Guide to Ongoing Formation for Priests

CHAPTER 2: ONGOING FORMATION | 31

80. New models of common priestly life are advancing as well. In areas where many parishes are served by single priests (that is, priests living alone in their parishes), they may be able to live in a single rectory and enjoy the benefits of common life without detracting from their individual service to their parishes. 61 Some priests, with the permission of their diocesan bishop, live under a formal rule of life while jointly serving a variety of apostolates assigned by their diocese. 62 Whether or not these options are available, priests in a region can at least coordinate the same day of rest each week and so more easily arrange for priestly gatherings, prayer, and recreation. Whatever the format, priestly fraternity can play an important role in our ongoing formation. Our fraternity is a matter not of instrumental izing friendship for the sake of our personal development, but rather of highlighting ways that our friendships already are, or could be, a source of mutual growth. It is hoped that the specific suggestions in this docu ment regarding the fraternal means of ongoing formation will promote and expand the fraternity that is one of the great blessings of our priesthood. 81.

EPISCOPAL MEANS

82. Among the chief duties of a diocesan bishop is to care for his priests. He sees to it, for example, that they have a livable income and proper medical care. He ensures that their rectories are decent. He observes their anniversaries and visits them in the hospital when they are ill. He celebrates their funerals and commends them to God when they have died. A diocesan bishop’s care for his priests, though, goes beyond this. He wants for them what he wants for himself, that is, to thrive, to grow in all

61 “One cannot sufficiently recommend to priests a life lived in common and directed entirely toward their sacred ministry; the practice of having frequent meetings with a fraternal exchange of ideas, counsel and experience with their brother priests; the movement to form associations which encourage priestly holiness.” St. Paul VI, Sacerdotalis Caelibatus (On the Celibacy of the Priest) , June 24, 1967, no. 80, www. vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_24061967_sacerdotalis.html “Some practice of common life is highly recommended to clerics; where it exists, it must be preserved as far as possible.” CIC, c. 280. 62 “The experience of this common life has been rather positive in many places because it has represented a real form of support for priests: created is a family environment, with the permission of the local Ordinary it is possible to have a chapel for the Blessed Sacrament, and it is also possible to pray together, etc. . . . Many are the cases of priests who have found an important source of help for both their personal needs and the exercise of their pastoral ministry in the adoption of opportune forms of communitarian life.” DMLP, no. 39.