Vocation crisis no mere matter of numbers - the nature of Catholic seminary students - Column

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 24, 1997 by Richard P. McBrien

The National Catholic Reporter's excellent special report on U.S. seminaries (Sept. 12 issue) prompts reflection on candidates for the priesthood.

I should state at the outset the limits of my competence on this topic. Although I was a member of a major seminary faculty for 10 years, I have not held a seminary faculty appointment for more than 20 years.

On the other hand, I continue to have classroom contact with candidates for the priesthood at the University of Notre Dame. The seminarians (members of the Congregation of Holy Cross) receive their spiritual formation and reside at Moreau Seminary on campus and take their courses in the university's Department of Theology.

In the NCR report, I was intrigued, first of all, by Sr. Katarina Schuth's observation that over the past 10 years seminary teaching has improved, faculties are "better qualified," and students are older, "more settled," and "very moderate."

Schuth, who teaches at St. Thomas Seminary School of Divinity in St. Paul, Minn., is a careful student of Catholic seminaries. Her opinions are not to be taken lightly.

Those more skeptical about the state of Catholic seminaries today would want to see the evidence for such generalizations, and undoubtedly Schuth will provide it when her most recent findings are published.

To be sure, Schuth also expresses several concerns about seminaries and seminarians that have the effect perhaps of balancing off her positive generalizations.

She points out that some bishops and seminaries continue to accept "questionable candidates." The situation, in fact, must be widespread enough for the Vatican to have issued a warning last year against admitting candidates who have been expelled or even who have voluntarily withdrawn from religious communities and seminaries. Given the still-declining numbers of seminarians in the United States, the temptation to lower the admissions bar is difficult to resist.

Schuth also expresses a concern about the apparent lack of historical depth some seminarians possess. All those under the age of 32 were born after Vatican II and even those between the ages of 40 and 45 have no real memory of the pre-Vatican II church and, therefore, no experiential basis for appreciating why the church felt the need for the reforms and renewal that the council brought about.

Indeed, one is occasionally taken aback by seminarians and other Catholics under the age of 45 who seem to pine for the "good old days" of pre-Vatican II Catholicism, when they have no lived experience of those days and, therefore, cannot credibly distinguish between the strengths and deficiencies of that period.

Schuth worries that such seminarians may "lack the depth to grasp historical nuances and subtleties" and, as a consequence, may take "too simplistic an approach to religion" (these words appear in the article, but not as direct quotes from Schuth herself).

Accordingly, she is concerned as well about the future of seminary education when such priests, lacking adequate historical formation and perspective, assume positions of leadership as rectors, administrators and faculty members.

To be sure, this is a particularly perilous time for the Catholic church in the United States. On the one hand, there is a desperate need for priests -- and this is said without in any way denying either the absolute importance of lay ministries of every kind or the fact that many ministerial activities, once assumed to be the exclusive responsibility of ordained priests, more properly belong to the laity.

On the other hand, the candidate pool has not only become more shallow since the council, it has also changed dramatically, particularly after the 1971 World Synod of Bishops, which dashed any lingering hopes that the celibacy requirement for diocesan priests would ever be lifted in our lifetimes.

There now appears to be a proportionately larger number of gay seminarians, both those who are aware of their orientation and those who are not. (This, too, is a generalization, based on anecdotal rather than statistical evidence.) The church has not yet come to terms with the long-term pastoral effects of this trend.

There are also increasing numbers of seminarians -- whether gay, heterosexual or emotionally asexual -- whose concept and practice of Catholicism is at some variance with the renewal and reforms of Vatican II, especially in the area of liturgy and devotional life.

Communion on the tongue, benediction of the Blessed Sacrament and 1950s clerical dress -- to take but three examples -- are more than personal preferences. They are indicative of a mentality about the Eucharist, about the church as the people of God and about the nature of the presbyteral ministry itself and its relation to the church's many lay ministries.

The so-called vocations crisis is many-sided.