A SPECIAL YEAR TO GET PRIESTS BACK IN SHAPE
by Sandro Magister
Benedict XVI has proclaimed it in order to strengthen the
spiritual identity of the clergy, and to purify it from
"filth." The Legionaries of Christ are in the eye of the
hurricane. On the seminaries: the unstinting diagnosis of
the Secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education.
ROME, June 10, 2009 - In a few days, on Friday the 19th,
the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the special Priestly
Year conceived by Benedict XVI will begin.
Pope Joseph Ratzinger explained the reasons for it to the
cardinals and bishops of the congregation for the clergy,
who met last March for their plenary assembly.
Until 1967, the congregation for the clergy was called
the congregation "of the Council." It had been set up, in
fact, after the Council of Trent, in order to oversee the
application of the council guidelines on the part of the
clergy with the care of souls.
The profile of the priest outlined by the Council of
Trent characterized the life of the Catholic Church until
the second half of the 20th century. It was exemplified by
the sainted Curé d'Ars, Jean-Marie Vianney, the 150th
anniversary of whose death falls this year.
Over past few decades, however, the identity of the
Catholic priest has in varying degrees been transformed,
obscured, and fragmented under the blows of secularization,
outside of and within the Church.
The intention of the Priestly Year is precisely that of
rebuilding in the priest a strong spiritual identity,
faithful to his original mission. This also involves an
energetic effort to eliminate the "filth" that has polluted
part of the clergy, limited in numbers but disastrous on the
level of its worldwide image.
But the occurrence of another event must be noted in this
regard. With the beginning of the Priestly Year, there will
also be the start of the apostolic visitation that the
Vatican authorities have ordered to be conducted in the
congregation of the Legionaries of Christ. This congregation
distinguishes itself by its abundance of vocations and its
large number of new priests. At the same time, however, it
risks collapsing just as the figure of its charismatic
founder, the priest Marcial Maciel, has collapsed. The
definitive revelation of Maciel's gravely immoral double
life has now become a terrible scandal, above all for those
who were his most fervent disciples.
Rebuilding the spiritual identity of the clergy therefore
also implies special attention to their formation. Just as
the seminaries were one of the milestones of the reform of
the Church advocated by the Council of Trent, so also today
it is in the seminaries that the identity of the new priests
is being forged.
The congregation for the clergy does not oversee the
seminaries. They are supervised by the congregation for
Catholic education.
This congregation must also, then, make an effort to
ensure that the Priestly Year bears fruit. And it has even
taken the first steps, to judge from the speech given by its
secretary, Jean-Louis Brugučs, to the rectors of pontifical
seminaries who met in Rome in recent days.
Archbishop Brugučs, 66, a Dominican, was bishop of Angers
until 2007. In addition to being secretary of the
congregation for Catholic education, he is vice president of
the pontifical work for ecclesiastical vocations and a
member of the commission for the formation of candidates for
the priesthood. He is also an academic at the St. Thomas
Aquinas pontifical academy.
His speech to seminary rectors doesn't use any curial
language at all. It is unusually frank. In no uncertain
terms, it describes and denounces the failures following the
council, in Europe in particular, including the astonishing
ignorance on elementary points of doctrine that is found
today in young men entering the seminary.
This ignorance is so significant that one of the remedies
recommended by Archbishop Brugučs is the dedication of an
entire year at the seminary to the teaching of the Catechism
of the Catholic Church.
The Catechism "ad parochos" was another of the milestones
of the Tridentine reform. Four centuries later, we're there
again.
