My Photo

Insight Scoop

Catholic World News Top Headlines (CWNews.com)

The Curt Jester

JIMMY AKIN.ORG

Poor Box

Render Unto Us

Tip Jar
Blog powered by Typepad

« What If John Mark Karr Were A Catholic Priest? | Main | Desperate Catholics Find "Rent-A-Priests" Online »

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Comments

Georgia

Thomistic, This is a little ray of hope that is way overdue. I think Pope Benedict should appoint the few 7 or 8 real Catholic Bishops that exist and have shown fortitude, to oversee every aspect of these seminaries. Everyone should be strictly screened. No wolves who hate the teachings of the Church should be the head and certainly not the formation teachers. Constant monitoring of strict adherence to doctrine and morals would chase out the weeds and strengthen the wheat. Lets nominate the panel of Bishops who could do this. We could call them the "Magnificent Seven"...Bishops with Backbone!!!!!

TM Lutas

Very simply, you fight for better formation just as you should be fighting for better everything else in the Catholic Church. If you're blessed to be near a seminary, try offering a little moral support to the orthodox Catholics working there. They might not feel so alone. If you hear of some sort of retaliation at a seminary, do not hesitate to speak out in defense of what is right.

Let us not be silent and we will soon find that things will improve.

Some Day

It truly is sad the situations of seminaries.
Talleran, Catholic bishop and minister to the Monarchy AND Napolean once said...
"I never lost Faith...
not even in the Seminary."

Teophilus

Unfortunately the universal crisis in the Church is not going to be sorted out in our lifetime. One just needs to check the history of heresies to know this. It is an authority and faith crisis in the first place. John XXIII and Paul VI commited the grave mistake of believing the Church was ready to open up to the world and strong enough in faith to stand its sinful seductions. That was the most tragic blunder the members of the Church commited in Her long history.

Tim

Maximus, you paint a rather bleak picture. Let us pray that the Holy Spirit is up to the task of seeing to the health of his Church. Let's also pray for a renewal in our seminaries.

Rita

Thomistic,
You forgot to include in the "isms", the ever-dreaded and all too prevalent egoism. It's the new mantra; SEXism! RACism! EGOism! We're told weekly that this is what is wrong with us. Who knew?

Salve Stella Maris

Many years ago, I left the seminary because I just couldn't stand the politics anymore. For the sake of charity, I will not name the seminary nor the diocese I studied for. At that time, homosexual activity was concealed, but happened with frequency, particularly among Hispanic seminarians, and was basically tolerated by the administration so long as it didn't garner any outside attention. Dissent was present in some coursework, albeit subtly inserted. Student liturgies were often subject to the liturgical whims of the celebrant, kneeling wasn't allowed during the consecration, and raucous guitar groups led much of the music.

That seminary is radically different today, according to friends who attend it. Classes are taught from Magisterial sources, the Oath of Fidelity is publically taken each year by the faculty, illicit sexual activity is grounds for immediate dismissal, and the Masses are much more orthodox with kneeling allowed, better music, and no deviations from the rubrics.

This seems to be the case for seminaries across the country in the last few years, and I welcome it. Our prayers are being answered. God bless Pope John Paul II for starting the process of cleaning up the seminaries and Pope Benedict XVI for making this work a priority!

Kenjiro  Shoda

My cousin was in a religious Order seminary in L.A. in 1978. He left in 1979 after seeing so much dissent from Church teachings, permissive lifestyle, liturgical abuse and homosexual acivity that He could not in conscience stay 5 more years and be ordained. He was loosing His Faith.
This religious Order seminary is still in existance, but has less than 20 seminarians. They are still the same dissidents, and the Order is down to barely 100 old men in the Province. They have been plagued by scandal about homosexuality.
This particular Order, which is about 800 years old world wide, had before Vatican II 27,000 members. Today, they have declined to the point of barely 15,000. They have always ranked No. #2 in the size of male religious Orders in the Church, but are extremely aged in Europe and the USA where they probably will be all but extinct within 20 years.
The new strict instructions for priests for the USA issued by the US Bishops is like a band aid on a gaping wound in need of more radical repair than that.
All this would have not been necessary if we had never had Vatican II.

trubeleevr

There is no genuine reform unless there is a complete housecleaning first.
All existing seminary leaders should be fired immediately and replaced with carefully screened, orthodox individuals. It is a waste of time and effort to fill a barrel with fresh healthy apples when a rotten one still remains within.

Hope

To the 2 posters who had such demoralizing and testing experiences in the seminary.God bless you both.I can only imagine what a painful part of your faith journey this would have been.I wonder if the pain you felt was akin to Jesus knowing of judas' betrayal.
Thank God our courageous Benedict have begun to turn the situation around but he needs a sunami of prayer to sustain him because I have no doubt the devil is enraged at the dismantling of his kingdom.

The comments to this entry are closed.

Pope Benedict XVI Homilies & Statements

Codex of Catholic Blogs

Orthodox Blogs

Blogs From People We Wish Were Catholic