The Rev. Anthony J. Cekada

Fr. Cekada was born in La Jolla, California, July 18, 1951, son of the late Frank and Eleanor (Nardi) Cekada. He was raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and grew up during the revolutionary years of the 1960’s. Privileged to be of the last generation raised in the True Catholic Faith, he was educated by the Dominican Sisters and spiritually fed with daily High Mass and doctrine. This Faith formed him, inspired him and inevitably demanded of him many sacrifices which he willingly made for the Church and for souls.

Fourteen-year-old Anthony Cekada entered De Sales Prep or Minor Seminary in Milwaukee for High School, graduating in 1969. At the minor seminary he was able to pursue piano and then organ. He wanted to learn not only to play and accompany Mass, but to compose good music to counter the junk being produced by the Changes. He did more than that, however. At the age of fourteen he also began studies at the Milwaukee Conservatory of Music under the renowned musician and polymath Michael Hammond. This transformed him, in his own words “over two intense years, from being an untrained but eager musical ignoramus at fourteen to being the accomplished and technically adept orchestral composer of a major work at sixteen.” Amazing, but to be listed among his many accomplishments in life….

Fr. Cekada rarely spoke of these things. He was too busy doing things. He was all the time teaching himself whatever discipline the moment, the needs of the Church and souls, required. In addition to organ and musical composition, Fr. Cekada was a seminary professor for over forty years, teaching music, chant, Sacred Liturgy, Psalms and Canon Law. Because there was no one else to do it, Fr. Cekada taught himself accounting as a newly ordained priest at St. Joseph’s House of Studies in Armada, Michigan. Techniques changed over the years, but he was still doing the church accounting last January, when the strokes began. Teaching was surely his great love. While he willingly assisted anyone who came to him for guidance or advice, his special devotion was to young people, for whom he would make any sacrifice. Until his last months he was daily answering emails not only on Church questions, but especially vocation inquiries from youth.

Fr. Cekada taught himself the complicated discipline of liturgical rubrics when Bishop Dolan was consecrated in 1993, and wrote detailed directions for all the pontifical ceremonies. During the long dispute with the Pius X Society, which wanted to force a reconciliation with Modernist Rome, Fr. Cekada taught himself a good deal of Civil Law. He also tried his hand at church design when the new St. Gertrude’s in West Chester, Ohio was built in an attractive traditional style in 2003. Since 2009, Fr. Cekada returned to his old love of church music, directing St. Gertrude’s music program, and playing the organ.

In addition to his teaching and care for souls (Fr. Cekada was founding pastor of St. Hugh of Lincoln Church in Milwaukee), he was also an avid and prolific writer, on topics ranging from theology and modern questions, to liturgy and traditionalist controversies. He produced an accurate translation of the Ottaviani Intervention , The Problem with the Prayers of the New Mass (well over 15,000 sold), and the practical and ever popular Welcome to the Traditional Latin Mass and The Problem of Authority . Fr. Cekada’s great life’s work is the definitive study of the New Mass, Work of Human Hands , with nearly 5,000 copies in print. His numerous YouTube videos delight, edify and educate, presenting the traditional Catholic position. One wonders how he found time for it all.

When Fr. Cekada completed his studies at De Sales Seminary with a bachelor’s of divinity, he entered the Cistercians and briefly did studies at the Monastery of Hautrive in Fribourg, Switzerland. Later he entered the Society of St. Pius X at Écône, Switzerland, where he was ordained a priest by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1977.

Fr. Cekada has served as assistant pastor of St. Gertrude the Great since 1989, after a number of years at St. Pius V Chapel in Oyster Bay, New York.

Fr. Cekada’s life, his forty-three years of priesthood, have yielded incredible results. But he was an extraordinary man. His self-discipline, devotion and drive were not only matched but excelled by his humility, and his trademark sense of humor. His great erudition caused his friends to esteem him and his foes at times to fear him, and all to respect him, but it was his gentle humor which won him admiration even from those who disagreed with him.

As we mourn him now, and mark an extraordinary life in these most difficult of days, we should remember him most of all, for his first love and enduring devotion for teaching the Catholic Faith, for our youth. Father said it best, “a testament to the lasting and profound change that one good teacher can make….” His rest is well earned, “his works follow him.”

Memorial Donations may be made to St. Gertrude the Great, for the education of poor seminarians.