Seminary ponders how to form priests during a pandemic

What is the Christian response of a seminary to this time of pandemic? Let me answer by telling you what I think COVID means: Christ Our Victor Is Dominus (Lord)! Our faith is a prophecy of conquest!

Even from the popular medical nomenclature of the “corona” virus, we are reminded of Christ the King, corona meaning crown. Jesus is crowned Lord of the universe, even of the tiniest piece of viral matter, and under his sway nothing is left to chance.

Nonetheless in these times when British Columbia is pursuing a very specific strategy to contain the virus, we at the Seminary of Christ the King are left without a plan for the 2020 -2021 seminary year.

There are a few important signposts. The Holy See’s 2016 publication of Ratio formationis sacerdotalis nationalis (Program for Priestly Formation) places special emphasis on personal accompaniment, human formation, and community living. These three items are the ones that most distinguish us in our sociability and characterize us in our social interaction.

The academic component of a seminary program is also an indispensable part of seminary formation, but it does not require the kind of formation that the practice of the virtues and the building of character demands.

One can study, teach, and learn a subject online, but the human person cannot be fully embraced online.

One can review a case history of somebody online and analyze the psychological evaluation of a student online, but the smell of the sheep, as Pope Francis would say, is simply unavailable.

Good manners are learned around a table set with delicious food or the meagre ration of a Friday fast. It is impossible to learn the same in an internet chat room. We are creatures who love our reason, but we can’t dispense with our senses for full-bodied relationships. We are getting used to our virtual world and our virtual relationships, but we know ourselves best when we are familiar with our real relationships: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life –  the life was made manifest, and we saw it, and testify to it, and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us .” (1 Jn 1:1)

This is what any seminary tries to pass on, within the limits of its resources, to its seminarians and to the parishes they will ultimately serve.

To lose sight of Jesus is to lose sight of the good news, that he was truly born, truly suffered, and truly rose again in our actual human flesh. How can a seminary pass this reality on to our seminarians and to our people amid a COVID lockdown?

It’s not just a matter of finding creative technological solutions. The Gospel is not a solution; it’s a way of being.

There are creative ideas already being executed such as Behold, the new online Catholic community in the Archdiocese of Vancouver, but one must acknowledge with all the realism of the Gospel that these can only be temporary measures. 

One of the greatest advantages of such pilot programs is the striving to Christianize the web to a measure that has not yet been attempted up to now. This may very well be one of the hidden intentions of Divine providence guiding us through this pandemic.

Yet we still come back to the fundamental problems on the ground. The good news delivers a lifeline, not a quick fix. Can you raise a family of several children strictly online? Of course not. But such a question highlights the challenge of raising up ministers after His own heart for a period of nine years of full seminary formation.

Some of the most difficult formation in the Church is carried out in a good Catholic seminary. Given our present circumstances, it becomes a matter of how we can assure that normal human interactions, which form the scaffolding of seminary formation, can still be offered.

There are many possibilities for carrying out this work. One of the most helpful leads was precisely when the pandemic struck and we made the decision to finish the Spirituality Year on campus while maintaining both the rigour of the quarantine and the flow of the seminary courses and community life. We managed to do both in fairly effective way, but not without added sacrifices.

One can envision the possibility of returning to a model of seminary life that preceded the Second Vatican Council, but without the same mentality of formation, given our hyperconnectivity and clarity about the style of formation. In this scenario, seminarians would return to the seminary two weeks early to quarantine themselves. Then, if all is well, the year begins as usual, minus the outings to town, the home weekends, the apostolic work, and other interactions that usually take place.

Stifling? Not necessarily so. On one hand, the quarantine cannot be taken lightly, since one case of COVID will shut down the whole seminary and monastery. On the other, the strictness of the discipline of prevention has allowed calculated risks and safety practices that allow some of the freedom of the past. It will be a matter of all – seminarians, formators, parents, and archdiocese – being on the same screen (to adjust the analogy). A walk of trust, where each one would take up the serious commitment of being responsible for everyone.

The intensity of seminary life is proverbial among the seminarians, and it will be good for us to sound each one out to understand their concerns and address their anxieties. Nonetheless, the danger of viral infection is not a small matter and the challenge of balancing safety with the intensity of life, such as periodic outings and other helpful social interaction, remains. 

Another possibility is to rethink the program so that it can be halved, with one semester focusing on academics and completed from home or parish, and the other spent on campus within a more manageable quarantined situation. (By home, we mean the seminarian will have the opportunity to live in a “lesser” seminary environment, such as a parish rectory where human formation is shared by the clergy.)

This approach seems to present one main obstacle, that of condensing in a clear and effective manner nine years of formation at different levels for each seminarian – a steep if not impossible task for any formative faculty. The risk is an uneven formation which depends upon the capacity of the local priest or deacon accompanying these men.

There is a third method that might be a possibility, but not at the seminary and not with the monks. It would entail dividing the seminarians into appropriate groups, or cohorts, who are each assigned a formator-priest to accompany them in a specific location and household, with academic courses taken online.

We have very few diocesan priests who are capable of offering students such a rounded education. The necessity of working within a larger company of formators would be even more important. The seminary would provide only the academic formation and online spiritual direction.

A fourth option, and the simplest, is to postpone class for the coming year, enabling the formators to work on the 2016 Ratio Fundamentalis with greater leisure and be better prepared for their courses. Determining how the seminarians should be managed in the interim would be a major concern for Archbishop Miller.

Not least of these challenges is providing the provincial government sufficient assurance and practical proofs that a long-term COVID prevention program will be in place before September. Coupled with this is the safety of the elderly monks who will be in constant contact with the younger monks going to and fro.

If faith is our victory cry, there is no reason to doubt that come September the pandemic will be more manageable. If COVID protocols are still in place, only with mutual trust and a high degree of co-responsibility would we be able to continue as before.

It’s doubtful any seminary is ready. We are all listening to each other and trying to understand the initiatives and measures each is taking to meet such an unprecedented challenge. There are so many contingencies, yet who would suggest the Holy Spirit is limited in his creativity, even for the formation of seminarians?

The more realistic challenge remains the same. Handing on not programs, methods, or pastoral service, but giving gifts and proclaiming what we have received – a person, Jesus Christ, in the fullest way possible under extraordinary circumstances.

Father Abbot John Braganza OSB is the chancellor of Seminary of Christ the King and abbot of Westminster Abbey in Mission.