After 45 years in the priesthood, Rev. Robert Antczak has seen some dramatic changes in the Roman Catholic Church – including the premature predictions by some that the church is fading away.
Now, on the verge of retiring, Antczak looks back and concludes the role of the church might be changing, but it still has an important role to play in the lives of people.
Antczak, who is currently pastor of the Church of St. Paul the Apostle in Jersey City, was born and raised in Bayonne.
“I was born in Bayonne Hospital in 1938,” he said during a recent interview. “My grandparents were from Poland. My family attended Mount Carmel Church.”
His father, who worked in Staten Island for Proctor and Gamble, had the idea that he wanted his children to see as much of the world as possible and to experience as many things as they could.
“He would do all sorts of things and would drag us along,” Antczak said, recalling trips up the Hudson River on both sides by train, and even by boat.
His father’s idea to broaden his children’s perspectives on the world would send his children out of Bayonne to go to school.
Schooling often covered North Jersey – even as far as Erie, Pa. – although Antczak ended up in Seton Hall Prep, where he was to return years later as a teacher.
Eventually, the family moved to Toms River.
Music played a big role in broadening their vision of the world, Antczak said, including polka music.
“My brother played the drums,” Antczak said.
He and his siblings did many of the typical things kids in Bayonne do growing up. He and his brother both worked as newspaper delivery boys for the “Bayonne Times.”
The idea of priesthood came with the arrival of a new parish priest in Bayonne, who drove a Volkswagen and presented Antczak and others with a different approach to faith that included carrying food to the needy in Newark, and developing a drum corps without instruments.
Antczak entered the seminary at an odd moment in church history.
“I was ordained in 1964,” he said.
While he was at the seminary, the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, or Vatican II, occurred, a controversial change of direction that sought to allow the church to adjust to a changing religious landscape already evident in many other parts of the Christian community. Masses, for instance, were conducted in languages other than Latin for the first time. Other changes were attempted to help church-goers better understand various ceremonies and to introduce new innovations that would make them relevant to modern times. Critics blame this moment for the loss of many traditional elements that lent character to the church.
For Antczak, it meant an abrupt change.
“I spent the last year of seminary unlearning what I had learned during the first three years,” he said.
The good old days, he noted, are not always the good old days.
But one essential truth he learned is that “Gods looks after people.”
Antczak received his degree in theology and went on to teach at Seton Hall Prep, and later Seton Hall University. He received his master’s degree from New York University and went on to Catholic University in Washington, where he focused on medivel studies.
Always a very timid individual as a boy, Antczak grew into his role, helping to work with students and others to empower them. He also took a stand against the Vietnam War, working with people to deal with the social and psychological challenges of the times.
He did draft counseling, and said that the church had to be involved. Some of this involved steering people into other ways to serve, such as nursing.
“God moved me in different directions. I’ve enjoyed them. Each period was special, everyone enjoyable. They all presented challenges.” – Rev. Robert Antczak
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But the church has to be involved with the community, teaching people how to care about themselves and others.
Although he always saw himself as a teacher, his role changed over time, living up to his father’s concepts that he would begin to experience other parts of the priesthood.
“God moved me in different directions,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed them. Each period was special, everyone enjoyable. They all presented challenges.”
As directed by the Archbishop in Newark, he began to work as a priest in a variety of parishes. But even this varied from serving as a priest in an impoverished neighborhood in West New York to a parish in the more affluent Bloomfield.
“I was pastor in North Bergen for a couple of years,” he said. “It had a Polish population although the neighborhood was changing. We had a small school, but we managed to keep it open.”
After a few more stints in various parishes around New Jersey, Antczak came back to Jersey City, serving at St. Mary’s for a while before moving into his current position at St. Paul’s.
Over the years, he has been involved in the Priest’s Senate and other church organizations, both local and national.
One of the sad moments came only a few years ago, when the doors of St. Paul the Apostle elementary school closed in June 2003. The declining numbers in enrollment, mixed with the escalating costs of quality education, were both factors in the decision to close.
His biggest concern, however, was how to keep kids close to the church, even when they have moved on to other schools. This, he said, has been accomplished through various programs still ongoing in the existing building.
But he said the school closing had more to do with the cost of education than with any sign that the church is fading away. The church, he said, needs to engage society in new and innovative ways.
Now, looking at retirement, he said it is time to hand things over to the next generation.
“I’m grateful for what I learned over the years,” he said. “It is a journey.”
He said he still has a role to play, and he doesn’t yet know what God has planed for him, but would love to continue to be involved somehow.
“Younger people aren’t against religion,” he said. “Many are still looking for something spiritual in their lives. I teach mythology. My reality has to do with imagination and dreams. We are losing a lot of that. In some ways we’re still caught in the Cold War, thinking that we are behind in math and science when what we really need is music and art to make us human.”
Over the last few years, he has seen his role as bringing people together, and sometimes, this creates some strange unions, such as the recent run for Kenya that also featured the choir of the local Seventh Day Adventist Church.
Antczak will be honored for his service at the noon Mass on Sunday, May 31, at a luncheon in the school center.