There has been a certain amount of discussion in three blogs about the proper training of priests. Once we get rid of the red herring according to which the clergy of a “proper denomination” are properly trained and small minority churches without the financial resources for full-time residential seminary training can only produce ignorant impostors, we can begin to reason everything out and make progress.
Is a priest held to the same standard of formal qualifications as doctors, lawyers, business consultants, chartered accountants, surveyors, civil engineers and the like? I have often found low standards of professionalism in poor minority churches like the Continuing Anglicans, and I have also found intellectual pride, a lack of empathy and arrogance with some of the priests I have known in the “official” Church. Arguments are often made against university education on account of the risk of the student being influenced by heresy and fallacious philosophy. Each of these viewpoints has a certain but limited validity.
My own experience has been a classical European university faculty for theological studies to licentiate standard. We were expected to know our stuff at the examinations, and an experienced professor would see at a glance if the student was trying to “fake it”. More importantly, a university does not have the same role as a seminary. In the former, emphasis is placed on the student thinking for himself, doing his own research and defending his thesis according to the rules of evidence and correct reasoning. A seminary also offers a theological education at an advanced level, but from the point of view of the Church’s teachings and what is directly useful for the future priest in his future ministry. Whether the priest has a university degree or has simply been taught or examined by the Bishop and examining chaplains, the important thing is that a priest should be able to reason and assimilate a level of general culture. Perhaps requirements would be less precise than the standards required of surgeons or civil engineers, but these qualities seem essential.
I can speak from my own experience of a full-time residential seminary. We are given our intellectual training, typically according to the Thomist and scholastic method – unlike university – but that is not all. We had the framework of a community life similar in some ways to that of a monastery. We were taught and conditions to be clerics, like soldiers in the Army. From the day we got the cassock and the tonsure, we had to learn to behave ourselves in a different way, and acquire gravitas. We worshipped in chapel at Lauds, Mass, Sext, Vespers and Compline. We ate in refectory in silence, listening to a reading. We put on something, like the cassock and collar, over and above our personalities, and had a comfortable feeling of hiding behind our new identity. We had recreation, played sports, went on walks, went on holidays to see our families – but as clerics.
Our clerical formation was designed to enhance our spiritual life as being very similar to monks (for the time we were at seminary). We prayed in chapel each day. We had our spiritual reading and had our spiritual directors – and seeing them was more or less an exercise in hypocrisy. It was a positive experience for me, and it was as formative of character as having being in the Armed Forces. One learns to deal with authority, obeying but yet negotiating by the interaction of personalities. This is a subtlety many lay people are unaware of – unless they have been in the Army!
Is there a better way? Can priests be trained “on the cheap”? The seminary is an invention of the Council of Trent. Before then, it was something like what they do in Orthodoxy. The elite were monks, trained in universities and their communities. Parish priests are local men who were brought up in the parish and learned their “stuff” from childhood, and were chosen as viri probati to be ordained for the parish. They often just celebrated the Liturgy, and a priest-monk would come in once in a while to preach and hear confessions. That system leaves something to be desired, but there is a lot of wisdom to it. It is a notion of priestly training based on an apprenticeship and years of hands-on experience.
Whether it is right to say that only mainstream churches train the clergy properly and “continuing” churches are beneath contempt depends on the beholder’s viewpoint. Perhaps one particular “beholder” should have stayed with his owners in the American Episcopal Church, as there was no justification for his going to a pretty little neo-baroque church in the city where he lives. Officialdom and institution are more important than conscience and genuine grievances with the so-called “mainstream” bodies.Following orders coming from the official authority does not justify just anything. That was the most significant principle that came out of the Nuremberg Trials in 1946.
Resuming, a priest should be cultured and able to reason with all social classes. First of all he should be a devout believer and concerned for the spiritual good of his flock. Thirdly, a degree of professionalism and competence in “priestcraft” is needed. A badly celebrated Mass is unedifying! Good manners are essential. The quality of being a good cleric is being increasingly questioned, when the cassock and collar are used to conceal evil and wrongdoing. Corruption is proper to institutions and the men who use them for their own ends. This is why Catholicism can survive outside these institutions and renew itself according to extraordinary means – a principle foreseen in canon law. Salus animarum suprema lex – the salvation of souls is the highest law.
As someone formed to be a cleric, these matters cannot be dealt with according to a black-and-white simplistic mindset. Western Christianity is in a crisis, from whichever viewpoint you look at it. In Europe, the faith is being extinguished, and I am not quoting the Pope. I can see it for myself.
The Blue Flower 
Fr. Anthony, As always an interesting and insightful piece.
My only comment would be that we sometimes fail to understand or appreciate the impact “politics” has on seminaries and how “political” they can be, at least in USA. Activists and ideologues learned some time ago that the easiest way to effect major change in a Church is to take over the seminary. Once it is taken over, the controlling group self-selects only applicants that appeal to them (using vigorous methods to try to ascertain if applicants agree with them), then selects faculty that agrees with them, and then they have turned the seminary into a place that churns out graduates who agree with them. (Unfortunately, this isn’t limited to Christians Churches. We see this in law schools, graduate programs, teacher colleges, etc.)
We saw open “political warfare” at the major LCMS and Southern Baptist seminaries in 1970s; here the modernists and liberals ended up being purged. But the conservatives and traditionalists were purged elsewhere. This process was a major reason ECUSA and the other mainline protestant groups “fell”; when a generation of pastors are successfully indoctrinated by, with, and into the new way of thinking, it isn’t long before the results are seen in the pews and later they become bishops.
And we’ve seen it in action in RCC ever since Vatican II. Much of the sex abuse scandal can be placed initially in the hands of seminaries that stopped looking for devout believers (actually rejecting them for being too rigid or some such nonsense) and looked for those who would join their ideology and follow the culture. For RCs, now there is a counter swing against the modernists and liberals who took over the seminaries in the 1960s-1980s. But they aren’t going without heavy resistance. So it ends up being somewhat of a see-saw battle. Sadly, the applicants and seminarians learn to keep their heads down and mouths shut, saying or doing nothing to offend anyone and doing whatever is necessary to make it into the seminary and then to graduate.
In my opinion, no one (at least in the Western world with which I am familiar) currently has a clue as to how to form really good clergy. Whether it be seminary training or ‘reading for orders’, or even the “Independent Catholic” tendency of, “You want to be ordained? OK, let’s do it,” ordination seems to be the objective — a laying on of hands and, “zap!” one is ready to do anything a priest can do, and has become an authority figure. I like what you say about apprenticeship. Frankly, I think a new priest needs to be guided carefully for a period of years, after ordination. One can’t learn how to be a priest until one is one, and, once one is one, there is a powerful need to learn the how of it, and to be guided into the attitudes of humble authority that the office requires. None of it comes easily. I know both seminary graduates (some with advanced degrees) and much less educated clergy who have learned to be good priests, and those from both ends of the spectrum who haven’t a notion of what it entails.
It is a weighty matter to approve someone for ordination, requiring a great deal of prayer, a great deal of examination of the spiritual and personal qualities of the man, and the assurance that there is a reliable foundation of knowledge on which to build. No one has the knowledge a priest needs, nor will anyone this side of heaven, but rather a priest needs the humility and hunger to admit his insufficiency and to continue learning and growing. A younger priest needs a mentor, a spiritual director who won’t put up with BS, and needs to be gradually allowed more and more responsibility. An older priest, while perhaps able to be a mentor, still requires one, and must still be reaching to be better. All of this weighs even more heavily on the bishops. If a cleric is not in a lifelong formation of priestly formation, he is not entirely faithful to his vocation.
I’m convinced that Jesus called a college of Apostles, dependent on one another, and that the Church (ideally, though the ideal is seldom approached) is under the guidance of a college of bishops, dependent on each other, each of whom presides over a college of presbyters, who are not islands unto themselves. When humility is the guiding principle, few of the questions we ask about preparation have much relevance at all. When humility is weak, there’s no way the church can really act like the Church.
I fully agree that vocations are a matter of discernment by the Bishop and a serious programme of training according to the material resources of the Church in question. A vocation is not simply a “wannabe” from the candidate. In medio stat virtus – there is something on the side of the candidate and a reasonable attitude on the part of the Bishop, examining chaplains, parish priest and so forth.
I am all too painfully aware that the meaning of the priesthood is found only in the Communion of the Church – of course I say the Church and not a particular institution (Rome, Constantinople, Canterbury, etc.).
If the ideas of certain laymen were followed, the Church would not ordain any priests because no person could be up to the standards of absolute perfection required as a “minimum”. Then those individuals should go and live in Saudi Arabia or some parts of France.
There needs to be a moderate position between “anything goes” and the kind of Donatism that masquerades as conservative orthodoxy!
Fr. Anthony, Yes to that “moderate position”! However, I think all churches absolutely have to include what the NT says about the Church’s ministers (e.g., Paul in Titus 5-9, 1 Tim 3, 2 Tim 2: 14-26).
I think certain of Paul’s admonitions–“They shouldn’t be new believers”, but “be faithful to their spouse”, “manage their own household well”, and have “a good reputation with those outside the church” (1 Tim 3: 2-6, CEB)– strongly tell us NOT to ordain the young or inexperienced. We would do well to follow Christ’s example and not start ministry until there is some age, experience, and wisdom. I find it comforting that EO don’t ordain until a man is 30. That seems about right? I think we focus too much on education and erudition, rather than on trying to work with the Spirit to help bring forth and help nurture “tried-and-true workers” (2 Tim 2: 15, CEB).
If only I had a dollar or pound or euro for every learned sermon I’d heard over the years that did little or nothing to bring the Gospel to the laity but rather “showed off” the minister’s education or study or ability to look up the thoughts of giants before him)…! It is amazing how we can appreciate great preaching and firm, faithful teaching. We know it when we hear it! But we hear it so very rarely?
… and just to strengthen something I said: Regardless of how much training he dtarts with, the priest or bishop who ceases to regard himself as insufficiently prepared, and ceases to strive to know more and to be molded more closely to the image of Christ, as well as the priest or bishop who ceases to seek out godly counsel, is no credit at all to the priestly vocation and should, perhaps, consider resigning.
Fr. Anthony, you are a good example of the kind of things a priest who becomes isolated should be doing, in your efforts to be in communication with others and to learn from them. May your readers learn that from you!
… And Michael, I’m with you in what you say. St. Paul says little, if anything, about any kind of formal training, but plenty about character and experience. There’s a reason our word “priest” derives not from ‘sacerdos’, ‘hieros’, or ‘kohan’, (Latin, Greek, and Hebrew for ‘priest’), but rather from ‘prebyteros’, the Greek for ‘elder’ or even ‘old man’. While it is possible to make a young man a prebyter, there seems something a bit counterintuitive about doing so.
I can relate to things Father says here about his experiences in seminary. But I want to address a couple of points: (1) I don’t think the clerical sex abuse issue can be readily attributed to a particular phase of seminary training and “modern culture”. The problem of the sex abuse is increasingly becoming accepted as a problem of institutional abuse of power and here in Australia a Royal Commission has been established to inquire into the causes. In my assessment – a personal one of course – part of the cause lies in the belief that a priest – and priesthood – is “ontologically” significant and different. This lies at the head of the regrettable clericalist superiority that characterised the concealment of clerical crime. This is not a “modern” phenomenon, but on the contrary, has been part and parcel of the Church’s theology and culture for a long time. Therefore, we will never know now the extent of clerical sexual and mental abuse in the middle ages up to the 19th century, but I don’t accept the suggestion that it was not there and possibly in spades. Its exposure now is a result of modern culture: in former times, there was less chance of exposure.
(2) I think the “thou art a priest forever” concept is problematic. It can be justified theologically, in a way, but perhaps it is difficult from a psychological point of view. Many priests might have very salutarily operated better or differently had they been told “thou art a priest for as long as you show good example (and until the bishop decommissions you)”.
Just some thoughts.
This brings me back to Cyrille Vogel’s Ordinations Inconsistantes et Caractère Inamissible, published in Turin in 1978. It is a collection of short essays related to this subject. Vogel clearly contests the classical Catholic doctrine according to which bishops and priests, even when excommunicated or deposed from their functions can confer valid Sacraments provided the right matter, form and intention are present. For example, the sacrament is conferred according to an approved liturgical form and the minister has the “intention of doing what the Church does”. Vogel rightly notices that such a doctrine makes vagante priests and bishops possible. In Vogel’s work, this doctrine is unknown in any of the oriental Churches, Old Catholicism or the Reformed Churches, or in the Roman Catholic Church before the end of the twelfth century and beginning of the thirteenth.
What does Vogel propose? We seem to have the notion that an excommunicated or deposed priest really loses the priesthood and absolutely becomes the layman he was before ordination. There is no inamissible character. Ordination can be reversed! The Sacrament of Order is possible only in the official communion of the Church and in accordance with canon law. This book is extraordinarily well researched and written and would be difficult to refute other than by an argument of authority (eg. the Council of Trent). If this thesis were true, then through the theory of “economy” as found in the oriental Churches, quite simply, ordination is valid because the Church says it is and for no other reason. If priesthood ceases because His Grandness the Bishop says so, there is a problem.
Perhaps my own priesthood has “switched” on and off, leaving me unsure of which of my masses were valid. If the priesthood can be “switched off” (as opposed to distinguishing between someone driving a car without a licence but nevertheless driving it to its destination and being physically unable to drive), then how is it “switched on” again? We might think that St Augustine’s theology against the Donatists was not a theory that would favour total control by the institution – a bishop or priest can “escape” and still remain a bishop or priest.
What is needed is a fresh examination of the inamissible character of the Sacrament of Order (and Baptism and Confirmation). This is the classical Catholic teaching on the Sacrament of Order – http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11279a.htm and there must be many theological works on the subject.
I think the problem lies not in the sacramental character of the priesthood but in the clerical status. I have dreamt for many years of finding a way to separate priesthood from clericalism. That was the great insight of the Worker Priest Movement in post-war France.
Fr. Anthony, Unfortunately, the history of Christendom doesn’t appear too favorable for your admirable dream: “I have dreamt for many years of finding a way to separate priesthood from clericalism.” Not even the Reformation’s good ideas on the priesthood of all believers has been able to be a complete corrective or restorative.
I suspect both proper priestly formation and combating clericalism are tied to the complex interaction of bishops, priests, deacons, and laity within the Church. If they don’t cooperate with the Holy Spirit in complementary harmony and unity an imbalance arises. They lose sight of their proper place, their role and function, how they support each other and how much they need each other. Instead of mutual support, we get domination by one or more office and submission of one of more office.
First and foremost, the laity has failed to live up to its calling. We need to be properly educated and motivated. Both to support their clergy but also to be a check on them when they go outside their bounds. We mustn’t be subservient in a slavish manner, but supportive in a cooperative manner. Second, I think the role of bishops has fallen from being religious to being administrative, managerial, technocratic. Much of this problem seems to stem from there being so few bishops (so each ends up being elevated in everyone’s eyes). And they tend to be hundreds of miles away physically! My local church sees its bishop once a year! So the laity have no real opportunity to develop any relationship with or proper cooperative interaction with their own bishop. He is a far away figure who is mostly spoken of rather than listened to and is unavailable for real interaction, to listen to his flock. The priest may see the bishop a couple more times a year at various conferences, but even that isn’t enough for the bishop to function in his oversight role. Third, the office of deacon was allowed to wither away and is still in a great state of flux during the ongoing attempts to recover it. Every parish that has a priest should also have at least one deacon. And that deacon needs to be a real deacon doing what deacons are supposed to do, vis-a-vis their bishop, priest, and parish. Finally, I think the Reformation concept of visitation oversight needs to be revived. Not something done on one day or even a weekend. But longer. Not unlike a military unit inspection. The bishop and others come to a parish and see how they are worshipping, getting a sense for the priest’s interaction with his members, checking on the catechesis of the laity, and really seeing if both the Gospel is being preached and Christians hearts are being formed and supported.
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