Intervention of Fr. Shayne Craig, Superior General of the Society of Priests of Saint Sulpice

Faced with the diversity of ecclesial contexts in the world, what are the challenges for vocational discernment, the formation of future priests and ecclesial collaboration?

1. Vocation and freedom

Like Monsignor Micas, my remarks will revolve around the question of vocation, and what is central to vocation, to being called, namely: the question of freedom. How can we help candidates who come forward to respond to Christ’s call in full freedom? The question of freedom is complex and leads to several other questions.

For example, in English-speaking Canada and the United States, there is a high percentage of foreign students. They come from deeply traditional Catholic countries, where there is often a question of "shame" not to continue. Thus, the question of inner freedom manifests itself in this case. Quite often they are motivated by the desire to help their family financially. The question of inner freedom also arises in the face of candidates who have suffered psychological pressure.

In Canada, candidates are supported financially by the dioceses. They then incur a financial but also moral debt towards the diocese that welcomes them. This situation once again raises the question of the spiritual freedom of candidates for the priesthood. We perceive in many a fear of "failure" as well as a dismissal by the Seminary. Thus, they are often tempted not to take risks for fear of failure, not to draw attention to themselves in case of difficulty encountered during their formation. This raises the question of transparency and spiritual freedom.

For candidates for the priesthood from Canada, there is another profile that is emerging. The candidate is quite often an only child or from a small family. As the Pope says, they are often "little princes", deeply loved by their families, but to the point of being too protected and cherished. As in their families, when the Church sends them to the seminary, there too, they are cherished, loved, even excessively esteemed... and in fact Canadian vocations are very rare!

In both cases, we can end up with what the Holy Father called "monsters of narcissism": so how to help them be fully free to serve others?

One of the effects of being so loved, cherished, and protected from failure is that they have little or no ability to cope with failure or suffering. When the slightest difficulty arises, they are tempted to give up or leave. Therefore, as part of their training and to help them discern, there is a growing use of psychological follow-up. At least half of seminarians receive this type of short-term assistance.

In addition, with so few local vocations, there may be a danger of trying to "retain" candidates... to the detriment of their spiritual freedom. This can also be exacerbated by a lack of inner freedom of their formators, who seek to “retain” them. Again, only a deep relationship with God allows us to seek only his will and not ours, to be free from ourselves, for God.

In other places and countries I have noted the concern of bishops and formators that candidates should have an authentic and transparent relationship with their formators and spiritual directors. This is to allow them not to hide for fear of being put out, if they come to show any problem (with chastity, for example).

How are we to foster this relationship of trust, which makes it possible to address these issues and support candidates?

I think that the insistence of this personal accompaniment, that the heart of formation is spiritual direction, that each priest in the Sulpician approach is above all a spiritual director, favors this accompaniment in depth, and not simply on the formal level (when there is only one or a few house spiritual directors for a large number of seminarians). The Sulpician approach is a richness, a blessing for the Church, in order to foster the development of a climate of trust and a true accompaniment for the discernment of the will of God. Because only God’s will counts in the end. Doing his will makes us happy, makes others happy and the Church happy. If you don’t, you’re unhappy, and you make the church unhappy. But to do God’s will, it presupposes true inner freedom – on the part of every candidate, but also on the part of every formator.

2. The social and cultural question or how to witness? 

One of the challenges of those discerning a priestly vocation is precisely that such a decision is so deeply counter cultural.  Even in those cultures which were traditionally Christian, those entering into seminary now face a dramatic choice.  To choose to enter seminary, one has to separate oneself from one’s contemporaries, on several levels.

However, once one has made such a separation – with all that this implies – what does it mean for the futrure mission as a pastor? For one is ordained precisely to reach out, in this mission, to those same contemporaries. But if one’s identity has been formed “in opposition” – how can one find the way back – the path of communion? How does one bridge the gap? How to bear good fruit in the middle of a world and a culture that is part of rejection?

Hence the risk of some young priests being caught between two extremes: that of a «culture warrior» who is only in opposition, in an identity which is only in opposition, or that of a priest too close to his contemporaries,  with an identity which risks being lost or absorbed by the culture. 

This explains the need for a deep and interior formation that is clearly Catholic in order to forge the heart of a good shepherd who goes out to and identifies with the people to whom he is sent as pastor.

3. Collaboration ecclésiale : « TUTTI, TUTTI, TUTTI »

There is a famous English writer, who says of the Catholic Church: «Here comes everyone! » As Pope Francis says: «TUTTI, TUTTI, TUTTI!»

The further we go, the clearer it is that we will be the Church together, or that we will not be the Church at all. But this spirit of communion, of synodality, if you will, is facing a time when there is a growing polarization within the Church itself. One of the challenges is to form priests who are not partisan, who have the "sensus ecclesiae", the common sense of the Church.

This can only be achieved by involving the various elements that make up the ecclesial community in the formation process. Hence the importance of initiatives such as the propedeutic program, the importance of a time of pastoral insertion in parishes, where future priests serve alongside other baptized faithful and are able to learn from them, the involvement of local pastors, the presence of women in the formation process (in pastoral experiences, as teachers, as those involved in human formation).

More and more, all over the world we see that it takes a whole village to raise a child, and it takes a whole church to form a pastor, a good pastor.

It was Mr. Olier’s conviction that for the renewal of the Church there is nothing more important. He found his brothers and sisters like sheep without a shepherd, with poorly prepared priests, sometimes even with only the  heart of "functionaries”. He wanted to form the People of God to be true Christians, saints. This task requires good and holy pastors who are themselves profoundly formed in the faith, good Christians who are able to lead and guide the People of God.

Intervention of Bishop Jean-Marc Micas, Bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes

Faced with the diversity of ecclesial contexts in the world, what are the challenges for vocational discernment, the formation of future priests and ecclesial collaboration?

1. Vocational discernment : what are we talking about?

Mr. Olier, in the 17th century, said that one had to enter the ministerial priesthood “through the door of the vocation”. That meant you could get into it in a different way— At the time of the commendatory abbots, one could become a priest for financial interest, in order to secure an annuity. The king could distribute bishoprics for similar reasons… In the context of the French 17th century, a period of mystical, spiritual and missionary renewal, in the spirit of the Reformation of the Council of Trent, which had been sensitive to the schism with the Protestants and its causes, particularly as regards the state of the clergy, Jean-Jacques Olier and others promote another way of becoming a priest: “one must enter through the door of the vocation”, that is, on the basis of an inner and spiritual personal desire, and of a formal call of the Church which discerns the aptitudes for ministry.

Seminaries are at the service of the free decision of a person to offer himself to the call of the Church to become a priest, and at the service of the decision of the Church to ordain such a person for the ministry of priest.

The challenges to be met by these houses and institutions that serve this dual objective (to enable a person to discern his vocation and to form himself, and to enable the Church to discern the vocation of this person, and to form him), is to do what is right. Several conditions apply:

- Know what to do (vision):

o To be clear about what priests are in the Catholic Church (question of theology of the ministerial priesthood, articulated to the baptismal priesthood);
o Be clear about what the vocation to the ministry of priest is (often there is confusion between the importance of personal desire over the actual discernment of abilities for the ministry: one orders whether there is no objection to doing so, more than if there are good reasons to do so!);
o To be clear about the essential elements of formation, in terms of human personality, spiritual personality, intellectual and pastoral;
o To be clear about the ecclesial and societal contexts in which future priests will have to live and exercise their ministry: they are different from one continent to another, but also sometimes from one diocese to another…

- Be well equipped to do so:

o Qualified persons in sufficient numbers (spiritual directors, professors, experts in the humanities, parish priests and lay people competent to train future priests and enable them to enter the ministry well…);
o Stable and serene institutions that inspire long-term trust and pride.

2. The formation of future priests

It is regulated by norms (ratio) established by the Holy See for the whole world which sets the expectations and axes to achieve it, fixing some obligatory passages for all and opening options to take into account the diversity of the contexts in which the Church lives and carries out her mission, and the national episcopal conferences which specify the affairs for their region of competence (for us, France).

Within the same country, various proposals may exist, depending on geography, charisms of a particular institute, history, ecclesial or missionary sensibilities. Thus, in France, 25 houses form the future priests who will be tomorrow in our dioceses. These houses are «classical» diocesan seminaries (Issy-les-Moulineaux is one of them, but also Rennes, Nantes, Orléans, Bayonne, Toulouse, Aix, Toulon, Lyon, Paris and Strasbourg), two SU (Carmes and Rome), the seminary of Saint Paul VI which begins to train seminarians while allowing them to pursue university studies, the house of formation of the Community of Saint Martin, the seminary of Ars of the SSJMV, that of the ND Institute of Life in Venasque, the Prado in Lyon or the Mission of France in Paris, or 5 Redemptoris Mater seminaries for priests of the NC Way incarnated in our dioceses…

The challenge for all these institutions is to be in conformity with the mission that the Church assigns to them: to discern the vocation of future priests, and to train them adequately to "give the bishops the collaborators they need to exercise the apostolic priesthood" as the prayer of ordination says. That is a universal challenge, whatever the context. In France, in addition to having seminarians in sufficient numbers for life and community dynamics, for their financial balance, to have teams of competent instructors (not only good teachers but clear on all the points mentioned), free and courageous to avoid the pressure imposed by the small number of seminarians (between 600 and 700) and the objective needs of the Church’s mission.

The challenge is also to form priests who embody well what the Catholic Church says of her priests, in terms of the solidity of personal life, the accompaniment of Church members, the support of the missionary commitment of all the baptized, attention to the peripheries, as the Holy Father insists, but also more simply the gospel of the Good Samaritan, of service to communion in the Church, of the communion of the Church (ecumenism), of dialogue with other religions and with society. All this within the same country!

In the diversity of ecclesial contexts in the world, the challenge is that of catholicity! In recent times, it has been said that such a decision of the pope may be valid for one continent but not for another, even though the pope is at the service of the universal Church. For the world of formation in the ministry of priest, this challenge is not small: when we train priests, we train them for a particular diocese and context, but also for the universal Church: the Catholic Church is one and the same Church, wherever she is in the world. A diocesan priest belongs to a diocese, he shares his culture and his particularities, but he also bears the concern of the universal Church. In our seminaries, we welcome seminarians who are not all of French origin, and others who will not be priests in France. The challenge is to form priests who are Catholic, both from somewhere and from the whole Church. I remember the difficulty of always feeling competent, as trainers, in discerning the vocation of African or Vietnamese candidates, for example… Not an easy question!

3. Ecclesial collaboration

Behind this title, finally, I think of the synod on synodality. The pope said that synodality is part of the genetic code of the Catholic Church. So it’s not a matter of sensitivity, style, taste, or opinion— It requires adherence to faith and know-how, particularly in the exercise of pastoral responsibility and governance.

However, the challenge is not small, and it is not the same everywhere, depending on the culture of the countries where we are.

Habits and cultures matter: habits about how to exercise ministry, culture of the leader different from country to country… ), figures of the role of man, of the father, conceptions of the relationship between man and woman, of democracy… All this impacts our subject.

The challenge is for both priests and others. We speak of clericalism on the priests' side, but not only; there is also a conception of synodality which has difficulty with the institution of the Church as an apostolic hierarchy, there is also the possible clericalization of lay people called to pastoral or ministerial responsibilities, etc., etc.

For seminaries, the subject is not small: we often turn to them when complementarities in parishes are not always lived harmoniously, when there are demands for power or authority on all sides… It is a challenge for the whole Catholic Church, as well as for the seminaries, but here…

I will say no more on this point, but my conviction is that the challenge is that of transmitting the conviction that in the Catholic Church, founded on the apostles and on Peter’s singular mission at the service of the unity of the entire ecclesial body, Everyone grows at once, or disappears at once. We must come out of the too frequent vision of power conflicts in “communicating vessels” (more priests = fewer lay people, and vice versa).