Fr. Gregory Coupal: Signs of God’s love

There are a number of theories about how time works. Some say that it is linear, others say that it is circular or cyclical. While the physicists argue the matter out, Fr. Greg Coupal’s life might be used as an argument for the case that time might just be cyclical after all.

Born in Regina, Saskatchewan, in 1946, Fr. Greg moved to Calgary at the age of 6.  He first attended Holy Name Cottage School in Glengarry, one of the cottage schools which were developed by the school boards in Calgary to help reach sparsely populated parts of the city before they filled out in the years after World War II. He later attended St. Charles School and then St. Mary’s Boys High School.

The Coupal family was a mixed-marriage family — Fr. Greg’s father, Jean-Paul, was a Catholic, and his mother, Dorothy, was an Anglican. Aside from himself, the Coupals also had a daughter, Cathy, five years younger than Fr. Greg. He, his father, and his sister would attend Mass regularly at Sacred Heart Parish, and his mother would join them for major occasions.  Fr. Stan Henke was the young assistant at Sacred Heart at this time, and he gave Fr. Greg his first communion; Fr. Stan would later become a very good friend. 

While the Coupals were not directly encouraging of their son’s vocation, they were very supportive of it. Fr. Greg was never an altar server (even though his mother typed out all the responses for the trainees learning their Latin), not was the family the kind to pray the rosary together every night, yet he remembers his father’s pride in telling the sisters who were guarding exhibits at Expo 67 in Montreal that “This is my son!  He’s going to be a priest!”

Fr. Greg got his first “feelings” that he was called to the priesthood while studying at St. Mary’s High School. The Basilians were his teachers at the time, and the family had just moved to the new St. Gerard’s Parish, where Msgr. J. J. “Jack” O’Brien was pastor and Fr. Phil Fry was assistant. Msgr. O’Brien was very influential for Fr. Greg as a terrific model, and it was he who arranged for Fr. Greg to meet with Bishop Carroll as he was finishing high school. Fr. Greg was still missing Math 30 at the end of high school, and had to return to St. Mary’s the next year to complete it. Bishop Carroll was nonplussed, and said: “You don’t need Math 30 to count the collection.”

Fr. Greg entered St. Joseph’s Seminary in Edmonton in 1965, just as the Second Vatican Council was drawing to a close.  It was still very monastic when he entered, and change was very gradual.  Seminarians were not to visit in each other’s rooms, and there was complete silence after night prayer.  However, the anticipation of change after the council showed some weakness in the formerly unflappable structures of seminary life; “What do we do?” and “Where do we go from here?” seemed to be the unspoken, and sometimes seriously debated, questions that hung in the air in those years. 

The major development at the seminary at the time was the creation of Newman Theological College, and seminarians’ courses were conducted under the jurisdiction of NTC, even though they were within the same facility as in previous years. For a number of factors, Fr. Greg was the only member of his intake class at St. Joseph’s to be ordained, and even then, Fr. Greg did not graduate from St. Joseph’s Seminary.

As Fr. Greg parted ways with St. Joseph’s, Bishop O’Byrne arranged for him to attend St. Thomas the Apostle Seminary in Kenmore, Washington, just outside of Seattle.  It was discovered that Fr. Greg had completed most of his theology requirements, and so the faculty made the decision to place him in a parish — Our Lady of the Lake in Seattle, under Fr. Bill Lane and Fr. Pat Callaghan. These two were an excellent spiritual team, and served as top-notch mentors to Fr. Greg, ensuring that he was included in all social and spiritual activities in the parish. 

​Changes following the Second Vatican Council were beginning to take effect around this time — Fr. Greg was the last man to be ordained a subdeacon for the diocese of Calgary in the spring of 1972, before this holy order was suppressed that summer. He was ordained a deacon at St. James’ Parish in Calgary, where he served one of the first pastoral placements that would later become a regular part of seminary training. 

Fr. Greg's ordination, St. Gerard's, 1973.

Fr. Greg was ordained on March 3rd, 1973, the Saturday before Ash Wednesday, at St. Gerard’s Parish in Calgary, in the midst of a beautiful chinook, which shocked his classmates from Seattle.

Fr. Greg was one of the last ordinandi from St. Thomas Seminary, which closed in 1977.  Immediately afterwards, Fr. Greg left for New Orleans for Mardi Gras and to visit a family, former parishioners of St. James, who could not make the ordination.  On the way home he stopped in Houston to visit their son, a seminarian for the Diocese of Corpus Christi, TX; this young man is now the Bishop of Biloxi, Mississippi, Louis Kihneman, III.          
       
In his priestly ministry, Fr. Greg’s placements have been varied.  He remembers the “Seek the Face of God” conferences at St. Mary’s in Medicine Hat fondly, as well as the retreats at St. Gerard’s in Calgary with the Redemptorists and with Grayson Warren Brown — “God is Good!”. 

He is grateful for the many incredible women and pastoral associates such as Doreen Yochim and Teri Hutchinson, with whom he has shared ministry and who highlighted to him the great potential and gifts that women have to offer within the church.

Notably, for much of his priestly life, Fr. Greg has been involved in ministry to high schools as chaplain, chaplain emeritus and adjunct chaplain, particularly with Barb Fabijan-Waddell at St. Mary’s, Bishop Carroll and St. Anne’s Academic Centre.  This has taken him as far away as the former Soviet Union with St. Mary’s High School in 1978. 

This particularly memorable trip involved a Mass in Communist Russia, where no liturgical changes had yet occurred after Vatican II, the only way to communicate with the priest was in extremely broken Latin, and an armed guard was posted at the back of the church.  There was also a five-hour trip to the hospital to escort one of the members of a Vancouver group with the same itinerary who sprained an ankle, which involved some very extremely broken Russian.  He was the chair of the police commission in Hanna, and had an RCMP officer boarding with him — the so-called “Odd Couple” are still friends today.  

Fr. Greg also still serves as a chaplain for Retrouvaille, helping couples with marriage challenges, having inherited the role from Fr. Jack Bastigal, and Fr. John Petravicius before him. Fr. Greg is not only chaplain for the Calgary community, but for the Vancouver community as well, and enjoys seeing that with a lot of hard work on their part and the power of the Holy Spirit, these couples leave these weekends with a lot more hope for their marriages.
           
When asked for advice for those discerning vocations today, his advice is steeped in his experiences in seminary:  “If you’re not happy…, get out.”  He was of 83 seminarians at St. Joseph’s at the time of his entrance in 1965, and one of 12 when he and St. Joseph’s parted ways. He has been very happy as a priest — and still is.

He also stresses that the importance for the discerner to be open to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and that God will speak in little ways through the people and circumstances around us, rather than in a big booming way.  As well, it is important to remember that vocations are not ours, but that God gives each vocation as a gift, and we are to be stewards of the gift.

Included in the best advice he’s ever been given, words from Bishop Emeritus Henry come to mind, that a priest should “be a shepherd, not a cowboy.”  A shepherd invites his flock to follow him in front, while a cowboy pushes the cattle along the trail from behind. 

In his 50 years as a priest, his most effective pastoral ministry occurred by accepting people where they were, and then gently inviting them to grow, rather than by imposing his expectations upon them. To make the point, Fr. Greg gave the example of a funeral in which the family had no desire or intention to choose any readings for the service. Fr. Greg chose to leave the lectionary with the family over the weekend, and by the next meeting, they had chosen an Old and New Testament reading, a responsorial psalm, and a passage from the Gospels. At the funeral, they thanked Fr. Greg “for taking us where we were, and leading us a little bit further.”

Fr. Greg's 25th anniversary, Corpus Christi, 1998.

Fr. Greg’s journey has been cyclical — many of his early influences would remain or return to be part of his life later. He presided over the funerals of his Grade 1 teacher, Alice Tucking, Grade 3 teacher, Cosma Luvisotto, Grade 12 English teacher Ron Thompson; and led a prayer service for his junior high teacher, Bernie Andrea. 

Part of his involvement as a high school chaplain in Calgary and Medicine Hat was conducting the “Search” program — he is still friends with some of the students who are now grandparents. He returned to St. Gerard’s, his home parish, as pastor later on; and his first placement as a priest was also his last — St. Mary’s Cathedral.

​For Fr. Greg, the life of a priest is a “sign of God’s love for people”.  Despite all the changes that have happened in his time, Fr. Greg has done his best to be one of these signs, pointing out God’s love for us steadily, throughout the cycles of his 50 golden years of priestly ministry.

Fr. Gregory Coupal
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Ordained:  March 3, 1973, St. Gerard’s Parish, Calgary.

Pastoral Assignments in the Diocese of Calgary:

• Assistant:  St. Mary’s Cathedral, Calgary (1973-1979)
• Chaplain:  St. Mary’s High School, Calgary (1975-1979)
• Pastor:  St. George’s, Hanna (1979-1984)
• Pastor:  Christ the King, Claresholm (1984-1987)
• Pastor:  St. Mary’s, Medicine Hat; St. Albert the Great, CFB Suffield (1987-1996)
• Pastor:  Corpus Christi, Calgary (1996-1998)
• Pastor:  St. Gerard’s, Calgary (1998-2006)
• Pastor:  St. Bonaventure, Calgary (2006-2008)
• Rector:  St. Mary’s Cathedral (2008-2014)
• Retired:  October 18th, 2014

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Written by Solomon Ip for Faithfully. Solomon is a born and raised Calgarian. He studied music history in Lethbridge, and is now a seminarian in his pre-theology studies at St. Joseph's Seminary in Edmonton. He has been worshipping most recently with Canadian Martyrs Parish in Calgary, and with St. Mary's Parish in Banff where he has been working as a heritage interpreter with Parks Canada. He is an oboist by training, a chorister by grace, hobby wordsmith, amateur calligrapher, and museum enthusiast.