CHARLOTTE — Father Carl Del Giudice is retiring this year from active ministry, where he has most recently served as pastor of Our Lady of Consolation Church in Charlotte and prior to that, many years as pastor of Sacred Heart Church in Brevard. The Catholic News Herald recently sat down to interview him and look back over his ministry:
CNH: Were you raised Catholic?
Father Carl: Growing up I went to a Catholic church; it was my parents’ church. I grew up with my parents’ faith and my parents’ religion. I was part of that experience, but it is not until I left home that I finally developed my own identity as a follower of Christ. We do our own thing and we come to an understanding, grasping for the Lord because the Lord never abandons us.
CNH: Did you feel close to God your whole life?
Father Carl: When I moved to Boone in the 1960s, for a lot of my classmates, I was the first Catholic they ever met. I had never thought anything of that, but in their mind, it was like, what is this Catholic thing? I represented someone they probably read and heard about. I began hearing all kinds of errors, and tragically those errors were not because my classmates thought differently, but from what they were taught in their churches. All kinds of craziness! I began looking at ways to defend my Catholicism and see who I was as a Catholic. I doubled-down, studying what it means for me as far as Catholicism. I came to my faith experience on my own terms so I could have a new understanding of Catholicism.
CNH: Tell us about when you were transferred to Our Lady of Consolation Church from Sacred Heart Church in Brevard.
Father Carl: I knew well in advance that I was getting transferred from Brevard. I asked to stay where I was. I was 65. I said to Monsignor (Mauricio) West, “I want to stay, I have five more years to retire and I want to finish doing my swan song and then go into retirement, riding off in the sunset. This is what you do in private industry. The guy in with a company for many decades, you let him finish his years, give him a gold watch and send him on his merry way.” Monsignor West replied, “Carl, this is not private industry, this is the Church.” I knew he was right. He told me where I was going, and I understood. The transfer was not about me, but about the life of the parish and the people of the parish. It is not about the priest, so much as it is the needs of the people involved. And the pastor has to respond to those needs. I was also familiar with OLC because I was a transitional deacon there from 1980 to 1981.
CNH: How has OLC responded to you as pastor?
Father Carl: My first two weeks here, a parishioner came to see me. I knew Mary 30 years earlier when I was here as a seminarian. I asked Mary if she could recommend a doctor and a dentist. I needed a physical and I didn’t know where to go here. So, she sits there for a while, and finally she says jokingly, “Well, do you mind if they are black?” I said to her, “I don’t care.” Currently, my doctor is black and my dentist is black because this is where I am living. Why would I need to go anywhere else other than right around here?”
The congregation puts up with me and my eccentricities. I feel comfortable with my parishioners and that is why I am here. In my job, they don’t enter my life, I must enter in their lives. I think we tend to sometimes gloss over that. So regardless of where I am, I have to enter into where they are in their lives and their relationship with Lord, understand where they are at, and help them go in the direction they want to go. I am not the judge, the jury and the hangman. I see what the people are doing, see if they are on point.
Black lives do matter. Unless you are in this community, you don’t understand it. To realize what it means, you have to live here. To put it into perspective, Mr. Joe Maguire, my maintenance man, was mowing the lawn and ran out of gas. He took the gas cans to his pickup truck and stopped at Home Depot to get the cylinder to cycle in the oil. He is standing in the back of his pickup truck, pouring oil, when a police car pulls up. The cop rolls down the window and asks him if that is his truck. Right there, asks for his license and registration. And while Joe was talking to the officer, another police car swings around. Well, he is a black man in his truck on a Saturday being stopped. Why? You mean a black man can’t have a nice truck? That’s racist. If it were a white man there, the cops wouldn’t have stopped. No, that’s white privilege.
CNH: What is the most significant sign from God you have ever received?
Father Carl: Signs from God are unfolding every day of life. The Lord is always addressing us, constantly. If we don’t hear Him, (it is because) we are too busy to stop and listen. Some days it’s clear, some days it’s cloudy, but that’s where we are sometimes. Every day is a wondrous experience of religious expression. Prayer life doesn’t mean sitting in a room beating your breast for two hours. I see enough of that from people. People go through all the gesticulations of prayer rather than being present in that moment, even in small ways. Every day I wake up, sit at the edge of the bed, put both feet on the floor – and the dog is looking at me, because the dog has to go out – and I say, “Thank you, Jesus for another day I am awake. Thank you that I am alive and I get to go on another day.” It is as simple as that.
CNH: Do you have any words of wisdom for Catholics?
Father Carl: It is important for anyone – whether they are actively the pastor, a parishioner, or a young man in formation of the priesthood – to develop a solid prayer life, a prayer life focusing on building a relationship with the Lord. We must enter into a prayer relationship for the totality of our nature. We need to express ourselves to the Lord Almighty, so we can be tied, together, with Him. We need time with our Lord. With an ongoing prayer routine and the Lord’s grace, we are able to endure whatever suffering or challenges are laid out before us. Sometimes we turn from the Lord, yet the Lord will never turn away from us. None of us are a lost cause, no matter where we may be from.
— Lisa Geraci, Correspondent