Guide to Ongoing Formation for Priests

CHAPTER 1: PRIESTLY LIFE | 11

flourishes to the extent that we conform our lives to the life and teachings of Jesus.

27. To be humanly mature as priests means that our personal devel opment is free and integrated. We are free when we take responsibility for our own growth, when we pursue a life of virtue not under coercion but out of love. Our conscience is formed to perceive the good, and our will grows strong enough to pursue it. We are integrated when growth is consistent in the various aspects of life—when we live a unity of life that does not compartmentalize and that achieves a “right balance of heart and mind, reason and feeling, body and soul.” 17 Immaturity, for instance, may manifest itself in someone who is generous with strangers but selfish with friends, who devotes hours to prayer but neglects the basic duties of life, who is disciplined and tidy in professional work but lives in squalor, or who cultivates a polished public demeanor while privately disregarding his childish or eccentric manners. An essential part of human maturity is affective maturity. The Program of Priestly Formation describes an affectively mature priest as “a man of feelings who is not driven by them but freely lives his life enriched by them.” 18 This form of self-mastery makes genuine, selfless love possible. In particular, affective maturity is a precondition for the joyful embrace of chastity, the virtue that channels our capacity to love and enables us to love well. Although everyone is called to live chastely, the virtue assumes a special importance in the life of a priest called to celibacy. 19 Our masculine identity is especially visible in our call to spiritual paternity. Like natural fathers, as spiritual fathers we should nurture human qualities that enable us to live this aspect of our vocation well: generosity, strength of character, kindness, patience, personal discipline, and courage, to name a few. The celibate priest should feel comfortable in his mascu linity and possess rightly ordered sexual attractions. In addition, he should have the capacity and the desire for deep friendship, especially friendships 28. 29.

17 18

DMLP, no. 93. PPF, no. 183e.

19 Regarding married priests, see Benedict XVI, Anglicanorum Coetibus (Apostolic Constitution Providing for Personal Ordinariates for Anglicans Entering into Full Communion with the Catholic Church), November 4, 2009, no. VI §2. See also Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Complementary Norms for the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus ,” November 4, 2009, art. 6 §§1-2.