KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter
March 11, 2019
by Peter Feuerherd
Editor’s note: This is the sixth part of a series focusing on seminaries in the United States. Every priest, including those accused of sexual abuse or those who disagree with Pope Francis, attended seminary. How are priests being formed? Who is teaching them? How are seminaries adapting to the new wave of abuse crises and condemnation of clericalism from the papacy? NCR will attempt to answer these questions and more.
All accused priest sex abusers attended seminary. While that relationship does not constitute a cause, it has not escaped the attention of seminary rectors and scholars.
Seminaries — set apart from the secular world and seen by some as a breeding ground for clericalist attitudes that fostered the sex abuse crisis — have come in for criticism. Yet leaders of Catholic seminaries say that their priestly formation programs have already successfully implemented curricula that can check future sex abuse.
Like other academic institutions, seminaries have varying reputations regarding academic quality. But perhaps even more important is the reputation each institution retains for its philosophy and theology of priestly formation, the term that implies a complete look at a man’s qualifications to be ordained.
Some emphasize the cultic nature of the Catholic priesthood, focusing on setting men apart in the sacramental life of the church, which can include the wearing of elaborate attire, such as cassocks, as everyday wear. Others focus on what Pope Francis has described as nurturing the “smell of the sheep,” educating priests to better relate to the world of lay people. Still others combine elements of both.
Seminary leaders say they have a largely untold success story. Via classes in preventing sex abuse and more careful screening of candidates, public reports of sex abuse among new priests have declined considerably.
Franciscan Sr. Katarina Schuth, a longtime scholarly researcher about seminary life, is professor emerita at the Seminaries of St. Paul, part of St. Thomas University, in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Schuth noted that the perpetrators cited in the Pennsylvania grand jury report graduated from seminaries well before the 1990s. The vast majority of cases detailed in the horrific accounts of that report involve priests who attended seminaries in the last century.
Changes in seminary formation date in part from a document issued by Pope John Paul II in 1992. The apostolic exhortation Pastores Dabo Vobis described the need for human formation, including knowledge of psychology and sociology, in the formation of priests. Schuth also cited the 2002 Dallas Charter of the U.S. bishops, ousting any priest from ministry credibly accused of sex abuse, as another landmark document in how seminary formation deals with the issue.
“I think about it every day. We are on the frontlines,” said Sulpician Fr. Phillip Brown, president-rector of St. Mary’s Seminary and University in Baltimore.
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