Begging for Alms: Part Two

By Jennifer Haselberger
Canonical Consultation
April 15, 2015

http://canonicalconsultation.com/blog.html

After my earlier post about the Catholic Services Appeal, I learned that the poor priests of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis were hit with a double-whammy of fundraising requests last week. Not only were they asked to put the screws into reluctant donors at their parishes, they were also asked to personally contribute to the support of the seminarians at the Saint Paul Seminary School of Divinity.

This request, which came by means of a letter from the SPS rector, Monsignor Aloysius Callaghan, provided some interesting information about seminary operations. For instance, the Monsignor wrote that the four year formation program for priests costs more than $200,000 per student, or $140 per day. Half of this, the letter states, is paid by the seminarian's diocese, and the other half through donations to the seminary itself. Of course, I am sure what the Monsignor meant to say is that, in the case of the W.D.O.E, half is paid by contributions to the independent Catholic Services Appeal, and not the seminarian's diocese. But I digress.

In exchange for this rather large sum, the student at the Saint Paul Seminary is ensured to receive 'the best human, intellectual, spiritual, and pastoral formation possible', preparing him and his peers to become 'good shepherds and capable pastors'. Of course, this has recently been called into question, at least in the case of Saint John Vianney College Seminary, thanks to the article by Paul Blaschko in Commonweal Magazine. I will leave it to you to decide if we are getting our money's worth from the formation program provided by SPS. From my vantage point, the seminary seems to have made little progress in separating the wheat from the chaff.