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CNS Story:
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OUBRE Jul-1-2008 (1,070 words) With photo. xxxn
Pastor, labor advocate, seafarer, biker: Texas priest does it all
By Mark Pattison
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Father Sinclair Oubre, like many priests, has multiple responsibilities.
They include being pastor of a parish and administrator of a mission in the Diocese of Beaumont, Texas; running the Apostleship of the Sea office for the diocese and serving on the apostleship's national board; being Web site administrator of the Catholic Labor Network and sponsoring meetings in Washington in conjunction with the annual Catholic Social Ministry Gathering; and being on the board of directors of Interfaith Worker Justice.
Now, what could a man like that do that would combine all of those interests and avocations?
Would you believe working one month every year as a seafarer -- using his accumulated vacation time from priestly ministry to do so?
Father Oubre, 50, first started working on boats as a seminary student during the summer to help pay for tuition. Now he does it to keep active his membership in the International Seafarers' Union, and as a change of pace from parish life.
"So much of the work of running a parish is cerebral. You're either doing paperwork or you're speaking. It's all cerebral stuff," Father Oubre told Catholic News Service in a telephone interview from Beaumont.
"When my watch (on the ship) is over with I'm finished," added the priest, pastor of St. John the Evangelist Church in Port Arthur, Texas. "There's nobody coming to the door asking for the key to the hall."
But on board Father Oubre isn't totally away from the priesthood.
"I'll have my Mass kit with me and I say Mass in my room and sometimes they (other seafarers) join me," Father Oubre said.
Because the other seafarers on the ship know he's a priest, they'll come to him with their troubles. According to him, problems often deal with the difficulty they are facing in becoming a Catholic or getting married in the church, because with their crew schedule they don't have shore leave to attend classes required by the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults program or the marriage preparation classes they need.
"Usually I try to explain to them what they need to do," Father Oubre told CNS. "As an Apostleship of the Sea port chaplain, a priest has the capacity to do weddings for people who are 'people of the sea,' and sometimes you solve the problem that way."
On one occasion, he noted, he was asked to preside over a burial of ashes at sea; the ashes were placed in an urn, which was put into the ocean.
The priest has other interests, among them cigars, baseball and Lionel trains. He also likes riding Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
"He and I have shared many a cigar together discussing the issues of the world," said Tom Shellabarger, a domestic policy adviser for the U.S. bishops' Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development. "He's a very energetic young priest who is really committed to the social teachings of the church."
Shellabarger said Father Oubre's mentor was the late Msgr. George Higgins, the longtime "labor priest."
"He met Msgr. Higgins at a labor gathering in Des Moines (Iowa) when there were young priests like himself (who) found themselves in the midst of labor disputes and were looking for support from their fellow priests," Shellabarger said.
Msgr. Higgins "and some of the old-timers that had been in the early labor movement, called them together. ... He often talks about meeting Msgr. Higgins, talking about what a wonderful opportunity that was," he added.
At sea, Father Oubre said, his day is dictated by the hours of the watch -- "12 to 4, 4 to 8, 8 to 12. You stand (for) two four-hour watches every day. You do the watches and then usually you work four hours of overtime a day. So basically you're doing 12 hours of work a day," he said.
"If you work from 12 a.m. to 4 a.m., you go to sleep until 7 a.m. and get three hours of sleep before they rouse you to do four hours of overtime. You sort of limp with the deprivation of sleep on that watch. And being the low man on the totem pole because I never stay around long enough to change the situation, I almost always get the 12 to 4 watch," he explained.
His latest seafarer stretch was in January. He sailed from Lake Charles, La., to relieve a crew that was assisting a tanker 20 miles off the beach at San Juan, Puerto Rico.
"I've been in 15-foot seas," Father Oubre told CNS. "We were beat up pretty bad in January. There was a cold front in January that spawned a number of destructive tornadoes. We were going between Cape Canaveral and Jacksonville (Fla.). And we were going into the storm. It just beat the heck out of us. You know the maracas, the shakers with the beans in them? We were the beans in the maracas."
Father Oubre added he's usually sailing on a U.S.-flagged tanker carrying refined petroleum products to Florida, Louisiana or up the East Coast. He hopes to join another crew in November.
Father Oubre is an able-bodied seaman, known as AB. And that's not just a descriptive phrase, but a skill designation.
"In the old days, the 'AB' guys were the guys who were able to go up into the mast," he said, which implied that one had the skill to handle heights and "a lot of other stuff."
It's equivalent to the craft industries, like plumbing, where one goes "from apprentice to journeyman," he said.
While seafaring isn't for everybody, conditions are making it even less attractive.
Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, "some seafarers have been abused by policies that deny them shore leave. They're denied the ability to take care of personal needs, as well as the basic ability to go onshore," Father Oubre said. "This can be a morale-killer. You can be out for 20-30 days. ... They can keep you on the boat just because they can. We don't need to put up with that kind of stuff."
On the other hand, there's currently "a tremendous shortage of mariners" and at the same time there's "a need to develop 14,000 new mariners," Father Oubre said.
And as for him, "I'm getting a little old to do this stuff," he said with a laugh.
END
Copyright (c) 2008 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
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