The nbsp COVID-19 Response Fund nbsp has been established to address critical needs in our community.nbsp DONATE NOW.Throughout the next several months, the staff at IPF will be working to develop additional programs.This includes a program for recently ordained priests, as well as a program for the spiritual life of bishops.Both new programs are being developed in response to the feedback we received last year during our strategic planning process.
We will also be reviewing our existing programs, particularly in light of the document from Rome entitled, The Gift of the Priesthood. It will be a helpful guide as we evaluate our current programs. Among other elements, the program comprises a healthy and much-needed media fast, in which the use of phones, television, computers, and social media are kept to a minimum. Catholics have rightly wondered: Since The Boston Globe first confronted us with the depth of the crisis of clergy sexual abuse in January 2002, has seminary formation changed and adapted. In fact, if we look back over a bit longer period, the past 25 years, we find that already prior to 2002, seminary formation programs were on the road to improvement almost across the board. It can be helpful for laity and clergy alike to consider where weve come from, what these improvements have entailed, and some of the challenges that still lie ahead. This is the governing document for seminaries throughout the world from which, and in close adherence to which, episcopal conferences are expected to establish their own local governing documents for seminaries. In the United States, the latter is accomplished through the Program of Priestly Formation (PPF), presently in its fifth edition (with a sixth edition currently in the works). This was followed by revised editions in 1976, 1981, and 1985. In 1992, following an international synod on Priestly Formation in the Circumstances of the Day, St. John Paul II published his post-synodal apostolic exhortation Pastores Dabo Vobis (I Will Give You Shepherds).The fourth edition of the PPF was subsequently approved in November 1992. As a fifth edition of the PPF was nearing completion, a new apostolic visitation of all U.S. A concluding report on this visitation was published by the Congregation for Catholic Education in 2008. Later that year, Pope Francis appointed Mexican bishop Jorge Carlos Patrn Wong as secretary for seminaries within the Congregation for the Clergy, with responsibility for the formation of the worlds approximately 120,000 seminarians. Ignatian in its approach and orthodox in its theology, IPF has pioneered an intense program of spiritual preparation for seminarians that becomes solidly foundational for their later years of formation. The term formator captures nuances all expressive of the crucial role these individuals play today as mentors, teachers, and guides of our men in formation. Significant in this context has been the birth of the Seminary Formation Council (SFC) that today plays a vital even prophetic role in providing education, practical tools, spiritual enrichment, and fraternal support to seminary formators. SFC has developed a two-year certificate program, Seminary Formation for Missionary Discipleship, for those who serve in diocesan seminary formation, especially formation advisers, teaching faculty, administrative faculty, and vocation directors. The Ratio foresees seminary formation teams collaborating with professionals in the psychological sciences. Institute For Priestly Formation How To Live ALong gone are the days when figuring out how to live a celibate life was largely left as a matter for the seminarian to consult about with his spiritual director. If there is one thing weve learned in the past 15 years, its that many priest abusers reached ordination in a stage of arrested psychosexual and emotional development. Helping the Church heal from this tragic chapter in her history will be the task of our lifetime, and particularly of the most recently ordained and of the next two or three generations of priests. We are acutely aware that more preparatory work is needed before the men arrive at the major seminary. And there is a broad consensus among seminary formators today that our seminaries urgently need to require of incoming candidates a year dedicated to intense human and spiritual formation prior to commencing major seminary. To be sure, the concept of a special preparatory phase has a firm foundation reaching all the way back into the Churchs monastic tradition: Neophytes are to be provided with a special initial period of spiritual preparation and testing. Begun in 1999, their spiritual year is required for all seminarians prior to the first year of theology.
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