After graduating college, Deacon Timothy A. Courtney decided to investigate the Catholic faith. “Either I believe (this) is true and I need to really take a look at what that would mean for my life, or if it’s not true, then once and for all forget about it,” he said. “That set me on a path of reading and talking to people. I slowly started to realize that God became man and died and rose from the dead.” As he took that truth to heart, it led him to his priestly vocation.
He was born June 18, 1993, in Greensboro, N.C., the second of Britt and Catherine Courtney’s six children. He grew up primarily in Fairfax and his family attended St. Andrew the Apostle Church in Clifton. His father was Methodist, but as Deacon Courtney did years later, he began to look into the Catholic faith and came into the church around the same time Deacon Courtney received his first Communion.
After graduating from W.T. Woodson High School in Fairfax in 2011, he spent two years at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., before transferring to the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg. He graduated with a bachelor’s in history in 2015.
Deacon Courtney spent a few years not practicing the faith after the death of his father in 2011. “I was really angry at God for my father passing away suddenly, and pretty young, he was only 48. (I thought), I’ve done things right, why should this happen to me?” he said. But in college, his Protestant girlfriend asked him a question that ultimately led him back to the practice of the faith — “How Catholic are you really?” While working at a law and policy research institute in Washington, he started praying outside of Sunday Mass.
As his faith life deepened, his uncle, Father Paul D. Scalia, episcopal vicar for clergy and pastor of St. James Church in Falls Church, helped him discern a calling to the priesthood. In 2017, he entered St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood, Pa., and two years later continued his studies at the Pontifical North American College in Rome. In his free time, he follows baseball, reads about history, and studies foreign languages including Spanish, Italian, Arabic, Czech and German.
After his ordination, Deacon Courtney will be parochial vicar of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception Church in Fredericksburg. He’s looking forward to celebrating Mass. “It’s the greatest gift that the Lord ever gave to the church and to me personally, and to be chosen to cooperate with him and to bring it to other people, that’s the chance of a lifetime,” he said. “That’s what the whole thing is about.”
