On the Road with Roach

A Tribute to Father Michael Roach

By Rev. Msgr. Andrew Baker, S.T.D.

FOR 42 YEARS, Father Michael Roach, a priest of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, has been teaching Church History at the Seminary. One of his most popular courses—“Research Seminar: History of the Church in the USA”—involves some visits to various historically significant sites in and around the Baltimore area. No one knows the official name of the course. It is a boring title, anyway. The course is simply and affectionately known as “On the Road with Roach.”

Father Roach’s personal road began in his native Baltimore. He grew up the second son of a doctor and nurse in the post-World War II era. He graduated from Loyola College with a bachelor’s degree in history and eventually earned a Master of Arts in history from The Catholic University of America, a member of the first class to graduate under the endowed chair in American Church History.

He received his formation at St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore and was ordained a priest in 1971 by Cardinal Lawrence Shehan. He was hired as an adjunct professor of Church History back in 1978 and has taught multiple generations of future priests.

Msgr. James Farmer, Archdiocese of Baltimore, S’80, who has known Fr. Roach since their days together at Loyola College, pays the historian a high compliment saying that “he is an extremely good human being.” Not only that but, as Msgr. Philip Halfacre, Diocese of Peoria, S’91, recalls, seminarians took his courses just to be with a fine priest. “Being with him was formative for us apart from the concrete things he taught,” Msgr. Halfacre said.

Some of his students remember his classes being very engaging and even entertaining. “He was the most interesting professor we had,” Msgr. Edward O’Connor, Diocese of Allentown, S’81, said. “The worst sin a historian can commit,” Fr. Roach once admitted to a seminarian, “is to be boring.” His classes are never boring.

With the class in the Elder Cemetery

One of Fr. Roach’s greatest qualities is his dry sense of humor. After traveling in an airplane to concelebrate the First Mass of a newly ordained Mountie, Fr. Roach observed, “the airplane seats get smaller every year.” His humor finds its way into the classroom and casual conversation. Fr. Roach likes to quote Jacques Kelly, a journalist from the Baltimore Sun, when he begins a conference. “Just make it up,” Kelly says. After a class or conference, the audience knows that not only has it not been made up but that they have been taken on a trip through history that is very real.

Over the last several years Fr. Roach has given a talk to the new seminarians during orientation week on the history of the Mount. Fr. Roach tells them that the reason he was chosen to provide reflections on the Mount’s illustrious history is not because of his own knowledge and skill but because he is “the only game in town. Everybody else is dead!”

As he recounts the history of the Mount, Fr. Roach somehow weaves comments by St. Clement of Alexandria, the opinion of St. John Henry Newman, and the legend of the Indian Ottawanta to fill out his story. He is able to provide context and background for Fr. Dubois arrival, the challenges of the Civil War years and the string of Seminary rectors through the 20th century. At a certain point Fr. Roach speaks of people and events he knows. The seminarians suddenly realize that not only does he know Church History, he has lived it.

When Father Roach speaks of history you get the sense that he might even know some of these people. From the insights he provides, you begin to wonder whether you know them. He has a way about tying facts together that provide a robust view of history. Who would have known that one of the “local kids” who accidently burned down the Church on the Hill (which stood where the Grotto bell tower now stands) on the 4th of July with an errant Roman candle, later became a Monsignor in Pittsburgh? Only Fr. Roach.

Even though he is a top-notch Church historian, he has never lost his love and contact with parish life. Fr. Roach served for several years as an assistant pastor until he became pastor of St. Peter the Apostle Parish in Baltimore in 1981. Since 1996, he has been pastor of St. Bartholomew Parish in Manchester, Maryland. Many seminarians have been mentored by him in his role as pastor.

With seminarians

Fr. Tyler Kline, Archdiocese of Baltimore, S’19, was struggling with his vocation as a seminarian and had the opportunity to serve one summer in Fr. Roach’s parish. “It was that experience,” Fr. Kline says, “that made me stay.” His pastor’s heart is always worn on his sleeve. Even as a Seminary professor and formator, Fr. Roach is first a pastor. He has the envious ability to laugh at himself and, at the same time, constantly say, “God’s in charge.”

When the seminarians take the course called “On the Road with Roach,” they follow more than the historical paths of early Catholicism in the United States. They also follow the road of a priest who has lived much of recent Catholic history and who provides footsteps in which they can stand in order to be good, zealous and holy priests.

The Seminary is grateful to all those who work to accomplish our mission of priestly formation but especially those priests who, like Fr. Roach, forge ahead in the life of a priest, leaving seminarians the road to follow.