Father Colton to celebrate 50 years as a priest | News, Sports, Jobs

The Rev. Gary Colton poses Thursday afternoon at St. Theresa Church in Kihei. On Friday, the church will host a Mass and a dinner celebrating Colton’s 50th anniversary of ordination. -- The Maui News / MATTHEW THAYER photo

More than 50 years ago, the Rev. Gary Colton was inspired to enter the priesthood by Father Robert Turgeon, an outgoing and friendly priest at the Star of the Sea parish on Oahu.

“In those early years, I was shy,” he recalled in an interview recently at St. Theresa Church in Kihei. “I was not comfortable with people, and I wanted to be, and, here he was. . . . In church, he was very comfortable, and I liked that. . . . What he had is what I wanted.”

And that set the course for Colton to study at St. Stephen’s Seminary in Honolulu in his late high school and early college years before traveling to St. Patrick’s Seminary at Menlo Park, Calif., for his senior college years and theological studies. He was ordained June 1, 1968.

On Friday, 50 years to the day later, St. Theresa Church in Kihei will host an anniversary celebration with Colton serving as the main celebrant during Mass that begins at 6 p.m. Hawaii Bishop Larry Silva will concelebrate with fellow priests, including St. Theresa pastor and Maui Vicar Forane the Rev. Msgr. Terrence Watanabe and Hawaii Vicar General the Very Rev. Msgr. Gary Secor.

“I’m really excited,” said Colton, 76. “It’s really going to be, in my mind, a gathering of the Catholic Church in Hawaii.”

Colton in 1968

Dinner will follow Mass. Approximately 350 dinner tickets have sold out, but the Mass remains open for anyone to celebrate Colton’s lifetime of service.

Born Jan. 21, 1942, in Van Nuys, Calif., Colton and his family moved to Maui in the early 1950s because his father, a dentist, loved Hawaii and wanted his family to live in the islands. Later, the family moved to Oahu for the elder Colton to set up a private dental practice in Waikiki.

Colton’s mother didn’t want him to become a priest, but his father didn’t oppose his choice of vocation.

“My dad said, ‘You know, if that’s what you want to do, go ahead,’ “ he recalled. “My mom didn’t want that. She wanted me home.”

Colton began boarding at St. Stephen’s on the windward side of Oahu after he completed the 8th grade at Star of the Sea in Waialae-Kahala.

When he wasn’t serving as a parish priest, Colton indulged in some of his other passions — golf, running and travel. In April 2001, Colton runs in a marathon in Big Sur, Calif.

At St. Stephen’s, “it was rigorous but comfortable,” he said. “We really studied. It was regimented — study hall, classes, counselors once a month to go over report cards, not just parents.”

Later, in the mid-1960s, he was at St. Patrick’s Seminary at a time when the church was going through a revolutionary transformation brought by the Second Vatican Counsel, also known as Vatican II. Older priests were resistant to changes that included turning the altar around to face the congregation and saying Mass in English, rather than only in Latin, Colton said.

While he embraced the new ways as a young priest, older priests would say, “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” he recalled.

After his ordination, Colton went to Oahu where he was assigned to St. Theresa Catholic Church in Honolulu from 1968 to 1971, St. John Vianney parish in Kailua from 1971 to 1973, Our Lady of Good Counsel in Pearl City from 1973 to 1977 and Our Lady of Sorrows in Wahiawa from 1977 to 1981.

Then, he moved to Maui where he was assigned as pastor at St. Rita Church in Haiku, where he served from 1981 to 1988.

In 1999, Colton went on a tour of Rome and northern Italy. He visited Rome (other photo) and Venice.

It was in the early 1980s at St. Rita’s and the mission church St. Gabriel in Keanae where the once-shy boy became the priest he dreamed of being.

Colton recalled a Sunday baptism in Keanae, a mostly Native Hawaiian community, where he stayed back for a potluck meal. Members of the parish believed the young priest would only serve the community a month or two before moving on, so they were careful not to get too close to him, he said.

At the potluck, “I stayed, and I ate everything,” he said, recalling his hosts’ surprise that he’d eat Hawaiian food.

“He likes the poi,” he recalled them saying. “Give him a laulau and see what happens. . . . I ate their food. I could sing their songs. Then, they invited me to go down to the taro patches where they worked.”

There, despite the mud, he walked in. “They couldn’t believe it,” Colton said. “I walked into the mud. . . . I almost fell, but they grabbed my arm and pulled me up.”

Then, he went down to a waterfall and went swimming with kids there. They climbed the rocks.

“I was down here, and they’re up on the rocks jumping off,” he said. ” ‘OK, bomb the priest!’ They were coming in left and right.

“That started it,” he said. “Things really came together.”

Later, at St. Rita’s, termites had infested the old church, inflicting what appeared to be significant structural damage, he said. The floor was so uneven that “it looked like the ocean.”

It was believed the venerable church would need to be torn down, but he said he wanted to see if it could be saved. Closer scrutiny of the structure revealed that most of the termite damage was in the floor joists and flooring itself.

“The building was sinking a little bit, but it could be fixed,” he said. The flooring and support beams were replaced, and “all of sudden the roof came into place with new shingles; it was like you had a new building.”

The altar was moved closer to the congregation, and the end result was an intimate, comfortable church for prayer and worship, Colton said.

It was a place for “full and active participation,” he said, echoing Vatican II. “That’s a good example.”

Colton retired as a parish priest in July 2012 after serving as pastor at Maria Lanakila Church in Lahaina for six years. He also served as pastor at Christ the King Church in Kahului from 1988 to 1994 and at St. Rita in Haiku and Holy Rosary in Paia from 1994 to 2002. From 2002 to 2006, he was pastor at Co-Cathedral of St. Theresa in Honolulu.

Even in retirement, Colton remains active as a priest, celebrating Mass as a substitute for pastors at every church on Maui, he said.

“I’m having a good time,” he said. “The part I’m really happy about and comfortable with is that my administrative responsibilities are over.”

Now, it’s fun, he said.

“I greet everybody, and see the people whose children I baptized or whom I married, and they’ve got five kids,” he said. “Just to say Mass in that particular church where I was once the pastor, it’s delightful.”

He estimated that he’s baptized more than 400 children and married approximately 200 couples in his career.

Colton said he has no regrets entering the priesthood and regards his celibacy as a choice rather than a sacrifice.

Instead, he reflected on what married couples do to live, work and love together.

“At times when I sit back and I say to myself, ‘They’re making more of a sacrifice than me,’ “ Colton said. “I don’t have to worry about kids’ education. I don’t have to worry about the doctor bills. I don’t have to worry about a place to live and how many bedrooms in a house. Wherever I go, I have room and board and a car, spending money, which has always been for me not extravagant but sufficient.”

Colton continues to serve as a chaplain for the Maui Police Department. He’s a member of the advisory board for Catholic Charities Hawaii, Maui; a member of the Diocesan Board of Education for Hawaii Catholic Schools; and he’s one of the founding members and an ongoing member of the board of directors for Ka Hale A Ke Ola Homeless Resources Centers.

And, somewhere over the years, Colton found time to indulge in his passion for travel and to run six marathons — two on Maui, two in Honolulu and two at Big Sur, Calif.

Colton said a favorite piece of scripture that has guided him throughout his career was John, Chapter 10, verse 10. The second half of it says: “I came that they might have life and have it to the full.”

“I believe and feel that it is my purpose as a Catholic priest to bring a happy and fulfilled life to all that I meet and especially to all for whom I pray and to whom I bring contact to Jesus who loves us so much that he died for us,” he said.

* Brian Perry can be reached at bperry@mauinews.com.

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