December 29, 2014
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Not that he was thinking of Descartes back when, as a high school senior, he decided to come to Thomas Aquinas College. “I did not go to the College for the intellectual life,” Fr. Busch admits. The second of three sons, he grew up attending public schools in Tallahassee, where Catholics make up just 4 percent of the population. He spent much of his teenage years debating religion with his non-Catholic friends, defending the existence of God and the divinity of Christ, and disputing charges about the Crusades and the Inquisition. (“I was usually on the defensive,” he remembers.)

So when it came time to choose a college, he sought one that would offer a vibrant Catholic community. “I had no friends who were Catholic, and so I thought, ‘Here is my chance to be around people who are all Catholic!’” he recalls. Thomas Aquinas College would be his refuge from conflict, a “city on the hill,” as he put it. Academics were an afterthought.

“But what actually happened when I got to the College was that I fell in love with philosophy and the intellectual pursuits,” says Fr. Busch. “In every class I kept discovering new truths. It made me fall in love with God in a different way, through His creation. I could see what St. Augustine calls ‘the vestiges of the Trinity’ at work in everything, and that opened up new avenues of prayer for me. It caused me to grow spiritually.”

Meanwhile, learning by way of the Discussion Method in the College’s classrooms nurtured his humility, especially when — as happened more than once — Fr. Busch found himself on the wrong side of an argument. “We gain nothing by being right all the time,” he observes. “It is only when we are wrong, and then admit it, that we gain new insights, new knowledge, new growth.” Humility, he came to realize, is an essential part of the intellectual life and the spiritual life. “If you don’t have humility, you are not going to get very far when it comes to finding the truth and grasping it. That truth is God, and God just does not deal with the prideful. He does not share His secrets with them.”

Quite unexpectedly, Fr. Busch found that the intellectual life of the College had an even greater effect on his spiritual growth than did the Catholic community that he had initially sought. Although he had once imagined the College to be “Catholicville, this little paradise on earth,” he learned that his faithful peers were just as prone to normal human failings and weaknesses as he was. Moreover, he had come to miss defending the Faith among unbelievers. “It helps me to keep the blade sharp,” he remarks. That insight allowed him to see that his was a diocesan vocation. “I have a lot of respect for people who thrive in a monastic atmosphere,” he says, “but I am not one of them.”

Still, it would take some time before he was ready to pursue his vocation. When he graduated from the College in 2004, he “wasn’t ready,” he concedes. “I still wasn’t mature enough.” So he traveled in Europe for a few months and then, for several years, dabbled in real estate, tutoring, and other ventures before entering the seminary in 2009. Although it typically takes seminarians nine years to prepare for ordination in his diocese, Fr. Busch was able to do so in five, having already completed the necessary theological training at the College.

On May 11, his bishop, the Most Rev. Gregory Parkes, ordained him to the priesthood of Jesus Christ, and a few weeks later Fr. Busch began his first assignment. He is the parochial vicar of Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Tallahassee, where he himself was baptized 33 years earlier. “Now I am baptizing babies here,” he says. “And I am hearing confessions and celebrating Masses. We have a hospital up the street and a school attached to the parish. I am always busy.”

His is the active life of a secular priest, working among God’s people, in whom His glory is ever visible.