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	Seminary Spiritual Proving Ground, Says Author of Insider's Narrative By Mark Lombard Catholic Online May 2, 2006 http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=19686 NEW YORK (Catholic Online) – Today's seminary is a spiritual boot camp that forces seminarians to face external and internal challenges, including obedience and celibacy, and a proving ground to test their vocation, said the author of a book published in April about five men who give up careers to study for the priesthood. Jonathan Englert interviewed more than 50 seminarians as well as spiritual directors, faculty members and officials of several seminaries and researched seminary life over a five-year period in writing The Collar: A Year of Striving and Faith Inside a Catholic Seminary (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006, 300 pp., $25.95). Catholic Online interviewed the journalist-author, who has written for The New York Times and Catholic Digest, in April about his "fly on the wall" look at life inside the seminary system and what he learned from the full access he had within Sacred Heart Seminary in Milwaukee, Wis. The Collar, he said, attempts to tap into the "strong spiritual narrative" and "prayerful quality" of the priesthood and seminary training. It was written within the context of the church going through the clergy sexual abuse crisis and a situation in which the numbers of Catholics in the United States are growing and the numbers of priests are declining dramatically. Despite seeing the grueling nature of seminary life, the Catholic convert reported that the seminarian's journey toward priesthood seems to be similar to the drive toward a "deep and profound love." Englert followed the five through two semesters at the seminary, which specializes in second-career vocations. Traveling each week from New York, he was able to eat, sleep, worship, attend classes and formation training at the seminary, as well as be present for faculty and other administrative meetings during the 2002-2003 year. While observing the entire operation of the seminary, Englert focused on five seminarians: a divorced man in his 40s; a widower in his late 60s; a long-divorced single parent; a former Marine with a BMW; and a musician who was blind since birth. Vocation a haunting "The seminary is like a spiritual boot camp. You are really put through a lot of challenges that are very foreign to contemporary life," he said. "As soon as you enter the seminary, in my respects, your life is not your own." While "celibacy is always touted as a huge thing," Englert said that obedience is a much bigger issue for the men studying for the priesthood. "Obedience is huge, because oftentimes these are men that are coming from a world where they can do whatever they want… a world in which they are masters of their own domain," he said. They have to live in small living quarters, "eat off of cafeteria trays, have to behave and act in community… have to go to classes, write papers, go through spiritual direction and formation," he added. "It's a fish bowl." Obedience "becomes a huge challenge," Englert said. "It begins to wear on them and they begin saying to themselves 'Is this what it's going to be the rest of my life.'" And while they realize that seminary life is not the rest of their lives, he said, "they know that their lives will not be own either, because the demands of priesthood are so tremendous, especially today." Men who become seminarians could be doing a lot of other things, but "they keep somehow circling back to the question of whether I should become a priest or not." Unlike other life paths, Englert said that what the priesthood "is definitely not is a career." For many seminarians, the author said, "a vocation is almost like a haunting," with the draw to the priesthood "similar to deep and profound love." "Again and again," he said, "men would say, "I've always had a vision of myself serving Mass.' It's an image in their head that, until it is satisfied, continues to haunt them." "The seminary becomes the testing, the proving ground for their vocation," Englert said. "They're tested against so many distractions… when a person says they're going to become a priest, they really know what they're becoming." He described the "sophisticated formation process" as an experience that "dissects them psychologically, intellectually and puts them under scrutiny." The seminarians experience "communal scrutiny" through being observed and "judged to see if they're going to be worthy candidates for the priesthood" as well as "self-scrutiny, where they continue to analyze themselves," he said. Seminarians 'collared'? The book's title, the author said, comes from both "the sense that you are being called" to wear the Roman collar and "the idea of being collared, that you are being told, "OK, this is what you should be doing.'" In some cases, the seminarian struggles with being collared, and yet continues to come back, he said. He pointed to one seminarian, named Dean, who was looking at four or five decades of priestly life and wondering about whether he should give up the possibility of marriage for it. Yet another seminarian in his late 60s, who was married for 45 years, cared for a wife who succumbed to cancer, raised four children, had three grandchildren and ran a successful business, didn't struggle so much, Englert said. "He knew this is where he should be serving for the rest of his life," he said. Beyond the external pressures faced, the seminarian's toughest taskmaster is himself, the author said. "There is this excoriating drill sergeant, busybody inside many of the seminarians who, at times, is telling them, 'You are not worthy of priesthood' and, at other times, saying, 'the priesthood is not worthy for you.'" Describing the experience as a military boot camp, Englert said the years of preparation "makes it more brutal because time acts on a person" and is "designed to be a mini-analogy of what the priestly life is going to be." Celibacy freeing Sexuality is an issue that is dealt within the formation experience and as part of the ongoing development of the seminarian, Englert said. "The ideal is that you have a person who is mature, is at peace with their sexuality, knows what it is, has a sense of what it is and is willing to channel it in a non-intercourse, chaste way." He stressed that the issue is not whether the future priest is going to be "attracted" to others because he most likely will be, he said. But the priest, because of going through the formation process, is "going to be aware of it" and better able to deal with it. The seminary experience, he said, "is really supposed to build up your commitment to priesthood as opposed to tear down your sexuality and set you adrift." He said that the seminarians he was in contact with were not "craving celibacy," but understood that it provides advantages to fulfill their vocation. "Most of the men I followed had this strong sense of service," he said, adding that not having an exclusive relationship "frees them to be there for people." Church facing changes He said that he believes Catholics "would be surprised , enriched and even liberated to know the sophistication, the maturity, the dynamism of the types of men becoming priests today," adding that much of what is understood about the church and the priesthood has been created by media versions rather than "actual reality on the ground." Researching and writing this book, Englert said, "definitely deepened my sense of Catholicism, expanded it, changed it profoundly." "I went in as a different person than I am now." But, he said, within the next 10-15 years, the church is "going to see an extreme change" in the numbers of those ordained, with attrition of priests through death, with the average age of newly ordained now at 37 years increasing and with not having enough people to step in. "The numbers," he said, "are not good and they're going to get worse, a lot worse." "The expectations of the people and the institution itself of what makes a priest and what is an ideal age are going to have to change too," he said. And despite the numbers, Englert said he was left with a sense of the church being a "much stronger and vibrant entity" than he thought and that the media portrays. "I was deeply impressed" by the seminarians and their commitment, he said. "Part of what drove them on was that there were people out there who need them and who want them to be priests," he said. "That larger Catholic world, that Catholic community out there is more vibrant than either ideologues or pessimists or others might want to think." Englert said the contact with seminarians was hopeful as they were "making extremely countercultural choices." "Some of the men were taking lives that had derailed, not through any fault of their own," he said, "then turning it into service for others, to bring light to other people." - - - Mark Lombard is the editor in chief/director of news operations of Catholic Online.
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