Denver Newsroom, Nov 8, 2020 / 04:18 pm (CNA).- No phones, no Facebook, no Amazon, no Netflix.
When Fr. Josh Mayer entered St. John Vianney’s Seminary in Denver, his first year looked a little more monk-like than what some might expect.
“It had to do with getting weaned off of the damaging effects of media, and then being able to see them for what they are when you come out on the other side of that,” Mayer told CNA.
Besides fasting from their phones and the internet, the seminarians also went on a commerce fast, where they were not allowed to make purchases. The only day the men did not observe these fasts was Saturday, when they could call friends and family or buy things they needed.
The year was also peppered with spiritual direction and counseling, as well as spiritual retreats, culminating with a 30-day Ignatian retreat. There were classes, but no grades. Book assignments, but no reports.
In January, after Christmas break, the men were sent out two-by-two for 30 days, with about $80 and a backpack, heading to unbeknownst-to-them mission destinations, for what is known as a poverty immersion. Mayer can’t say where he went, so as not to ruin the surprise for other seminarians, “but I can tell you that it was awesome.”
These experiences were some of the key parts of Spirituality Year – the introductory year of the seminary program at St. John Vianney in Denver that is designed to give men a break from academics for a more intense focus on their spiritual and human formation.
“They call it a year of the heart,” Mayer said. “So a year to focus on your relationship with the Lord and to engage in deeper prayer than probably anybody who’s in spirituality year has ever engaged in before.”
When Mayer entered his spirituality year 10 years ago, the Denver seminary was one of the only ones in the United States with such a program. Today, more seminaries throughout the country are looking to St. Vianney’s program as a model for their own “propaedeutic,” or preparatory years.
The authority in the Church that governs the formation of seminarians is the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy, which provides its guidance for formation in the Ratio Fundamentalis Instituionis Sacerdotalis (or “Ratio”).
Following this “Ratio,” each country’s bishops’ conference then prepares their own “Ratio Nationalis.” In the U.S, this document is entitled “The Program of Priestly Formation.” The current edition of this document suggests a “propaedeutic period” for seminaries, but the U.S. bishops’ conference told CNA that the document is being updated, and such a period will become the norm in U.S. seminaries with the new edition.
According to the Vatican’s 2016 Ratio, the purpose of such a period “is to provide a solid basis for the spiritual life and to nurture a greater self-awareness for personal growth.”
“It must always be a real time of vocational discernment, undertaken within community life, and a ‘start’ to the following stages of initial formation,” the Ratio states.
Pope John Paul II wrote in the 1992 document “Pastores Dabo Vobis” (I Will Give You Shepherds) of the growing need for propaedeutic years for seminarians, due to the rapidly changing cultural, technological and ideological landscapes of the modern world.
“[T]here is spreading in every part of the world a sort of practical and existential atheism,” he wrote, in which “the Individual, ‘all bound up in himself, this man who makes himself the center of his every interest’…even as a wide availability of material goods and resources deceives him about his own self-sufficiency.”
Archbishop Samuel Aquila of Denver noted in a recent document, “New Men in Christ,” that it was such an observation that motivated St. John Vianney Seminary to provide a spirituality year for the past 20 years.
“Coming from an environment of that promotes self-centeredness, our young men are given the daunting task of hearing and responding to their vocational call. In many cases, they receive and respond to their call with decidedly marginal resources – having an underdeveloped knowledge of themselves and their relationship with Christ,” Aquila wrote.
“Like the apostles, prior to entering the intellectual and pastoral formation stages of seminary, our young men need a time for their hearts to be formed by Jesus. This human and spiritual formation allows them to live with Jesus through prayer, away from the
cacophony of the voices of the world,” he added.
Fr. John Kartje is the rector of Mundelein Seminary in the Archdiocese of Chicago, which just started its second year of a spirituality program.
Kartje said while the program took a lot of its inspiration from Denver, including the media fast, one of the ways in which it differs is that it is “housed deliberately not on the seminary site.”
“It really is in the nature of the year itself, that you’re sort of stepping away. You’re stepping outside of that busy-ness of the life you’ve been living,” he said.
Furthermore, he said, it disengages the men from some of the “dramas” of seminary and Church life, and allows them to dive deeply into community life with one another.
“It allows the men to disengage a little bit from, for lack of a better word, the drama that sometimes can go on in the Church today,” Kartje said. “‘Bishop X said this.’ Or, ‘Did you see what was in that blog post?’ Dialogue is important, but there’s a toxicity in the Church today – by no means is it pervasive, but it’s there. And for someone who’s just exploring a vocation, the evil one can really take advantage of those kinds of things and just completely take us off focus.”
The men live together in a house with one full-time priest, and other priests who come for spiritual direction or to give talks. The men are fully in charge of the house’s day-to-day duties like cooking and cleaning, Kartje said, which gives them an opportunity to grow.
“It’s the men living together in community, which is much more than getting along with your roommate or something like that. It really is having that common bond as a disciple of Christ, as a man who is discerning this vocation and learning what it means to be the body of Christ in the truest sense of the word,” he said.
“But also, it does mean to take responsibility for your share of the work, to collaborate. Men in a presbyterate are not best friends primarily. They may have a good friend, who’s a priest in the presbyterate. But how do we all get along? How do we respect each other? How do we handle fraternal correction? All those kinds of things.”
Echoing the sentiments of Pope John Paul II as well as the Ratio, Kartje said that men who enter seminary are often coming from environments that are antithetical not only to prayer and the Christian life, but to any kind of quiet in their lives, which is another thing the spirituality year aims to provide.
“Nevermind having a deep Catholic experience or identity,” Kartje said, often the men lack deep experiences with “even just introspection.”
Spirituality year allows them “to unplug from the frenetic pace of our culture and really learn what it means to spend time in quiet with the Lord,” he said.
Mayer added that in his experience, the time to step back from academics was an important part of the spiritual year, because otherwise, it could be easy to view the seminary as just another academic track, with homework to study and tests to pass.
“For instance, if you have a candidate who’s coming right out of high school or right out of college and going into seminary, you’ve spent most of your life in class. And…you tend to have an expectation of seminary as more classes. Then you get to seminary and most of your time is actually spent on academics,” Mayer said.
“So it’s very possible to just see your preparation for the priesthood as being primarily a mental exercise, something that you’re still competing with others for the best grade. The seminary just becomes in the stream of everything else you’ve done, which is primarily, for Americans, school.”
Mayer said men in spirituality year still take classes on things like the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and they read some spiritual classics, like “Story of a Soul” by St. Therese of Lisieux and “Confessions” by St. Augustine.
“You’re going to have some classes, but they’re actually just for you, they’re just for your sake, for the sake of your flock,” he said.
Another important goal of the spirituality year is to help men with their human formation by providing ample opportunities to meet with psychological counselors, and to examine their own weaknesses and shortcomings.
“There’s a surprising amount of human formation issues that a spiritual bandaid cannot fix,” said Fr. Brady Wagner, who serves as the director of the spirituality year for St. John Vianney in Denver.
“I think doing a Spirituality Year or a propadeutic year gives men opportunities to really seriously consider their history, their life, their own experiences in light of Christ and find some freedom,” he said. “And if a guy is not free, then he’s able to see that, okay, this is probably not going to be a good fit.”
Wagner added that most men throughout the course of the year take advantage of the psychological counselors that are available to them, and even if they don’t engage in formal therapy, almost all of them receive some kind of growth counseling.
“It really is…having to get foundation in a life of prayer and having done some good work in terms of healing. Maybe there’s some things that I’ve suffered in my life, in my past experiences. (Seminarians can) have them healed and integrated into their lives according to God’s providence,” he said.
It helps seminarians come to a deeper recognition that God has “been with me my whole life, and I know what it means to walk with him.”
This spiritual and psychological work allows men to enter into the rest of the seminary with as free of a heart as possible, Wagner said, or to discern that their call is elsewhere – either somewhere else in religious life, such as the monastery, or to marriage.
“There is a heavy emphasis on vocational discernment, but only after having sensed the truth of my baptismal dignity and identity,” he said, which “naturally opens up vocation becoming clear. And so I think a lot of guys really have a sense of clarity by the end of the 30-day spiritual exercises. They have some clarity about their vocational discernment because the exercises themselves really have an orientation towards making an election to a state of life.”
Because spirituality year has a heavy emphasis on discernment, there are often men who choose to leave seminary during that year, Wagner added.
“It’s not uncommon, where guys leave throughout the year. We just had a guy after his three-day retreat, he had a deep sense of confirmation that the priesthood is not his call, and a lot of joy and a lot of freedom around that. So he just left recently and, and that’s actually a good sign. A lot of guys go through that.”
Mayer said spirituality year serves as a good “check” on men’s motives and expectations for entering seminary.
“I’ve seen a lot of really beautiful things happen in spirituality year in both directions, from men deciding that this is not the call, but they’re grateful for the time they were able to have, or men really hunkering down and realizing that this is where the Lord’s leading them. Spirituality year is also really good for revealing deeper issues and wounds that we have,” he said.
Mayer said he learned lessons during his spirituality year that he continues to carry with him in his priesthood.
“I think having nine months of being really privileged to live like that certainly helps us analyze the way that we live our lives, and helps us make choices to preserve those things that are most important, like prayer and relationship – relationship with God and relationship with other people,” he said.
“Something like spirituality year, where you have an intensity of prayer and relationship and intensity of focus, you don’t have all the distractions that you normally have to blame your issues on,” he said.
This can sometimes bring up deeper issues that men may have been avoiding or that went unrecognized before entering seminary, Mayer added, like anxiety issues or other psychological problems.
“It’s good for them to show up and reveal themselves and how deep they go, in a safe context and safe environment, rather than 15 years later at a parish, when you have a nervous breakdown or something,” he said.
Overall, he said, he thinks things like a spirituality year or a propaedeutic experience lays a strong foundation for seminarians for further discernment.
“A lot of things are revealed when you spend a lot of time in prayer and sinking down into your heart.”
[…]
In a civilized world, economy needs to be at the service of human beings and not the other way around.
Long before Aquinas, Saint Augustine also said this: “[The passions] are more easily mortified finally in those who love God, than satisfied, even for a time, in those who love the world.”
Aye, and here’s the rub. . . In our entrenched, economically-structured and Consumerist Lifestyle where exactly—today, both personally and systemically—is the line to be drawn between real “needs” and superfluous “abundance”? Who on the production lines are to be the first cut loose and sent forth to find or invent new work? And, in the cause of inter-generational solidarity, in addition to an atmospheric national debt, what other kinds of debt are being shoveled over the fence into the future?
Or, are technology (Technocracy?) and human ingenuity permanent and reliable jokers in the deck of modern economics—-the reverenced cornucopia called GNP?
Pope St. John Paul II explicitly called for “important changes in established lifestyles, in order to limit the waste of environmental and human resources, thus enabling every individual and all the peoples of the earth to have a sufficient share of those resources” (Centesiumus Annus, CA, 54).
What does this one-liner really mean? A prominent abbreviation of CA chose to edit-out this balancing (yes?) perspective, entirely, as simply an inadvertent anomaly, a throw-away.
Charitably, I hope the author of this article simply misunderstands Dr. Hirschfield’s work. Aquinas might be paraphrased as saying “private property is fitting because it channels our propensity to work for ourselves in socially useful ways,” but I do not think he says “we are also to hold private property as if it is in common, that is ready to share with others the fruits of our labors.” He says we are to act as “stewards” of what we have been given and use it for the “common good”. And respectfully, these are simply the difference between is-statements and ought-statements. He’s explaining the way human’s actually do function and then he enters morality in saying how we can be our best.
Second, the author of the article states “Economists … see happiness as acquiring wealth and goods.” This again is either the article author completely misunderstanding or Dr Hirschfield saying something that no economist thinks. Economists never talk about happiness coming from wealth and goods – ever. It’s a matter of satisfaction of preferences AS A PERSON SEES THEM NOW.
My biggest beef however is with the conflation of economics with the outcomes of markets and the general undertone of the article. The undertone is that it’s all so unsavory. Frankly it smacks of gnosticism. Economics, by telling us how preferences are going to be satisfied under a given set of rules – a market – is somehow unsavory. Just by telling us how people will respond to incentives, the science of economics itself is unsavory? Would you yell at a rock because it drops on your foot when you let go? Nonsense.
Economics is an area of study – how people with given preferences respond under a certain set of rules in the face of uncertainty and scarcity – that field of interaction between preferences, rules and resources is called a market. Economics is not about getting rich or materialism or anything like that except in the sense that if you value certain things then it can definitely tell you what path to follow to get more of it or less of it. It doesn’t say “go out and rip and tear and to hell with everyone.” That is an ethic – an ought – and economists do not talk like that. It’s a science about what we fallen creatures do given certain very specific conditions. As I said in the review of her book if you don’t like the outcome of a market, then you can always change the rules which almost always means police and guns and violence. But better yet, how about if, as disciples of Christ, we work to change human preferences. I really do not get what is so hard here. Stop blaming economics or the market when it’s really our sin hardened preferences that deserve the blame.
If Dr. Hirschfield wants to discuss what we should do with wealth – well and good. That is called morality and we have been working on that for about 10,000 years. Christ has shown us a new way – self emptying love as a way of true happiness. And that is wonderful. It is life itself. But it doesn’t change the existence of markets just like it doesn’t change the existence of gravity or the strong force. Given people’s preferences whether they are angelic or demonic, economics is the study of how those preferences will actually work out.
Superb insights and analysis, Tim H. I also noticed what appears to be some significant misunderstandings and jumping to false conclusions by either the article author or Dr. Hirschfield or probably both. For example, note the following excerpt from the article summarizing one of Hirschfield’s positions:
“On one hand, Aquinas seemed to say that ‘private property is fitting because it channels our propensity to work for ourselves in socially useful ways,’ Hirschfeld said. This aligned perfectly with what she believed as an economist.
‘But then [Aquinas] said we are also to hold private property as if it is in common, that is ready to share with others the fruits of our labors. That read to me, as an economist, as a pure contradiction. On the one hand, private property is good because it gives us an incentive to work hard. On the other hand, we are supposed to turn around and give it all away. What sort of incentive is that?”
Taking into consideration what you have written about Hirschfield’s misconception in the use of private property, she also leaps to an egregious false conclusion that “we are supposed to turn around and give it all away. What sort of incentive is that?” Aquinas never said to give it all away, but indeed as you rightly point out, to use private property to benefit the common good, and for anyone who is truly objective in this regard, the legal and moral use of private property always contributes to the common good in a variety of ways.
And of course, whether people like it or not, the always operative invisible hand concept of Adam Smith demonstrates how the pursuit of productive efforts and wealth leads to many others benefiting in the process since nobody can simply produce X goods and accumulate X wealth unless things produced are also desired and purchased by others.
And to be sure, the accumulation of wealth and the pursuit of wealth in and of itself is not an evil as suggested by Hirschfield if she or others determine that the pursuit is for “too much wealth accumulation,” but again as you rightly point out, the morality aspect applies to what and how we do anything, so if a person pursues X to the extent that he or she shirks other responsibilities to God and others, then that person has failed a basic aspect of morality, but if other responsibilities to God and others are not being shirked in the pursuit of wealth, then such pursuit is moral…even if it brings about massive wealth accumulation in the process.
You know, the pursuit of knowledge is a wonderful thing, but taking part of Hirschfield’s attitude into consideration for a moment, did she really need 2 PhDs? Imagine what other things she could have done for others with the time it took to acquire the other PhD, which is clearly an excess since the vast majority of those who possess a PhD only have 1? Did she need twice as many PhDs as most other possessors of PhDs?
The questions above are silly, of course, but they do reflect an underlying attitude in Hirschfield’s approach. Pursuing ever more knowledge can be just as easily abused as pursuing ever more wealth, so once again it always comes down to what people do with their extra amount of whatever it is they have; not simply that they have it or pursue more of it.
Also note one more excerpt from the article to further demonstrate more misconceptions and false conclusions of Hirschfield along the same lines mentioned above:
“‘However much we have, we think a bit more would be helpful and so we work hard.”’
‘“But that same logic means we would not experience our wealth as abundance, and so we would find it hard to give to others,’ she said.”
This false conclusion is what one would expect to hear from yahoos like Socialists Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Once more it betrays a significant misunderstanding of what people do with their wealth and how they must serve others’ needs to accumulate it, and it also falsely stereotypes people who accumulate lots of wealth as being hoarders of their wealth, and that almost all of them are unwilling to share their wealth with others. If this conclusion was really true, numerous charities throughout the world would not exist since many receive their greatest contributions and financial capacity to continue their work by those people Hirschfield claims don’t view their wealth as an abundance to share with others. Indeed, these “hoarders” are the same people who have founded many charities throughout the world, and they can do this because of the abundance of wealth they have accumulated.
Docent writes: “Aquinas never said to give it all away, but indeed as you [Tim H.] rightly point out, to use private property to benefit the common good…”–and on this point there can be today something more capacious and perceptive, and more forward-looking and intentional in play than any mechanistic solidarity found in Adam Smith’s “hidden hand.”
From Centesimus Annus: “Whereas at one time the decisive factor of production was the land [13th century?], and later capital [19th century?]–understood as a total complex of the instruments of production–today the decisive factor is increasingly man himself, that is, his knowledge, especially his scientific knowledge, his capacity for interrelated and compact organization, as well as his ability to perceive the needs of others and to satisfy them” (n. 32).
P. Beaulieu: “…and on this point there can be today something more capacious and perceptive, and more forward-looking and intentional in play than any mechanistic solidarity found in Adam Smith’s ‘hidden hand.'”
Remarkable misunderstanding here. First of all, “more capacious and perceptive” is just a bogus claim without any substance, but even worse is the complete lack of perception regarding the reality of the “invisible hand.”
Indeed the “invisible hand” is as forward looking as it gets. In fact, it is a timeless reality of economic life that describes how a free people naturally (never mechanistically; that pertains to directed economic actions by governments that disrespect basic human freedom granted by God) interact with each other to produce many goods/services for the benefit of themselves as well as others. These interactions are voluntary and completely free, and they fully respect the natural order established by God. There is a famous short essay entitled “I, Pencil” that provides a good explanation of the “invisible hand” in action, and in this explanation is a most capacious and perceptive appreciation of serving God’s creative order as free people endowed with gifts given to them by God. A copy of “I, Pencil” can be found at the following website:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/I,_Pencil
Enjoy the wisdom contained in the essay.
Ships passing in the night…
I actually recall well reading “I, Pencil” after it was published, and recall a similar and later tale, equally instructive, about the weighty National Geographic Magazine–that if the government were in charge of the economy all used copies would end up in one place and Manhattan would sink into the Hudson River.
No endorsement here of “yahoos like the Socialist Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren”, rather simply attention to the fact that such innovations as the more deliberate and explicit, corporate-boardroom “triple bottom line” do not show up yet in Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations.
From Centesimus Annus (n. 36), we have this: “I am referring to the fact that even the decision to invest in one place rather than another, in one productive sector rather than another, is always a moral and cultural choice” (last five words in italics) and surely a conundrum, too, for finite minds–hence, “the market”.
But, then, as for the market, this on the added defense (yes?) of collective goods: “Here we find a new limit on the market: There are collective and qualitative needs which cannot be satisfied by market mechanisms. There are important human needs which escape its logic” (CA 40).
NOT a license here for Socialism, but perhaps an admonition that the buffalo hunters needed to be reined in a bit, and that the Dust Bowl was not entirely climatic in origin, and that overnight digital currency mobility might have had something to do with the aggravated global market collapse of 2008.
Regarding CA and the meaning of “capitalism”, then–and a very difficult vocation for well-formed laity today–we have this:
“The answer is obviously complex. If by ‘capitalism’ is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative, even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of the ‘business economy,’ ‘market economy’ or simply ‘free economy.’ But if by ‘capitalism’ is meant a system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom in its totality, and which sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the core of which is ethical and religious, then the reply is certainly negative” (CA 42). (partial translation: abortion clinics don’t cut it, so to speak).
Moreover, reining in the occasionally unhelpful pronouncements from chancery offices: “The Church has no models to present, models that are real and truly effective can only arise within the framework of different historical situations, through the efforts of all those who responsibly confront concrete problems in all their social, economic, political and cultural aspects, as these interact with one another” (CA n. 43).
I see no real contradiction in our above comments, but do propose that neither Aquinas nor even Adam Smith nor (ADMITTEDLY, above) red hats have the silver bullet for human flourishing in the 21st century. Yes, of course: no silver bullet anywhere, ergo, the “free economy”.
So, I propose, a VOCATION for the laity, and one that (as I have said elsewhere in CWR) would be better served if much of “autonomous” Catholic higher education had not derailed itself with the 1967 Land o’ Lakes Declaration. Woodstock in cap and gown.
Centesimus Annus and all of the Catholic Social Teaching (a misnomer addressing the societal: economics, culture, and politics)add up to less than a feared economic stencil, and yet more.
Okay, Peter.
I am glad you do not endorse the yahoos, but something is still very much amiss when you write “…rather simply attention to the fact that such innovations as the more deliberate and explicit, corporate-boardroom ‘triple bottom line’ do not show up yet in Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations.”
They had certainly showed up by the time of “I, Pencil,” and even with such bottom line thinking, it doesn’t matter, because the “invisible hand” is timeless and always operative insofar as people are free to pursue their economic well-being.
Now of course, some or even many boardrooms, CEOs, managers, owners, and so on can be the greediest people of all time in pursuit of ever more wealth, but they can only accumulate more wealth by providing goods and services for others, which opens up more employment opportunities for others as well.
Also somewhat problematic is your “…that overnight digital currency mobility might have had something to do with the aggravated global market collapse of 2008.”
This looks like at least partly blaming the market or perhaps capitalism in general for something that, if true as suggested, may very well have simply been an abuse of capitalism via inappropriate interventions fostered by governments and/or central banks.
Lastly, I also find much wisdom in Centesimus Annus. I only wish that the insights the saintly Pope John Paul II gained from his experience living under the yoke of socialism/communism would be better understood and appreciated by Pope Francis whose unfortunate experience living at times under various forms of “cowboy or gangster capitalism” apparently prevents him from seeing the goodness in capitalism in general, and it also makes him lean toward socialism despite the terrible track record of this system in his native country and South America in general. Pope St. John Paul II provides an intelligent and indeed measured endorsement of capitalism while pointing out the need for it (like anything else) to have a strong moral compass operating at all time, but for Pope Francis, he seems only capable of ignorantly criticizing capitalism and the United States’ practice of same while simultaneously endorsing more people illegally trying to enter this country that promotes ‘greed’. These migrants aren’t fleeing to socialism; they are seeking more economic opportunities and freedom offered by the US, but this basic reality of human nature eludes Francis.