Patheos blog
July 9, 2019
By Guest Contributor
[Blogger’s note: this piece was submitted to me by someone I’ve verified is a Catholic seminarian, currently studying at a seminary in the United States. I offered to let him write anonymously so that he could reach others without his privacy being endangered at the seminary. I think that young men like this, who understand what abuse really is, are the very people we need more of in the priesthood if we are ever to heal the Church. –Mary Pezzulo]
Brother seminarians, we are living in challenging times. You truly are doing something heroic for accepting the cross of pursuing intellectual, human, spiritual, and pastoral formation for Holy Orders, despite what is going on around us in the Church. Of the time I have spent in seminary formation, this past year has been the most challenging year by far.
We came to seminary, some of us for the first time, with the elephant of the allegations of then-Cardinal McCarrick’s abuse of seminarians no different than ourselves surrounding us in the room. We wondered what more bad news the year would hold, and we weathered a trickle, then a stream, and finally a torrent of even worse news. We heard of perpetrators and more scandals both near and far, and we wondered if we were crazy for pursuing the sacrament of holy orders when some who have gone before us were proving themselves capable of the most egregious sins of unholiness imaginable. How are we to respond?
Discerning out of seminary sometimes seemed like the easy way out of this crisis, but we know that God did not call us to seminary only to discern out when confronted with deep scandal in the Church, but rather to become holy men formed after his Sacred Heart and capable of serving the Church through the celebration of the sacraments. We need only to look to the words of St. Peter, the father and founder of our beautiful Catholic faith, to find the path forward to greater holiness: “Like obedient children, do not act in compliance with the desires of your former ignorance, but, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in every aspect of your conduct, for it is written, ‘Be holy because I am holy.’” It is only by uniting ourselves to Christ that we can achieve the holiness that is needed. As men of the Church, we are to strive for holiness in all things, whether they be big things or little things.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.