I am a priest in the Diocese of the Pacific of the Old Catholic Union of the West.
A native of Pasadena, I now reside with my husband, a few dogs, and a cat, in the High Desert north of the San Gabriel Mountains, amid a forbidding and beautiful landscape in which St Antony might have felt at home.
I was a Philosophy major at Grove City College in Pennsylvania, then read Theology at Oxford, of which University I am a Master of Arts. I hold the degree of Juris Doctor from Northwestern California University School of Law, and am planning to take the bar exam in February, 2025.
For some years I was a Benedictine monk, and, although I left the monastery in 2013 and was subsequently dispensed of my vows by the Holy See, the monastic approach to faith and life was to a profound extent formative of my own.
In order to avoid confusion, I should emphasize here that I am not a Roman Catholic priest. The Church to which I belong is Catholic, but not Roman, allowing us to include fully in the Church’s sacramental life some who are excluded from it by Roman norms.
My apostolate is unusual, to say the least. Like most clergy of my Church, I earn my living by means of full-time “secular work” (although I use that phrase reluctantly), in the French tradition of the Prêtre ouvrier. Since the Old Catholic Union of the West has no congregations in the Antelope Valley, I serve as a sort of chaplain-at-large, making myself available as pastoral needs arise and seeking to pray always for the needs of the Church and the world. What I post here will probably be sporadic, and I ask your patience if it takes me a while to reply, should you choose to contact me.
In the mean time, I wish you
Peace
Father John Hazlet