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CNS Special report:
Coverage of John Jay report, National Review Board study.
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-back to John Jay series main menu
Transmitted 03/12/2004 12:44 PM ET
Researcher assesses celibacy formation in U.S. seminaries
By Jerry Filteau
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Franciscan Sister Katarina Schuth of St. Paul Seminary in Minnesota recently surveyed all U.S. Catholic theological seminaries on their celibacy formation programs and compiled her findings in a 23-page report that she shared with Catholic News Service.
Her report gives a picture of a comprehensive formation approach, from the admission requirements and screening that precede entrance into a seminary to the final evaluation before a candidate can be ordained.
In between, if a seminary has a comprehensive program:
-- Students regularly attend workshops, rector's conferences and other forums in which celibacy and related issues are discussed.
-- They talk about it privately in sessions with their spiritual director or formation adviser.
-- They may belong to support groups or faith-sharing groups that discuss celibacy-related issues.
-- Their academic program includes one or more courses addressing celibacy, human sexuality in general, intimacy, interpersonal relations, psychosexual development, sexual morality and related issues.
-- In field pastoral work, their mentors or supervisors observe and discuss with them their interaction with others and how they deal with boundary issues and other behaviors that may signal healthy development or possible problems.
Sister Schuth is a professor of the social scientific study of religion at St. Thomas University and its divinity school, St. Paul Seminary. She visited all U.S. Catholic theological seminaries in the late 1980s and wrote a comprehensive study in 1989 of their facilities, faculty, students and academic, pastoral and spiritual formation programs. She did a follow-up study 10 years later.
She said a number of the seminaries who responded to her 2002 survey on celibacy formation had "quite comprehensive" programs described in their handbook, while other programs were described only in an outline format.
She said virtually all U.S. seminaries require a psychological evaluation of a candidate before admission. Typically the diocese or the school will also interview the candidate about his sexual history.
Seminaries have developed substantive lists of attitudes, character, behaviors and signs of personal integrity, balance, openness, self-understanding and other characteristics needed to develop a healthy celibate life, she said.
Some seminaries break down content goals for celibacy formation year by year during the student's four- or five-year seminary stay, both in academic formation and in areas treated in conferences, workshops or other forums.
Sister Schuth said despite advances in dealing with the many issues seminaries confront in celibacy formation, she found a number of unresolved issues in current programs.
She said, for example, that some seminary faculty members lack confidence to make appropriate interventions and recommendations, and some are uncertain how to deal with "cross-cultural dynamics relative to sexuality" -- especially when dealing with formation of the foreign-born seminarians who now make up about one-fourth of the theology-level students in U.S. seminaries.
She said some need more formation themselves to help them deal more forthrightly with their seminarians concerning information about sexuality; to recognize behaviors that should send danger signals about a student's ability to make a celibate commitment; or to discuss sensitively and effectively issues such as the implications of "effeminate, macho and misogynistic behaviors."
END
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Copyright (c) 2004 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method, in whole or in part without the prior written authority of Catholic News Service.
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