Program of Priestly Formation 6th edition

2 | PROGRAM OF PRIESTLY FORMATION

Committee on Priestly Life and Ministry, one of the predecessor commit tees to the Bishops’ Committee on CCLV, also contributed a series of important documents on priestly ministry and life that also has influenced this edition of the Program of Priestly Formation. 4 The central focus of this latest version of the Program of Priestly Formation comes from reflecting on the lived experience of seminaries and the Church in the United States in these opening decades of the twen ty-first century and takes its inspiration from the Ratio Fundamentalis published in 2016: “The fundamental idea is that Seminaries should form missionary disciples who are ‘in love’ with the Master, shepherds ‘with the smell of the sheep,’ who live in their midst to bring the mercy of God to them.” 5 This Program of Priestly Formation begins with an introduction to its central operating theme that priestly formation is an integrated journey, grounded in community and missionary in spirit. Building on this theme, the Program of Priestly Formation then explores the theological foundations of the ministerial priesthood, a description of the life of priests, and the Church’s role in promoting priestly vocations. After this foundation, the text then outlines the process for admission into a formation program. In the two chapters that follow those discussions, the text describes seminary formation. First is a discussion of the necessity of proper accom paniment. Here, the various people responsible for accompanying a semi narian through his formation are described. The next chapter sketches the structural elements of seminary formation, beginning with the importance of integrating the dimensions (human, spiritual, intellectual, and pastoral) into the stages of seminary formation (propaedeutic, discipleship, config uration, and vocational synthesis). The goal of this integration is to aid the seminarian in cooperating with God’s grace in conforming his heart as a disciple of Jesus Christ to the service of the Church in pastoral charity. The stages of seminary formation are then described in more detail. That chapter concludes with a description of the seminary community and the norms for evaluation. 3. 4. 5.

4 These include documents, for example, on preaching (1982), stress (1982), sexuality (1983), general health of priests (1983), ongoing formation (1984), the role of pastor (1987), morale (1989), and a basic plan for the ongoing formation of priests (2001). 5 Ratio Fundamentalis , Introduction, no. 3.