Guide to Ongoing Formation for Priests

72 | GUIDE TO ONGOING FORMATION FOR PRIESTS

188. In the pastoral dimension, study gives rise to new ideas for our preaching, teaching, and counsel as priests. Much of the intellectual matter for our pastoral mission arises from steady growth in the intellectual life. 154 It educates us in the doctrinal richness and spiritual Tradition of the Catholic faith and gives us something to hand on. It ensures that we remain faithful to the mind of the Church, as St. Paul did when he conferred with the Apostles in Jerusalem to ensure that he “might not be running, or have run, in vain” (Gal 2:2). On a more personal level, regular study offers a healthy balance against the practical realities of priestly ministry and helps us integrate those realities into a larger vision that can keep our daily ministry fresh and dynamic. Intellectual formation is, then, not only for those priests who happen to demonstrate a more academic bent. It is a dimension of life important for every priest and one that will have a decisive influence on our personal maturity, interior life, and apostolic ministry. The first and most obvious marker of intellectual formation for a priest is a deep knowledge of the faith. Much of the foundation for this marker will have occurred in seminary studies. There are two primary characteristics of the priest who is intellectually well formed. The first is objective, namely the doctrinal content of his formation. He should have a mastery of the teachings of the faith “drawn primarily from reading and meditating on the sacred Scriptures. But it should also be fruitfully nour ished by a study of the Holy Fathers and Doctors and other annals of tradi tion. In addition, [so] that they may be able to provide proper answers to the questions discussed by the men of this age, priests should be well acquainted with the documents of the Church’s teaching authority and especially of Councils and the Roman Pontiffs. They should consult, too, the best, approved writers in theological science.” 155 The priest must know 189. MARKERS OF THE INTELLECTUAL DIMENSION CATECHETICAL AND THEOLOGICAL COMPETENCE 190.

154 “Therefore, the priest, with the help of the Holy Spirit, the study of the Word of God in the Scriptures, and in light of both Tradition and the Magisterium , discovers the richness of the Word to be proclaimed to the ecclesial community entrusted to his care.” DMLP, no. 10, emphasis original. 155 PO, no. 19.