Formation for the priesthood, between
secularism and models of the Church
by Jean-Louis Bruguès
Speech of the secretary of the congregation for Catholic
education to the rectors of the pontifical seminaries,
published by "L'Osservatore Romano" on June 3, 2009.
It is always risky to explain a social situation on the
basis of a single interpretation. Nonetheless, some keys
open more doors than others do. I have long been convinced
of the fact that secularization has become a key word for
thinking about our societies today, but also about our
Church.
Secularization represents a historical process that is
very old, having emerged in France in the middle of the 18th
century before spreading to all modern societies.
Nevertheless, the secularization of society varies greatly
from one country to another.
In France and Belgium, for example, it tends to prohibit
signs of religious membership in public, and to push faith
back into the private sphere. The same tendency can be seen,
but with much less strength, in Spain, Portugal, and Great
Britain. In the United States, however, secularization
harmonizes easily with the public expression of religious
convictions: we saw this also during the last presidential
election.
Over the past decade, an extremely interesting discussion
has emerged among the specialists. Until it began, it seemed
that it had to be taken for granted that European-style
secularization constituted the rule and model, while the
American kind constituted the exception. Now, however, there
are many - JÙrgen Habermas, for example - who think that the
opposite is true, and that the religions will play a new
social role in postmodern Europe as well.STARTING OVER FROM
THE CATECHISMRegardless of the form it has taken,
secularization has provoked a collapse of Christian culture
in our countries. The young men who come to our seminaries
know little or nothing about Catholic doctrine, about the
history and customs of the Church. This generalized lack of
education forces us to carry out important revisions in the
practice followed until now. I will mention two of these.
First of all, it seems indispensable to me to provide
these young men with a period - a year or more - of initial
formation, of "recovery," catechetical and cultural at the
same time. These programs can be designed in various ways,
based on the specific needs of each country. Personally, I
am thinking of an entire year dedicated to assimilating the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, which presents itself as a
very complete compendium.
In the second place, our formation programs should be
reviewed. The young men who come to the seminary know that
they are ignorant. They are humble, and eager to assimilate
the message of the Church. Working with them brings
excellent results. Their lack of education has this positive
aspect: they no longer drag behind them the negative
prejudices of their older brothers. Fortunately, therefore,
we find ourselves working with a "tabula rasa." That is why
I am in favor of a comprehensive, organic theological
formation that is focused on the essential.
This implies, on the part of those responsible for
instruction and formation, the discontinuation of an initial
formation marked by a critical spirit - as was the case for
my generation, for which the discovery of the Bible and
doctrine was contaminated by a systematic spirit of
criticism - and of the temptation of premature
specialization: precisely because these young men lack the
necessary cultural background.
Allow me to share with you a few questions that occur to
me at this moment. It is absolutely reasonable to want to
give future priests a complete, top-level formation. Like an
attentive mother, the Church wants the best for its future
priests. For this reason, the number of courses has been
multiplied, but to the point of weighing down programs in a
way that is, in my view, exaggerated. You have probably
perceived the risk of discouragement in many of your
seminarians. I ask: is an encyclopedic perspective
appropriate for these young men who have received no basic
Christian formation? Has this perspective not, perhaps,
provoked a fragmentation of formation, an accumulation of
courses and an excessively historicizing outlook? Is it
truly necessary, for example, to give young men who have
never learned the catechism an in-depth formation in the
human sciences, or in the techniques of communication?
I would advise choosing depth over breadth, synthesis
over dispersion in details, architecture over decoration.
Similar reasons lead me to believe that learning
metaphysics, as demanding as this is, represents the
absolutely indispensable preliminary phase for the study of
theology. Those who come to us have often received a solid
scientific and technical formation - which is a good thing -
but their lack of general culture does not permit them to
undertake theology confidently.TWO GENERATIONS, TWO MODELS
OF CHURCHOn many occasions, I have spoken about generations:
about my own, about the one before me, about the future
generations. This is, for me, the crucial pont of the
present situation. Of course, the passage from one
generation to another has always posed adjustment problems,
but the one we are living through now is absolutely
exceptional.
The theme of secularization should help us to understand
better, even here. This secularization saw unprecedented
acceleration during the 1960's. For the men of my
generation, and even more for those who preceded me, who
were often born and raised in a Christian environment, it
constituted an essential discovery, the great adventure of
their lives. They therefore came to interpret the "openness
to the world" called for by Vatican Council II as a
conversion to secularization.
In this way, in fact, we have experienced or even
fostered an extremely powerful self-secularization in most
of the Western Churches.
The examples are many. Believers are ready to exert
themselves in the service of peace, justice, and
humanitarian causes, but do they believe in eternal life?
Our Churches have carried out an immense effort to renew
catechesis, but does not this catechesis itself tend to
overlook the ultimate realities? For the most part, our
Churches have embarked upon the ethical debates of the
moment, at the urging of public opinion, but how much do
they talk about sin, grace, and the divinized life? Our
Churches have successfully deployed massive resources in
order to improve the participation of the faithful in the
liturgy, but has not the liturgy for the most part lost the
sense of the sacred? Can anyone deny that our generation,
possibly without realizing it, dreamed of a "Church of the
pure," a faith purified of any religious manifestation,
warning against any manifestation of popular devotion like
processions, pilgrimages, etc.?
The collision with the secularization of our societies
has profoundly transformed our Churches. We could advance
the hypothesis that we have passed from a Church of
"belonging," in which the faith was determined by the
community of birth, to a Church of "conviction," in which
the faith is defined as a personal and courageous choice,
often in opposition with the group of origin. This passage
has been accompanied by startling numeric variations.
Attendance has visibly diminished in the churches, in the
courses of catechesis, but also in the seminaries. Years
ago, Cardinal Lustiger nonetheless demonstrated, setting out
the figures, that in France the relationship between the
number of priests and that of practicing Catholics had
always remained the same.
Our seminarians, like our young priests, also belong to
this Church of "conviction." They don't so much come from
rural areas anymore, but rather from the cities, especially
from the university cities. They often grow up in divided or
"split" families, which leaves them with scars and,
sometimes, a sort of emotional immaturity. The social
environment to which they belong no longer supports them:
they have chosen to be priests out of conviction, and have
therefore renounced any social ambition (what I am saying is
not true everywhere; I know African communities in which
families or villages still nurture the vocations that have
arisen within them). For this reason, they offer
better-defined profiles, stronger individuality, and more
courageous temperaments. In this regard, they have the right
to our full esteem.
The difficulty to which I would like to draw your
attention therefore goes beyond the boundaries of a simple
generational conflict. My generation, I insist, has equated
openness to the world with conversion to secularization, and
has experienced a certain fascination regarding it. But
although the younger men were born in secularization as
their natural environment and drank it together with their
mother's milk, they still seek to distance themselves from
it, and defend their identity and their differences.EMBRACE
THE WORLD, OR OPPOSE IT?There now exists within the European
Churches, and perhaps within the American Church as well, a
line of division, sometimes of fracture, between a current
of "composition" and a current of "contestation."
The first leads us to observe that secularization
includes values with a strong Christian influence, like
equality, freedom, solidarity, responsibility, and that it
should be possible to come to terms with this current and
identify areas of cooperation.
The second current, on the contrary, calls for keeping
distance. It maintains that the differences or points of
opposition, above all in the field of ethics, will become
increasingly pronounced. It therefore proposes an
alternative to the dominant model, and accepts the minority
opposition role.
The first current emerged mainly during the period
following the council; it provided the ideological framework
for the interpretations of Vatican II that were imposed at
the end of the 1960's and in the following decade.
Things were reversed beginning in the 1980's, above all -
but not exclusively - under the influence of John Paul II.
The current of "composition" has aged, but its proponents
still hold key positions in the Church. The current of the
alternative model has become much stronger, but it has not
yet become dominant. This would explain the tensions at the
moment in many of the Churches on our continent.
It would not be difficult for me to provide examples
illustrating the contrast I have just described.
Today the Catholic universities fall along this dividing
line. Some of them play the card of adaptation and
cooperation with secularized society, at the cost of finding
themselves forced to take a critical distance from this or
that aspect of Catholic doctrine or morality. Others, of
more recent inspiration, emphasize the confession of the
faith and active participation in evangelization. The same
applies to the Catholic schools.
And the same could be said, to return to the topic of
this meeting, in regard to the typical profile of those who
knock on the doors of our seminaries or religious houses.
Candidates of the first tendency have become increasingly
rare, to the great displeasure of the priests of the older
generations. The candidates of the second tendency have now
become more numerous than the others, but they hesitate to
cross the threshold of our seminaries, because often they do
not find what they are looking for there.
They are concerned about identity (and are sometimes
mockingly described as "identitarians"): the Christian
identity - how should we distinguish ourselves from those
who do not share our faith? - and the identity of the
priest, while the identity of the monk and the religious is
easier to perceive.
How can harmony be fostered between educators, who often
belong to the first current, and the young people who
identify with the second? Will the educators continue to
cling to criteria of admission and selection that date back
to their own time, but no longer correspond to the
aspirations of the young? I was told the story of a French
seminary in which adoration of the Most Holy Sacrament had
been banned for a good twenty years or so, because it was
seen as too devotional: the new seminarians had to struggle
for a number of years to have it reinstated, while some of
the professors preferred to resign in the face of something
that they judged as a "return to the past"; by giving in to
the requests of the younger men, they had the impression
that they were renouncing what they had fought for their
entire lives.
In the dioceses in which I have been bishop, I have
experienced similar difficulties when older priests - or
even whole parish communities - have had great difficulty in
responding to the aspirations of the young priests who were
sent to them.
I understand the difficulties that you encounter in your
ministry as seminary rectors. More than the passage from one
generation to another, you must ensure a smooth transition
from one interpretation of Vatican Council II to another,
and possibly from one ecclesial model to another. Your
position is delicate, but it is absolutely essential for the
Church.
