. It's a different time right now. And so he said but it's clear that you've made the effort to be here. I absolve you of your obligation for this week. And my father goes, " don't worry, we'll come back tomorrow. We're all in the back of the car, like Dad! We just got a hall pass. We're on vacation, we don't have to come back. You stay, we don't have to. We'll be back tomorrow morning. That somehow encapsulates the whole experience for me.
Zach Moynihan:That is awesome. We've talked so much on this podcast about the importance of family and how, in so many ways, family is synonymous with the faith, our faith background and we've also talked about how schooling as well plays such a large role in your formation. As a Catholic, coming from a K-8 Catholic school background myself, that was very formative in my life and also my family background, I'm wondering as you grew up and went into high school and college, what role did your faith play in your life?
Joe Connolly:Interestingly enough, with my father as a public school teacher. We're a public school family, like my brother was the last and he was the tail end. There's nine years between my brother and I and he went to public schools through high school but then went to a Catholic high school. But I'm a public school guy and I always say that I don't mean this in any negative or bad like it was sort of an autopilot, like I was sort of following along with the family doing church and doing CCD.
Joe Connolly:I was an altar boy through high school, which was a very, very formative experience. I've got all sorts of theories around that. I think if you find a lot of men my age and, for that matter, women, we've got like a deep faith. I think the experience of being an altar server is sort of profound and sticks with you. So that was a very important part of my youth.
Joe Connolly:But it really came alive for me when I went to Boston University, which, again, when I think about this and reflect on it, there's a lot of parallels with Yale because it's a secular university with religious roots. But we went, we worshiped at a place called Marsh Chapel, which was a non-denominational Chapel right on Commonwealth Avenue for the whole community and you know there'd be Catholic Mass but then followed by Methodist and whatever else, whoever else we use the place. But being at BU, I really feel that my faith sort of came alive there in a very, very meaningful way, as much like here. I think that you know the students are kind of on fire with faith. I think that the preaching and the liturgy seem very, very relevant. You know there's student leadership, there's a lot of things. The liturgy seemed very, very relevant. I had a tremendous experience at Boston University and my faith was a huge part of that huge part of it. So that's sort of where it sort of ignited for me.
Grace Klise:Which, wow, comes full circle now that you are serving as executive director of Yale's Catholic Center, but probably something you did not imagine for yourself back then, when you were a college student, and after graduating from college you didn't immediately go to work for the Church. Tell us a little bit about what came for you next.
Joe Connolly:I think, like a lot of people, I contemplated a religious vocation coming out of college and that was a really big deal. Like we can go into as much detail as you want on that or not. But like I, you know, I really thought about what is my role? How is the role of faith going to be expressed in my life? What should I do? But with a lot of like deep soul searching, like meaningful things and I'm not talking like that's superficial at all. At Boston University the chaplaincy was run by the Paulist community and so, like I went to the Paulist novitiate in Washington DC and I spent time there. I was very close with our chaplain. I went to lots of different Paulist outposts around the country. I was really thinking about it in a meaningful way, but just it clearly wasn't what was intended for me at that time.
Joe Connolly:So my degree was in communications and so I went out and I looked for work in that field and that's where it happened. My first job was in Hartford. I worked for an architectural firm as director of communications and marketing and then actually I started my own business while I was still there and I spent 15 years really running my own business. I started business at a very young age with my wife and we grew that and spent 15 years in, like a marketing and advertising model, if you will. And then from there I transitioned into healthcare, and then from the healthcare to here. That's the sort of abbreviated version of it.
Grace Klise:Back to the vocation conversation, because obviously that's something that we talk a lot about at Saint Thomas More. Our primary vocation is holiness for all of us, but then what that looks like in terms of states of life and then broken down even further in terms of what we give our professional lives to and our time outside of work as well, was your understanding of the lay person and the laity serving the Church and the role of the laity that really was cemented in Vatican II, and we see it as you mentioned earlier, we see it on full display at Saint Thomas More all the time. Was that something that was on your mind, or really it was this decision between the priesthood and married life?
Joe Connolly:A hundred percent, unfortunately, for better or for worse. And I don't know whether I could attribute this to the time that this was because this, by the way, was a long time ago or just me and my personal upbringing. But somehow and I realize this now looking back on it I had it all wrong, but I saw it as binary. It was like one or the other. And I have this very, very distinct memory of my grandmother, who was terrific. I already mentioned her. She was literally an Irish immigrant who came here and I remember sitting at a kitchen table with her talking about this and she took my hands and hers and she said you know she goes, "Joe, if today you hear his voice, harden not your heart. And I was like ugh, like it was kind of like a dagger to my heart, to be honest with you. And I remember I said I won't, Gram. Dagger to my heart to be honest with you. And I remember I said I said I won't, graham, I won't, I promise. And so, like for me, like it almost like haunted me for like years, like thinking have I hardened my heart? Am I hearing this right? Did I make the right decision? Did I make the wrong decision.
Joe Connolly:But, and even after, frankly, after I was married, it became very clear to me that married life was what I wanted. I am deeply and profoundly in love with my wife and have been for decades at this point, but it even took a while to grow into that. Like I made this choice and I feel that I made the right choice. But it took a long time for me to broaden my scope and realize that the definition of a vocation is not binary either, or discussion, and that there's lots of different expressions and lots of different ways and lots of different ways you can live a vocation in this life. But so I'm all for. You know I'm in praise of late bloomers, you know, because is n't always immediately apparent. I guess what I want to say it wasn't always apparent for me, but like I guess it always was. But it takes time to grow in confidence.
Joe Connolly:And I think that hindsight helps a lot, doesn't it? Right, when you can sort of look back and say I think I made the right decision, but that was. It was a big deal and it wasn't easy and it definitely took me a long time to sort of come around to come around.
Zach Moynihan:As somebody who is just getting started with my senior year, I'm thinking so much about vocations, my future paths, surrounded by all my friends who are doing the same, and I'm wondering what, for you, were some of the people and resources that you turned to and leaned upon during this time of questioning and consideration about your own vocation.
Joe Connolly:I love that question. Well, I guess what I would say is during the time, I hate to say it, but I felt very much alone. I was trying to figure it out on my own. So, I kind of had my family and my mom and my grandmother and others. I remember going to actually Bishop Peter Rosazza, who lives right here. I went and spoke with him at one point, but I didn't necessarily feel then that I spoke with a lot of folks about it.
Joe Connolly:But subsequent to that, some people have been extraordinarily helpful for me and one of them is our very own Father Joe Donnelly, who we all know from Saint Thomas More. But I had the very good luck of knowing him for 10 plus years before that. He was a pastor at Sacred Heart Church in Southbury where I went with my family, and Father Joe was just a tremendous model. We both served on St. Vincent de Paul board. He was actually the Chair. I succeeded him as the Chair. Thank you very little, Fr. Joe, for that.
Joe Connolly:But at any rate, I remember going into this meeting and we're sitting around the boardroom table and there's a bunch of guys and a bunch of women and somebody said you know, Fr. Joe, my wife told me that you'd make a great husband. You know what you would have been a great husband. And he just like, very quickly said, "well, that ship sailed a long time ago. And I just, for some reason, that very brief moment like it, just really struck me that like he had made a decision and he was comfortable with that decision and he wasn't looking back on that decision and again, that was like it just took me five seconds to express it, but that was a huge moment for me, a huge, huge, huge moment for me. And seeing sort of I keep using the word confidence, like the confidence with which he sort of lived his vocation and the comfort with it, and he wasn't saying, oh yeah, maybe I would have. I wonder what it would have been like. Or there was none of that. I was like, nah, I made that decision, I'm going forward. So that was a big moment and I took a lot from that. And I still do take a lot from that, because to me the inverse could be true. Right For me, like that ship, you know well, should you have lived a religious life, or should you have been a priest or whatever? Well, no, that ship sailed a long time ago. I take a lot of peace from that.
Joe Connolly:The other person is I actually have a spiritual director who is affiliated with Fairfield University. He's a Jesuit and I actually went to Fairfield in the context of I was exploring some writing programs that they had and various things, and I saw that they had a Center for Ignatian Spirituality and I just followed my instincts in there, or providence in there, or whatever you want to call it. And so I've been seeing this spiritual director for many, many, many years now and he's been so helpful in just helping me. You know, tease this out, think it through, talk about it, have language for it I think a lot of times you don't necessarily have the right language for it and he's been very helpful. So those two but I guess, reflecting back on your question, Zach, it wasn't so much in the time, but it was sort of like, after the decisions have been made, coming to peace and understanding of those decisions.
Grace Klise:Those folks have been very helpful.
Grace Klise:I think.
Grace Klise:So much of that confidence also probably in making a decision and seeing students with whom I've worked who can almost be paralyzed by the decisions before them, and this sense that there is one right path and God is kind of is secretly pointing me to it but not telling me exactly, because it's a little bit of a test and I have to make a decision and if I choose incorrectly.
Grace Klise:You know, I'm abandoned by God and in, I would say, the last 10 years when I've had to make difficult decisions, I'm starting to grow in greater confidence and I think I'm learning to trust that God has given us free will and that when we make a decision bringing God into it, that God is with us in that path that we have chosen. It's not like you know, you choose wrongly and all of a sudden you're done that God remains with us and I think of the verse from Romans that "God works for the good of those who love him. So that has brought me at least a lot of peace and I try to convey that to students because, just as you were experiencing that as a college student, so many of our students at St Thomas More, who have a plethora of options in front of them, can be really paralyzed and, I think, can feel really alone by the big decisions before them.
Joe Connolly:Yeah, maybe you could speak to that. That was my lived experience. And so I come here to say, like, take your time, it works out. You would ask the question about, you know, my role at Saint Thomas More. I remember during the interview process, I love sports, you know, and I hear a lot of coaches when they move from one place to another, so that was my dream job.
Joe Connolly:I went after my dream job and like I was compelled to say, like this is my dream job, but when I thought about it I said I can't really even say that because this job never existed. Like it would be wrong to say this is my dream because this role wasn't an option. When I came out of college there was no such thing. Like even in the early days of Saint Thomas more. There was.
Joe Connolly:Like this is a thoroughly contemporary role that I find myself in and so to say, well, I knew what I wanted to do. How could I know what I wanted to do when it didn't even exist, you know? So I think that there's something there too, like sort of following the process and trusting and growing in confidence. And you know, here I am and like when I look back at it, you said like there's all these parallels and these links and things that were meaningful for me like 40 years ago and I get to sort of revisit them now. That's deeply meaningful but there's no way I could have had that figured out. I'm not working to some master plan, at least not one that I'm aware of you know?
Grace Klise:Yeah, hopefully that will all be revealed to us in the next life. Exactly.
Zach Moynihan:It is helpful, Joe, to hear from your perspective that when you're at a crossroads you don't always need to pick one road or the other with absolute confidence that it's going to be the right path for you, and that you can follow one and then grow in that confidence over time and you can reap from the benefits of hindsight as you're continuing to grow down that path, and also that it's very fluid situation and that things can change in ways that you don't even know are possible. And so I think a lot of the angst that I carried during the start of my time here was thinking that the path that I was going to choose in my first couple of weeks here was going to be the one that I had to follow for the rest of my life and, as a FroCo myself, I hear a lot of that from my students thinking that the courses that they enroll in in their first semester here are what defines not just their time at Yale but also the rest of their lives.
Zach Moynihan:And I have to remind them that no, you have so much time for exploration. You have the benefit of time that I don't have anymore as a senior, so use it to your advantage. And that's something that I've learned over the course of my time here, and making maybe what felt like the wrong decision in the moment actually ended up being the right path for me. And I've always leaned on the chaplains at Saint Thomas More, Grace, David, Allan, Sr. Jen, so many of those wise voices over time that have gently reminded me that maybe I'm not messing everything up at every stage, so having that space has been really great to lean on over the years.
Grace Klise:Angst is a good word to describe how a lot of us are as young people. I think, oh gosh, God definitely works through peace, not through angst.
Joe Connolly:You remind me of something that I'd love to chat about and I've thought about this a lot. So much of your early life is like, defined by your experience of school, right and given your family situation you may have, you know parents have very interesting jobs or different careers or vocations, but a lot of kids that come out of that and sort of school is all they know right and school largely is about. There are right answers and wrong answers.
Joe Connolly:And clearly you know, if you're a Yale student, you've learned to excel in school, so you're used to sort of searching for the right answer and you've gotten pretty good at the right answer. But I think in matters of the spirit and matters of faith, there's a much broader spectrum, if you will, you know a palette of things that you can consider. And I think that, particularly when that binary like I've got to get this right. If I get this, you know, if I don't get it right it's going to be bad. And whether that's in, you know, from your relationship with God, or in your faith, or whether it's your career, I think you have to sort of try and relax into it a little bit. Relax into it, which leads me you hear the term discernment a lot, right, discernment, and again, I had misconceptions about discernment because I thought discernment was all like the cliff notes on how to get to the right answer. Right, it's like how am I going to get there? But as I, you know, through my spiritual director I've alluded to a little bit ago, here's the way I think about it. And if you go all the way back, like to St. Ignatius, and he talks about the movement of spirits, and it's the movement and so it's, which, by definition, right, it's not static movement and so it's which, by definition, right, it's not static. Movement of spirits is not a static thing.
Joe Connolly:And so in my life, some of my pastimes and hobbies that I particularly love there's two of them that are related, that I think are instructive to this, and one is I love to ski and I'm an open water swimmer, I swim in a lake all the time, and those are both environments that are like so dynamic, so like when you find yourself on a ski mountain, the light is changing, the weather condition is changing, the pitch of the slope is changing, the snow conditions are changing, and much like the movement of spirits, like you're, you're always responding and moving and making decisions based upon how you perceive what's in front of you at any given time.
Joe Connolly:And, and somehow to me, I link that up and make it be analogous to spiritual life and the movement of spirits. Right, like, things change and things evolve. And as opposed to like this binary right, wrong, white, black it's like it's moving, it's changing, and the better you can get at discerning that in real time or perceiving that in real time. I think the better off you're going to be, but I love the dynamic implications of that.
Grace Klise:That ongoing discernment that we're all called to is uncomfortable, though, because it's not make one decision and then coast.
Grace Klise:It's always being open, aware, open vigilance, considering new invitations and elements and factors, especially, I would think, amidst family life, as your children are growing and things are changing at home too.
Grace Klise:But it's definitely a lot harder than having to make one decision and then be good, and I think I have seen, just in my short time being married, yes, that a choice was made to this state of life, to this vocation, but there is a dynamism that requires me also to keep choosing it. Like every day, I do choose this, I remind myself that I do choose this. I think the same thing with our faith, like this, is a living relationship with God, which means that the faith of our middle school self, of our college self, of our 30-year-old self, those can't be static, those have to evolve and change and be open to the ongoing invitations from God to continue to serve Him and to give ourselves to Him. So thanks for bringing that up. I think it's just. It's obviously very apt to our college students and our grad students, but for all of us, a reminder that God is continuing to speak to us.
Joe Connolly:Exactly. It's interesting, as you say on what you said, it might be easier to just make a decision and stick with it. But I see it the opposite way, Like when you say like one big decision I have to get it right, like I find that that's where the paralyzing comes in, to me, like I'd much rather have a little decision followed by another little decision, followed by you know, and then eventually they all add up, you know. But to me it's a way of sort of taking the pressure off.
Zach Moynihan:And you learn so much about yourself and your faith going down those unexpected paths. And just, you know I'm always speaking from the Yale perspective, because that's what I know the best you come in also with an idea of what you're good at and you constantly want to pursue things that can show to yourself and to others that you really are good at what you do. You really do belong here. You have that pressure on you, but I found that I've grown so much in the spaces that have allowed me to try something new that I've never done before. This podcast is one of them these opportunities to grow and stretch in ways that you didn't think were imaginable and to grow in your faith, too, in ways that you didn't think were possible.
Zach Moynihan:Because, like you said earlier, Joe, I feel like I was on autopilot for a lot of my life. Going to Catholic school, I had a religion textbook and I'd go to chapter four on the Catechism and take a quiz on it. But being at Saint Thomas More has allowed me to really take ownership of it and, like I said earlier, when that scoop hits my inbox every week, I get to decide what are the social events I want to go to, what are the talks that I want to attend, hear from speakers that I wouldn't have the chance to hear from otherwise, and so it's been a great opportunity to grow in myself and to grow in the faith, and so I'm thankful every day for it. And speaking about dynamic discernment, I'm wondering what happened in your discernment that brought you to us?
Joe Connolly:I worked in Catholic health care, which is an environment that I loved and I look back at it and very, very fondly, it's very interesting to me. I've talked about my dad. You know, my father passed away a couple of years ago and I feel, you know, as connected and close to him as I ever have. My dad was in the Navy and he would tell us all the time, like my father lives to 92 years old and he throughout his life, he would say I had dreams about being in the Navy, I was on ship, and he would have these vivid dreams and, much to my shock, like I find myself having dreams about being in the hospital and I'm like dad, what the heck? Like you know, so I really enjoyed it.
Joe Connolly:But you know, the healthcare environment has changed wildly and dramatically and the hospital that I worked for, which was St. Mary's Hospital in Waterbury, Connecticut, became part of a big national company and I actually worked for that national company for a number of years. But like we went, like St Mary's was a big place, we had about 2,500 employees and a huge budget $350 million place it's a serious business. But all of a sudden we were part of an organization that had 110,000 employees and we had 100 hospitals and it just really changed. Like the whole world changed very, very, very much and it sort of over time I worked in it for a while I said, you know, to me I'm ready for a change, like I'm ready to do something different here. But I knew in my heart and in my head that, like I never considered myself a hospital professional, I consider myself a St. Mary's guy, like I was. It was this is our local Catholic hospital and it was very integrated into our community. So it wasn't like I have got this skill set and I can just go move to a different town or a different state and work in a hospital.
Joe Connolly:I knew I didn't want that, which is actually not a thing. That's a very important part because I think, with discernment and decision making, knowing what you don't want is equally as important to knowing what you do want. And sometimes, if you can't figure out what you do want, start making a list of all things you don't want. It'll help move you in a certain direction. So I knew I didn't necessarily want to go work for another hospital. I knew I didn't want to start another business. I was really trying to figure it out. And then somehow I saw you know this opportunity posted and I said, ooh, that sounds like really interesting. I actually do not sound melodramatic. I kind of knew, like this is for me, like this is going to be mine, I'm going to get this thing somehow. And, interestingly enough, I called father Joe at the time and I asked him about it and he was like.
Joe Connolly:"Oh, I never thought of that yet. You'd be perfect for that." Et cetera, et cetera. From the first time I saw it to the time I was actually here, it took well over a year, because at the time, if I have my history correct here, they started looking for an executive director when Father Bob was still alive, but then Father Bob unfortunately passed away, so the whole thing sort of got put on the shelf for a while, and then it got resuscitated again, and so on and so forth. So it took a long time, but it was coming out of the Catholic health care environment, knowing a bunch of things that I didn't want to do, knowing that I very much wanted to do something in a Catholic environment again, and seeing this opportunity.
Grace Klise:That's sort of what led me here. Yeah, there's a lot of elements of that story that I didn't realize, one that it took almost a year from you seeing it to to then actually come.
Joe Connolly:Maybe more.
Grace Klise:Wow, patience, another part of the spiritual life.
Grace Klise:What do you feel like you're drawing on from your past? You have, you know, a varied professional experience and a large skillset in terms of marketing and communications and running your own business, and I'm guessing that this role draws on so many of those things. What do you feel like in kind of the day-to-day operations that you're really drawing on it? And it probably has to do with relationships, I would imagine you know from St. Mary's and the involvement in the local community, but I'd love to hear from your perspective how your previous professional experiences are contributing to what you're doing today.
Joe Connolly:When you pose that question, the first thing that pops into my mind is like there's sort of I'm thinking about it in two buckets, if you will. I'm thinking skill set and mindset right, and I'm going to sort of try and draw some distinctions between skill set and mindset. I think both are equally important. But from a skill set perspective, when I was running my company with my wife and the St. Mary's opportunity presented itself to me again, it was funny because I knew in an instant, like I literally had a friend who worked at the hospital, left me a voicemail and said we're looking for somebody to do X. I never spoke with somebody live. I hung that phone up and I said that's my job, I'm going to be in that role. So, like both my last two roles, I knew in an instant, but at any rate, the skillset mindset.
Joe Connolly:When I went to St. Mary's I said I want to get an MBA, I want to broaden my business skillset, because I was running a business for more than a decade but without really a business background and let me tell you I stubbed my toes more than once on that. So going and getting an MBA was sort of the deal that I made with myself and I learned a lot in that environment through that coursework. And obviously there's people come to the Yale School of Management. It's spectacular and it's a very specific skill set. And of all the things that we learned, the one believe it or not that I was sort of the least familiar with going in was financial management. And financial management like the way I phrase it, like finance, is the language of business, and if you want to be in a business environment you have to develop at least a rudimentary understanding of how finance works. And I remember you know some of my professors say, you don't have to become an expert, but you at least need to be able to follow the conversation if you're in the room and know what's being talked about. So it's an elaborate answer, but, like I, the financial management of Saint Thomas More is very, very important, and so I that. find myself relying on that.
Joe Connolly:On my driving here this morning I was on the phone with our independent auditor having conversations. I rely on lots of other people who know far more than I do, but there are certain skill sets. So the financial skill set is a big part of it. Project management is a big part of it. Sort of organizational management is a big part of it. In the hospital environment you learn a lot to try and be like data driven and not make decisions sort of based on emotion and so on. So like I try and bring some of that mentality to some of what we're doing. So those are sort of skill set things, if you will.
Joe Connolly:But then on the mindset side, to me I think that's an important part of it. And I remember making a phone call to a colleague who was like down in the South and she said, "Joe, every day I wake up and I'm just so glad to be able to do meaningful work and I just love that concept of meaningful work. And so knowing that we're doing very meaningful work here at St Thomas More is very important. Knowing that, I feel that it is an expression of vocation.
Joe Connolly:I think that knowing that it's part of a community, there's something about the history of this place and the longevity of this place and the scale that again to me takes the pressure off. It's sort of like realizing that this is not about me, like it's about something so much bigger than me and it's like over 100 years of history, and so to sort of say I'm part of this and so I want to be do the best that I can, I want to be a steward for this and I know that someday I'm going to be gone and someone's going to fill in right behind me, and so I love that too. So that's part of the mindset, sort of knowing that you're part of something that just is sort of much bigger than you as an individual and just trying to do your best in that role. So skillset mindset.
Grace Klise:That's really helpful. Thanks for that.
Zach Moynihan:We've loved having you here, Joe, and it's been great always when I'm at STM maybe I'm having a busy week at school and I walk down the hall and I see you from afar. I'm like, oh, there's Joe. It's always great to see you there too. I have a less serious question, if that's okay. Joe, I want to know where you get your sense of style, because I see you coming down the hall. I'm like, "Joe's looking sharp.
Joe Connolly:You have no idea how much that means to me, that means to me probably more than a shirt.
Joe Connolly:So it is something that I like. I mean I just try and look good, feel good, right, you know. But so much of all this stuff. It's like to me. You have to want to like. You know what I'm saying. I think a lot of people are like they just don't care, like I don't care, I'm just going to throw some clothes on. That's just not me, I do care. So I try and look like I'm the executive director of Saint Thomas More More, and I do the best.
Grace Klise:can Well.. The, All students are noticing we're taking notes. It's funny.
Joe Connolly:You should say that because last year at Halloween, if you remember, Mary Margaret and Maria sort of did a costume of me yes. That was a very meaningful moment for me to see them, because I looked at it and I was like they drilled it. They got it so right. I was like they're paying attention.
Zach Moynihan:I love that I've got that picture they're paying attention.
Joe Connolly:I love that. I've got that picture tucked away in my journal. I love it.
Grace Klise:Yeah, that is awesome. One other question I feel like, before we wrap up, be remiss not to ask about your beautiful family, and you've mentioned your wife, but especially I know your role as a dad is so important to you. So if you want to share a little bit about family life and how that has helped your faith to grow over the last couple of decades.
Joe Connolly:I'll start with my wife.
Joe Connolly:I met my wife, Paula, in church, like quite I mean, like literally sitting in church, like looking at the back of her head, in Ireland, and Paula is just an absolutely amazing person. We have an amazing relationship, you know, and it is my primary vocation here, and I could not have made a better choice. I can't even say enough good things about her. She's intelligent and caring and generous and I just love her and being with her. And you know, I would not be the person that I am were it not for that relationship. And then, of course, we've got three wonderful children and being a dad is, you know, a great challenge but incredibly rewarding.
Joe Connolly:We've got so many new babies and you've just been through this recently. I think that you process is know, like literally though, the act of having a child delivered, like literally the it's the greatest exercise in humility because like you could want certain things to go a certain way, or hope for things, or pray for things, but like it's going to happen, not on your schedule, and I think that that humility, you learn that early and you learn it often, and I can tell you now. You know my kids are 27, 25, 23 now and you still learn that, so I think you know. It's a good reminder. Family life is a good teacher of humility.
Grace Klise:Yeah, I think of just. We've mentioned family before and the importance of family and how our families and our homes often are the first schools, first schools of love and probably humility and hopefully faith too. So thanks for sharing a little bit about your family and thanks for spending this time with us this morning. Especially as we get the semester and the academic year kicked off here. The theme of this season's podcast is faith on campus. So our final question to guests this season is where do you find God on campus?
Joe Connolly:It's a little bit of a curveball with that question because, as you know, I'm a huge fan. I've listened to every podcast. I love them all. It was more broadly. It was like where are you finding God?
Zach Moynihan:lately.
Joe Connolly:So I'm prepared for that answer.
Zach Moynihan:It's a little change here. You threw a curveball.
Joe Connolly:I'll give you the straight answer and then we can talk about my curveball answer. When I think about where am I finding God? On campus. You know, because of my role I certainly get on campus. I am at Saint Thomas More all the time and so certainly I find God at Saint Thomas More. I'd be remiss to not say that. But some of the specific ways I certainly find God through our students and I am continually inspired and moved. Our students are on fire with their faith and I love that. I think our liturgies in general are spectacular, but I think the music is amazing. I used to say to Karolina when you fire up that choir on a Sunday man, it moves me. So I love the music. But ultimately I think probably my most profound experience of finding God at Saint Thomas More is through our soup kitchen and it's through the faces of the people that we serve and the poor among us and that's really probably the most profound or pronounced place. And again, that's an evolution, because that wasn't necessarily the way I started off with the soup kitchen at all. You know I did that.
Joe Connolly:More ties back to your question about skillset and so on. I did that because, in my mind, serving in the soup kitchen was a leadership decision. It was like this. It was an expression of the type of leader I wanted to be. I want to be a servant leader. I want to do things at the street level, if you will, but it's grown into something far more profound, and seeing the face of God, the face of Jesus, in those we serve is absolutely a huge part. And, by the way, those who we serve with and I think that you know all the people that work in the soup kitchen are amazing. So that's my straight answer. That was a great answer.
Grace Klise:Saint Thomas More counts as campus.
Joe Connolly:Yeah, exactly, can I give my curveball answer?
Grace Klise:Go for it.
Joe Connolly:We can cut this off if you want or not. When you ask about, you know, where you find God lately, you know, and I listen to every one of the episodes and I always think about this. There's certain places like, if you're searching for God, there's certain places you can find God right and you can find God in silence, you can find God in music, you can find God in nature, and I love all those. But the answer that surprised me was I find God in my dog. You know, I grew my entire life and never had a dog, I never had a pet of any description.
Joe Connolly:And when my daughters brought home a dog, Molly, and she was a golden and we love Molly. A nd then Paula and I sort of fostered and then adopted a dog, Katie, and I just think that there's so many lessons and so many things that I've learned through my experience of being with Katie and I think that in many cases they're they tied directly to God and an awareness of God's creation. I think when I look at an animal in particular, there's like an inherent dignity, and so I immediately transferred that. I said well, if dogs have inherent dignity, we're taught people have inherent dignity, but it's a great reminder of that, and I also just think some of the habits that come with having a dog. L ike Paula and I walk the dog every morning, and so that time is all good things. Like we're out together, which is our primary vocation, right? So it's a way to revisit that. We're in nature, sometimes we're silent, sometimes we're in conversation, so there's so many good things that have come out of that. We're completely unexpected to me, so that's my curveball answer.
Grace Klise:We haven't heard that one before on the podcast, so I like it. Well. Thank you, Joe, for this time. Thanks for your leadership of Saint Thomas More and thank you to everyone who's tuning in. We'll see you next time on Finding God on Park Street. If you enjoyed listening today, please share this episode with a friend or relative and leave us a rating and review so more people can find our podcast. The producer of this podcast is Robin McShane, Director of Communications at STM. Sound mixing and editing are by Ryan McEvoy of Yale Broadcast Studio and graphics are by Mary Lou Cadwell of Cadwell Art Direction. We hope this podcast encourages you to seek God today and every day. You are in our prayers. Thank you for listening.
