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Father Stephen Rehrauer, C.Ss.R., newly invited professor of the Accademia Alfonsiana, is celebrating 25 years of religious life and service in 1999.
Fr. Rehrauer, a member of the newly organized Denver Province of the Redemptorists, is a native of the state of Wisconsin, U.S.A.. Born in Green Bay, he grew up in the city of West De Pere, where the awareness of his call to the religious life came very early. He attended the Catholic grade school of St. Boniface parish, where he was taught the fundamental truths of the Catholic faith by the Sisters of St. Francis of the Holy Cross, the order to which his older sister now belongs. The third of six children in the family, he began his formal religious studies at age 14 when he entered the Redemptorist minor seminary in Edgerton, Wisconsin, U.S.A. He made his novitiate at Immaculate Conception Novitiate in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin and first professed religious vows as a member of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer on July 28, 1974.
During the following years he earned a bachelor of arts degree with an extended major in philosophy from Holy Redeemer College, and then went on to earn two masters degrees, one in Religious Education and another in Ministry, from Mt. St. Alphonsus Seminary in Esopus, New York. He was ordained to the priesthood in June of 1980 and was subsequently assigned to St. Joseph’s Parish in Denver, Colorado where he served for two and a half years as parochial vicar.
In 1983 he was asked by his religious superiors to do further study in moral theology with the intention of teaching in the college seminary. He opted to study at the Instituto Superior de Ciencias Morales, the Redemptorist institute of Moral theology in Madrid, Spain, becoming the first United States citizen ever to study there. He received his licentiate in Moral Theology in 1985. Since by this time a decision had been made to close the Redemptorist college seminary, he returned to the United States and spent the following ten years working in a variety of ministries - as parochial vicar, director of priestly formation, parish missionary, among others.
Father Rehrauer returned to Madrid in 1993 and earned his doctorate in Moral Theology in the Spring of 1996, writing his dissertation on Responsibility and the Human Person: Its Nature and Attribution in Moral Theology and the Contribution of Psychological Theories of Attribution, under the direction of the highly respected Spanish moral theologian Miguel Rubio, C.Ss.R.. He was asked by the administration of the Instituto Superior de Ciencias Morales and encouraged by the best known Spanish Redemptorist moral theologian Marciano Vidal, C.Ss.R. to join the faculty as a regular visiting professor and received permission from his province to do so.
In 1997 he was asked by the Alphonsian Academy to join the faculty as an invited professor and accepted the invitation to teach in the department of ‘Empirical Anthropology.’ In addition to offering a number of different seminars, Fr. Rehrauer offers a basic course on "The Human Act" and a more detailed course on "Moral Reasoning." He draws heavily from the latest research being carried out in cognitive social psychology and cultural anthropology and attempts to help his students learn how to maintain an authentic religious dialogue between faith and empirical and social science. He now divides his time between Madrid and Rome, teaching one semester in Madrid and three semesters in Rome every two year cycle.
In reflecting upon the past 25 years, Father Rehrauer remarks: "I’ve been privileged to have the best of both worlds. I’ve been given the opportunity to serve God’s people pastorally and to learn from them the type of religious God is calling me to be, and now I am being given the opportunity to share what I have learned from this experience with others who are being called to do the same. Above all, both my years of pastoral work and my years of study have deepened my conviction that the way of doing moral theology taught us by St. Alphonsus is and must remain an essential part of our ministry as Redemptorists.
At the Alphonsian Academy our purpose is the reconciliation of people to God through Christ. We study, teach and pray Moral Theology in such a way that we are better able to bring the good news to people in their everyday lives that ‘With Christ there is plentiful redemption for all,’ and that every situation, every choice, every decision is an opportunity to experience this redemption at work. I cannot imagine anything more important that I could have done with my life during the past 25 years than place myself at the service of this message, and I cannot imagine anything that I would rather do in future years."