What Should I Expect From Seminary?

by | Sep 5, 2012 | Discerning Priesthood, Preparing for Seminary

‘The broad aim of seminary formation is to provide a suitable context for vocational discernment and growth and to enable candidiates to become priests who are, “true shepherds of souls after the example of Our Lord Jesus Christ, teacher, priest and shepherd”. ‘

Norms for Priestly Formation~The Bishops’ Conference of Scotland, 6.1

Seminary formation is organised around four principal areas of formation which were laid out in the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Pastores Dabo Vobis in the early 1990s and underlined again in the 2016 document the Church issued as the basic guidelines for priestly formation called the “Ratio Fundamentalis” – Human Formation, Spiritual Formation, Intellectual Formation and Pastoral Formation.

Formation and preparation for ordination is also then broken up into four main parts, namely the Propaedeutic, Discipleship, Configuration and Vocational Synthesis Stages. The first three of these take place in seminary, a community context in which life, prayer and study is shared with others who are discerning God’s call to them and making the journey to priestly ordination. In fact, the first stage is usually spent in its own seminary context (for the Scottish Dioceses this is in the Royal Scots College in Salamanca, Spain), the second two would normally be spent in a seminary context lasting five or six years (for example at the Pontifical Scots College in Rome). The fourth stage would be spent in a parish or around the Diocese, experiencing life and pastoral ministry as an ordained deacon preparing for priesthood. In fact, the life of the priest after ordination is also seen as part of the journey of formation, in a life of ongoing growth and ever-deepening formation in prayer, study and pastoral life throughout one’s life.

The links below take you to the page on the “Propaedeutic Stage” and to the Pontifical Scots College website which detail the content of these areas and stages of formation further.

Propaedeutic Seminary Course | Priests For Scotland

The Pontifical Scots College, Rome