In celebrating the feast of St. John Marie Vianney and the international year of priests a week ago, allow me to clear the name of the beloved patron of parish priests that has become the root of flawed reasoning with regard to seminary formation. Some seminarians (and even priests, mind you) think of St. John Vianney as a priest who is not really bright, doing poorly in his theological studies. However, as they say, he made up for this through his spiritual discipline. They wrongly conclude that anything besides this spirituality are just mere "decorations" of seminary formation, with little importance to contribute.
But is this really so? I believe that if one would read an account of St. John Vianney's life, no detail would account for this. All that has been shown was that because he took a break from seminary life due to the war, he had difficulty in his Latin, being too old to be very efficient in it. Nowhere does it say that he really had a very poor academic performance. After all, would a rich spiritual life well-described in his writings be possible for a priest who hasn't studied much?
In clarifying these matters, it is but inevitable to remind us of the call of the Church for us seminarians to strive to become better priests. It is our personal, as well as a communal, response to the Church's call of the day to provide authentic guidance and direction for the faithful who seem to be lost in the floating world of postmodernity and commercialism.
As of now, the clergy faces two challenges: the call to become integral persons on one hand, and the avoidance of rationalization on the other hand.
Some parish priests today face difficulties in handling the faithful and managing the parishes. Homilies not well-articulated and expressed, a lack of knowledge of people and interaction with them, and poor critical thinking regarding certain matters serve as signs for these. On a lay person's perspective, it seems that these are the reasons why the parish priests of today are unappreciated, undervalued, and, at times, not taken seriously and highly regarded. They seem to have something that should have been developed in the course of seminary formation, but was not done because of several factors, including the quality of formation as well as of the individual response to it.
Meanwhile, the Church faces what postmodern critical theory calls "rationalization." In a way, ministries have been strictly compartmentalized. Some priests are only good at teaching and education, or at liturgy and social action. It is indeed good that priests focus on their passions, but the problem is, some of the aspects have been left out. There are those who are knowledgeable in various disciples, but lack that which concerns practical matters and public. There are also those who know about parish management but fail to provide some theoretical and explanatory grounds for their actions as priests. In short, this systematization of the Church finds its roots and leads to a lack of the integral personhood of the priests.
With these challenges of integrity and strict systematization in mind, we can then show what it means by the Church needing better priests. A better priest is someone who have both the heads and the hearts set to serve the Lord and lead the people to Him. What we need now are priests who have enough understanding and wisdom to read the signs of the times, who know how to interact and relate with people. We need priests who know how to cater various kinds of people from all backgrounds and all classes, most especially to the poor and the oppressed. We need priests who really find God in all things and can relate with different passions, endeavors, and ministries. In short, the Church needs true priests, priests who serve as the Church's helping hand to the faithful.
Yes, it seems that the demand is great, but this is the very challenge that we seminarians face today. Now that seminaries, through the guidance of the Updated Philippine Program for Priestly Formation, become more open to "formation outside the confines of the seminary itself," we are fortunate enough to be offered the best quality of integral formation, consisting of a spiritual formation allowing us to go both inside and outside ourselves, an academic formation that is integral, a community life which respects individual responsible freedom, and an apostolic formation with complete immersion and oneness with the other as its center. With all these, what we are just called to be completely open and responsive towards formation. We just have to bring out the best in us, to show who we really are, strengths and weaknesses both included, that we may be fully molded as the best priests that there can be for the Lord.
The call to be a St. John Vianney demands a response now, and what is asked of us is to let ourselves be formed as we look forward to being the priests that the Church needs right now.
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