Diocese of Knoxville men follow different paths on their journey to priesthood
By Bill Brewer
As the Diocese of Knoxville’s growth rate sets a feverish pace, studies suggest it needs to be adding priests at an equally impressive rate to keep up with the rise in Catholic population across East Tennessee.
Henry Flasch, Michael Siegenthaler, Daimen Storch, and Nick Kelley are determined to do their part as they launch into their first semester of seminary studies this fall with the goal of becoming priests in about six years.
The young men for the first time gathered together at the Chancery in August to get their paperwork in order before leaving for seminary, and they took the opportunity to share their vocation-discernment stories.
Mr. Flasch, 20, Mr. Siegenthaler, 49, and Mr. Storch, 22, are studying to be Diocese of Knoxville priests.
Mr. Kelley, 30, is a Knoxville Catholic High School graduate (class of 2014) who is joining the Oblates of the Virgin Mary (OMV) religious order and will become one of their priests when he completes studies at St. John’s Seminary in Boston, where the Oblates of the Virgin Mary provincial offices are located.
Their backgrounds may be as different as the reasons they’re becoming priests, but what they share is a sacrificial devotion to the Church and a deep desire to serve God and His Son.
Henry Flasch
Mr. Flasch was born into a Catholic family in Chattanooga and is one of four children. He has an identical twin brother, Ben. And he has two older siblings, Max, who is 23, and Belle, who is 22. He is learning early in his vocation discernment the meaning of sacrifice. He shared that he turned down an appointment to the U.S. Air Force Academy to pursue his dream of becoming a priest.
However, the Flasches are well represented on the Air Force Academy campus. Max, Belle, and Ben all accepted appointments to the Colorado Springs military school.
Mr. Flasch attended Notre Dame High School in Chattanooga for two years and then transferred to McCallie School, where he and his twin brother were swimmers and where they graduated.
“I was raised in a very devout Catholic family, very loving and supportive. I don’t think anyone ever really thought about Church vocations in my family, but it wasn’t totally out of the question. I first heard, I guess, my call to the priesthood or a religious life when I was in eighth grade. But for a long time, I kind of pushed that to the back of my mind. I guess I believed I wasn’t really fit to be called to serve God in that way. I definitely couldn’t see myself being some great saint or some great priest. I didn’t really feel worthy of a profession like that and devoting my life to God in that way. I still can’t really tell you fully why,” Mr. Flasch said.
He acknowledged “pushing away” the idea of priesthood for several years. But that idea never left him, and after spending a year at Queens University of Charlotte in North Carolina as a swimmer, he relented.
“I was still feeling that feeling. And it came to me that there’s no way that I could push this feeling away unless it was a call from God, because no matter how much I as just a man was trying to live a different life, it was clear to me that God was still calling me,” the Chattanooga resident said. “And I knew it was God because I didn’t really want to be a priest at the time. I wanted to be able to live a regular life. I didn’t want that sacrifice. But the more I discerned on it and prayed on it, the more I dove back into my faith.”
As he came to terms with his decision, he still felt called to discuss it with his priest.
“About Christmastime was the first time I went to confession about it. I asked my priest at the Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul, Father David Carter, about my decision and told him that I feel guilty,” Mr. Flasch said.
A heartfelt talk with Father Carter led to an equally in-depth discussion with Father Mark Schuster, the pastor of St. John Neumann Parish in Farragut who also serves as the director of vocations for the Diocese of Knoxville.
“Father Carter, he’s an amazing man, and definitely an inspiration of who I want to be when I think about becoming a priest,” Mr. Flasch said. “Father Schuster helped me think about why I felt called to the priesthood. And from there, that just gave me so many opportunities of fully contemplating it and discerning it. And I fell in love with the idea of being a priest. I did look into a couple of different religious orders, but in the end, I felt that the lifestyle that I want to live and the way that I want to devote myself to God was through being a diocesan priest.”
As he weighed the decision, he confided in his twin brother the decision he was wrestling with. A reassuring nod from Ben made an impact.
“I was very, very fortunate when I told my twin brother first. He was very proud of me. And I guess that gave me that first bit of either hope or confidence to actually tell a priest about it and ask them for help. And from there, the Diocese of Knoxville was super helpful about helping me discern my vocation. Several priests helped me think about it and helped reassure me that I was doing it for the right reasons and that I wasn’t doing it for some jealous reason, like wanting to escape the normal life. They helped me see that I wanted to better myself and make my life a full-time commitment to God, not just on the weekend, not just at daily Mass, but in everything I do. In everything I say, I think I want it to be about God, and I figured this was the way to do it. I figured that’s how God was calling me to do it,” Mr. Flasch shared.
Mr. Flasch is attending Conception Seminary College in Conception, Mo. His parents are Missy and Andy Flasch.
Michael Siegenthaler
Mr. Siegenthaler was born in Daytona Beach, Fla., and relocated to East Tennessee from Utica, N.Y., where “the Catholic side of the family” is from. His mother’s side of the family is from the Norris Lake area of Campbell County. “They’re the Baptist side of the family,” he noted.
Mr. Siegenthaler is a 1996 graduate of Mainland High School in Daytona Beach (where he attended with NBA Hall of Fame basketball player Vince Carter). Following graduation, he went to the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia, where he graduated in 2000.
He explained that he grew up in the Catholic Church and would spend summers helping his grandparents on their farm in LaFollette.
“I would just do canning, picking vegetables, that sort of stuff, and working the tractor when I got a little older. I never really had a calling to the priesthood growing up because I was more interested in baseball, surfing, basketball, that sort of stuff. But when I got to seventh and eighth grades, the church I went to had a really good confirmation class. It was two years long. We did two hours every week for two years, except for the summer in between those two years. And that’s really when I got a call into the priesthood. I was interested then,” Mr. Siegen-thaler shared.
He acknowledges falling away from his faith as a boy and younger man. But he returned after finding meaning to his faith through people like Bishop Robert Barron, Bishop Fulton Sheen, and other influential Church fathers.
Mr. Siegenthaler since college has worked in commercial design and illustration, doing product development for different companies like Walmart, CVS, Walgreens, Hobby Lobby, Michaels, and JoAnn Fabric. He also worked for an arts-and-crafts company called Spellbinders.
But akin to Mr. Flasch, Mr. Siegenthaler recalled that beginning in middle school he felt an early call to the priesthood.
“Well, initially it was seventh and eighth grade. And even when I started going into high school I started taking Latin and ancient Athenian Greek. So, I had three years of Greek and one year of Latin when I was in high school. It was something that I was really interested in. And I had a priest who taught me Latin and Greek in high school. He had stepped away from the Church because he was battling cancer. After he beat cancer, he ended up teaching at a high school. And he died from the cancer while I was there. In the short time that I spent with him, he really put a fire in me for the classics. That was something that I continued with. His name was Father Robert Brown,” Mr. Siegen-thaler recalled.
The fact that he is a late vocation is not lost on Mr. Siegenthaler, who is a parishioner at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in LaFollette.
“I’m very late,” he said. “I was actually interested in becoming a deacon. I was on the deacon list. … But I was like, well, I’m just going full tilt (toward the priesthood).”
Mr. Siegenthaler shoulders concerns that his younger counterparts don’t yet have to worry about.
“The toughest thing about being older is I have houses, cars, property. My parents live on my property. They’re in their late 60s,” he said. “And so they’re on my property. And I had to get rid of livestock, had to do some things in order to make it easier for them. And that is a concern. I have to find people to help them mow, do things around the house. So, that’s a difficult thing. And also, I’ve worked my entire life. I don’t have anything from my parents. So, I have to rely on myself. I’m hoping I can rely on the Church while going through this formation. We’ll see how it goes,” he said.
Mr. Siegenthaler is attending St. Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology in St. Meinrad, Ind.
Daimen Storch
Mr. Storch comes from a close-knit family that takes a unique approach to faith.
He and his family are originally from Pine Bush, N.Y. They relocated to East Tennessee about four years ago and now live in White Pine in Jefferson County.
His parents, Erin and Aaron Storch, have three children in addition to Daimen. His older brother, Kaden, is 25; his older sister, Devin, is 24; and his younger sister, Ashlyn, is 21.
“I’m a cradle Catholic, born into the faith and have an interesting faith dynamic in my family. My dad’s what I like to call a nominal atheist. He kind of professes atheism, but only in the sense that he’s not Christian. He doesn’t practice anything spiritually, but he has a strong sense of moral justice. And I think he intuits that there is some kind of higher order that is dictating the way that things prevail here. But he’s not in the faith. But my mom is Catholic,” Mr. Storch said.
He described his mother as having a St. Monica kind of faith—practicing a persistent, a patient, and an unyielding prayer life.
“My mother has always been very devout for the extent of my life and has raised us all in the Church. I have two sisters and a brother. Both of my sisters are very devout as well. Both are recently married, and my brother is an agnostic of sorts. He is kind of spiritually apathetic but interested in these things at least philosophically, so we get good conversations,” Mr. Storch noted.
At an early age, Mr. Storch witnessed “this immense wisdom in my mom’s faith.” He said his dad’s opinions on faith tended to overshadow his mother’s beliefs, but her steadfast Catholic faith life resonated with him and his sisters.
“It was an ignition for me to start pursuing studying these things myself. And so I became really interested in philosophy and theology early in high school,” Mr. Storch said, adding that he attended a private, Christian high school in New York.
He acknowledged the positive influence of both his mother and father on him and his siblings and the sacrifices they made to send them to a private, faith-based school. His parents agreed that a private, Christian education was best for their children.
“My dad has a strong moral compass, and he recognized the practicality of the Christian faith and the virtues that it professes, and he wanted us to have that as well. It was a strong sacrifice for him. We don’t come from a lot of money, and we had to pay for private school on top of public-school taxes,” Mr. Storch said. “New York is not an inexpensive place to live. It was difficult. We didn’t vacation or anything like that. It was because we were going to that school. If we were going to public school, things would have been a lot easier.”
He pursued his high-school interests at Gordon College in Wenham, Mass., which perhaps foretold of his interest in the priesthood.
“I got a double major in philosophy and English and a minor in theology. And I wanted to teach. That was what my passion was. I felt that I had been given such an amazing education in high school, and I felt indebted in a sense and wanted to give that back. And so that was my passion like early on in high school all the way through college pretty much,” he said.
During his junior year at Gordon, he recalls attending Mass one day and desiring to improve his Mass experience.
“I was thinking that perhaps this is something like I could step up and do. … I need to implement some change or be the change that I’m looking for. And that was my first thought about priesthood in years. Very early on when I was about 5, I wanted to be a priest. That was what I wanted to do,” he recalled.
He remembers playing Mass when he was a young boy and dressing up as a priest for Halloween.
“Yes, all of those fun things. But I never really seriously considered the priesthood until my junior year of college,” he said.
In the meantime, he was involved in two serious relationships, including one where he believed he would be married.
“And I’d always said jokingly, if we break up, I’m going to join a monastery. But that was in jest. But there was a little bit of seriousness to it. And so we ended up breaking up,” Mr. Storch recalled, adding that he then dated another young woman for more than a year before they went their separate ways.
“Toward the end of that relationship I was really thinking that I haven’t even given thought to discerning a vocation, and I feel like it’s something that every young devout Catholic man should at least consider. Marriage isn’t your only option. There are equal sacrifice and equal greatness and love that can be found in the vocations of priesthood or religious life or otherwise. And so, I was like, all right, well, I feel like right now I’m called to at least discern this route,” he continued.
Mr. Storch acknowledges that even as he begins his seminary studies, he still is discerning. He knows “I want to be a priest like 100 percent,” but he continues to confirm God’s call.
“I’m just trying to strengthen my relationship with Christ and let that be a vessel through which I can pour into other people. That has been the greatest discerning experience. Even as I go into seminary now, as much as I want to be a priest, I don’t know if this is what God is going to fulfill in me. But I’m being called here now, and that’s what’s important to me,” he noted.
Mr. Storch is joining Mr. Siegenthaler in attending St. Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology.
Nick Kelley
Mr. Kelley is an East Tennessean, although his family moved around the country while his father served in the military.
He still considers Knoxville his home—after all, he is a graduate of KCHS and the University of Tennessee. His father is Danny Kelley and his mother is Jennifer Tekstar, who works with Catholic Charities of East Tennessee. He has a brother, Hunter, who is 29, a sister, Josephine, who is 22, and a half-sister, Irisz, who is 9.
Before even attempting to discern the priesthood, Mr. Kelley worked in information technology for nearly 10 years, using his computer science degree to navigate cloud engineering, which is designing, building, and managing computer infrastructure and systems that run applications over the Internet instead of on servers.
He was a member of St. John Neumann Parish in Farragut growing up and St. John XXIII Parish while attending UT. Since he graduated from college, he has been attending Holy Ghost Church in Knoxville.
“I was a cradle Catholic. My dad was Baptist, but he came into the Catholic Church when I was maybe 10. It was when we lived in Germany. I would say my religious calling really first began when I was in high school and went through confirmation. After confirmation I had this real conviction that the Lord was calling me to something,” Mr. Kelley said.
Mr. Kelley developed an early interest in the Jesuits religious order and was set to attend a Jesuit high school in Tampa, Fla., where his father was stationed. However, his parents’ divorce led him and his mother to relocate to Knoxville, where he attended KCHS.
“That caused, I think, the real deepening of my faith, and it was very challenging for a couple of years. Then, there were a few graces in my life, which really started to settle things in my life again. From then on I was always thinking about the priesthood,” he said.
He described eight years of “interior work” as his desire to discern continued to build. In the meantime, he was working in information technology and building a life for himself in the lay world.
“But during that time, I would say I kind of almost bargained with God. I was kind of like, well, let me do this thing first, let me finish this, let me do that, and then I’ll look at it. So, first, of course, it was college. It’s like, let me finish this degree. It was like, OK, I bought the house, let me pay off the house. And then it was, OK, well, I need to have a relationship. So, let me experience a real relationship. I did that. And then it’s like, OK, thank you, Lord,” he shared.
“And then I actually applied to do a come-and-see (seminary visit) with the diocese in 2020. And the week it happened, COVID kicked off. So that come-and-see went away. I was like, OK, Lord, I really don’t know what you expect of me,” he continued.
He was eventually able to visit seminaries, giving his discernment a jumpstart. He again landed with the Jesuits, which he decided to join as a seminarian.
“The Jesuits made a lot of sense. There were a lot of good signals to say, yeah, go ahead. I applied and was accepted and entered in August 2024. Man, that was an awesome year, but a year of trials,” he said.
Mr. Kelley remembered that as part of the Jesuit formation, he was given $5 and a bus ticket across the country and given two weeks to get back to the Jesuit campus.
“A lot of experiences are like that. Is this really wise or prudent? It’s like, no, but you’re doing it,” he said. “I would raise money until I could get a Greyhound (bus) ticket to the next spot. How would you raise money? Well, people were generous. They always gave me stuff. Homeless people gave me things like chocolate bars. I was homeless and getting help from the homeless.”
He noted that when he was with the Jesuits, most of his work was in homeless ministry. “So, I had really good relationships with a lot of people all over the country starting out.”
However, he began to realize that the Jesuit superior wasn’t someone who could help him further his discernment, so he left the order. He returned to Knoxville to regroup.
He served in lay ministry as his discernment continued. Through the Jesuits he had encountered the Oblates of the Virgin Mary, which share similar ministries.
Mr. Kelley entered the Oblates as a postulant on Aug. 15.
“Their specific work, they were started during the Jesuit suppression by former Jesuits. And specifically, their mission is to preach the spiritual exercises and to essentially apply the principles of the discernment of spirit with the Salesian gentleness to give the best possible confessions and direction that they can for their parishioners. They are based out of Boston, and their seminary is in Boston. So, I’m going to be in Boston. I’m actually going to be in the Oblate community attending St. John’s Seminary with also classes from Boston College. So ironically, I’m still getting a Jesuit education. That’s how it goes,” he said.
Mr. Kelley believes there is providence in his past and present discernment.
“I think that was part of that discernment—the spirituality was the correct fit, but the way it was governed was not. Like, OK, well, there are others that are in that family,” he noted. “So, by God’s grace, I applied, got accepted, and now I get to go back to the bottom and relearn those lessons in humility and see where God takes me next.”
Father Mark Schuster, pastor of All Saints Parish in Farragut and director of vocations for the diocese, is excited to see the diocese’s newest candidates for the priesthood enrolled in seminary and beginning their studies.
He has been working closely with Mr. Flasch, Mr. Storch, and Mr. Siegenthaler in their preparation for the seminary, including accompanying them on their come-and-see visits.
“All three are very faithful men who really want to follow Christ as closely as possible. It takes an act of trust to respond to God in such a way, and even just the willingness to risk oneself in following Christ’s call,” Father Schuster said, noting that he is visiting Mr. Flasch, Mr. Storch, and Mr. Siegenthaler this month as he accompanies a new group of young men discerning the priesthood on another round of come-and-see visits to the seminaries.
Beth Parsons, who manages the Office of Vocations for the Diocese of Knoxville, also is excited about the diocese’s newest class of future priests. She is praying for their continued discernment and God’s will in their lives as well as their happiness and success at seminary.
“It is such a joy to see the ways the Holy Spirit continues to work in the lives of young men throughout our diocese. All three of our new diocesan seminarians participated in the Men’s Discernment Group led by Father Schuster, which has been a real blessing and has borne wonderful fruit. Giving young men the opportunity to pray together, ask questions, and walk alongside other men who are discerning has been so valuable. We are incredibly grateful for these four men and for their willingness to say yes to where the Lord may be calling them. Their entrance into seminary is also a beautiful reminder of what can happen when we continue to pray for vocations, invite young men to consider the priesthood, and give them opportunities to discern that call,” Mrs. Parsons said.
As vocations director, Father Schuster sees the continuing need for vocations firsthand.
“We need vocations. We need priests. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, we need priests. We need priests to be ministers to bring the sacraments to the people, to teach the faith. Yes, we need priests, we need consecrated religious, we need good, holy marriages,” Father Schuster said. “All of us are working together in cooperation with our Lord, but we definitely need priests. And we have a lot of young men who are responding through the Men’s Discernment Group, which is very encouraging, as we see all across the country.”