June 26, 2009
Scripture scholar celebrates his golden jubilee this year
By MARY ANN HUGHES (Message staff writer)
Since he was a young man of 16, Father Donald Dilger has given his life to the serious study of the Scriptures.
He always had the “urge to know,” and because of his quest for more and more knowledge he has become a renowned Scripture scholar, teacher and writer.
He grew up in Mariah Hill, the third of the six children of Frank and Eleanora (Kern) Dilger. “I had wonderful parents,” he said.
When he is asked if they were “faithful Catholics,” he answers, “We went to Mass every day, twice on Sunday. We went to Vespers in the afternoon, and Benediction followed.
“We all enjoyed it. It was as much a part of our day as sitting at the table together. It was a natural step to go to that life in the seminary.”
He graduated from Dale High School in 1948, and then spent two years working in construction and farming. “I worked like a man since I was 10 years old. It was a wonderful life.”
The idea to become a priest began to form when he was about 16, as he started to intensely study Scripture. “It comes from inside,” he said of the call to priesthood, helped by the “good Benedictine priests” he knew at his parish, Mary, Help of Christians.
He chuckles as he remembers the day his mother found his application to St. Meinrad. “I would have told her eventually,” he said, explaining, “You didn’t talk things over, not in those old German families. You expressed your love by obedience.”
In 1950, he headed seven miles up the road to St. Meinrad Archabbey. There he completed a year’s study which included first year Greek and Latin. That summer, he was given textbooks with Latin studies for years two, three and four. “I did it, and when I took the test, I beat them all,” he remembers with a smile.
“In the environment I grew up in, you did not play. I applied that to Latin that summer.”
He spent the next four years in college at St. Meinrad. Then Bishop Henry J. Grimmelsman made the decision that he would study for the priesthood in Innsbruck, Austria, perhaps because of his talent with languages. “The professors there taught in Latin.”
He was ordained to the priesthood in Austria on March 15, 1959, and when he returned to his home parish that August, there was a huge celebration for the native son.
“The whole parish turned out for those things,” he remembers. The procession included all the young girls who wore long dresses and carried fresh flowers, and all the young boys who wore white shirts and dark pants. “It was a grand entrance. “The ladies all cooked a tremendous dinner. The whole parish was so proud, and everybody did everything they could for that.”
He was 28 years old, and his first assignment was as assistant pastor at Holy Redeemer Church on Evansville’s north side. It was a young, growing parish, and often there were five or six baptisms on Sunday. “A lot of [World War II] veterans came back and settled there.”
He said he enjoyed parish work, and still has friends at Holy Redeemer, but was “always more inclined to academics.”
In 1962, he was sent to Catholic University in Washington, D.C., to earn a master’s degree. When he returned to Evansville, he became the rector of Magister Noster Latin School.
“I reported to Bishop Grimmelsman every week that first year,” he remembers. The high school, established for the preparation of diocesan priests, offered a “tough schedule” with four years of Latin and three years of math.
When the school was closed in the early 1970s, he headed north to the University of Notre Dame to study Scripture. There he took courses in Hebrew, Aramaic and Syriac because “important Scriptures were written in that language.”
In the 1980s, Bishop Francis R. Shea designated him as Teacher of Scripture for the Diocese of Evansville, and 23 years ago, when Paul Leingang was named editor of the Message Father Dilger began writing a weekly Gospel commentary in the diocesan newspaper.
Today, he spends his summers writing the columns, and says he has written about each Gospel seven or eight times. He also teaches church history classes throughout the diocese, and has written his own manuscripts, which cover about 1,500 years — so far.
He celebrates weekend Masses in churches throughout southern Indiana. “I really enjoy the weekends, teaching and preaching in parishes, and my classes teaching church history. The last 10 to 15 minutes of the classes I spend on Scriptures. I will not leave Scripture out,” he insists.
He also celebrates the Tridentine or Latin Mass once a month at Holy Trinity Church in downtown Evansville.
The 78-year-old priest lives in a modest house on the edge of a forest near the Ohio River. There’s not a blade of grass on his property which has been completely converted into gardens. His home is filled with reference books which he uses in his scripture studies.
He spends his days in prayer and study. He says the rosary daily, alternating the decades between Latin, Greek, English and German. He also studies theologians and reads widely, anything that he thinks will help him in his teaching and preaching.
As he looks back on his life as a priest, he says, “I wouldn’t exchange it for anything.”