Women’s involvement needed in the formation of future priests
The Tridentine seminary
At Cardinal Moran’s two Sydney diocesan seminaries, St Patrick’s College at Manly and St Columba’s College at Springwood, there were two very strict rules: inside the walls, seminarians were forbidden to speak to females (nuns only); and outside the walls, they were forbidden to talk to, buy from, or receive anything from females. Both rules were derived from the Council of Trent, which in 1563 legislated that young, especially poor, boys of good character aged 11-12 years, should be recruited by the bishop and placed in a ‘seminary’ where they could be shielded from the contagion of the world and prepared for a celibate clerical life with the highest standards of moral and ecclesiastical discipline.[1]
The Tridentine seminary model endured for 400 years and shaped and determined the formation of several thousand Australian teenage candidates for the priesthood in some 100 Australian seminaries – diocesan and religious – from 1838 to 1965. It did not change until the 2nd Vatican Council (1962-65) where there was wide agreement that the Tridentine seminary model was no longer fit for purpose.
Vatican II and Pope Francis
Priestly formation was a major issue at Vatican II. The Council’s Decree on Priestly Formation accepted that only ‘general rules’ (Ratio fundamentalis) could be legislated and called on local Episcopal Conferences to draw up ‘local formation programs’ (Ratio nationalis) suited to the local context.
In 2016, Pope Francis authorised the third version of the Ratio fundamentalis which states that ‘the presence of women in the seminary has its own formative significance, helping instil a recognition of how men and women complement one another, and offering an edifying example of humility, generosity and selfless service’. This, it must be said, is a conflation of sex and gender.
Australian Ratio nationalis and Royal Commission on clericalism
For almost 40 years after Vatican II the Australian bishops used the Ratio nationalis of the US Bishops Conference. When the first Australian Ratio nationalis, approved in 2007, was put under the microscope by the Australian Royal Commission, it found significant deficiencies, not least the need for more action to address clericalism.
In The Light from the Southern Cross, the report of the governance review recommended by the Commission, ‘clericalism’ was identified as flourishing ‘in contexts where the lay faithful are excluded or marginalised’ and stated that ‘[N]owhere is there more need for greater participation of women in the life of the Church than in the formation of candidates for the priesthood during their seminary years’, and that ‘women [should] take a critical role in relation to the selection and formation of seminarians and participate in the evaluation team deciding suitability for ordination’.
Proposals to Plenary Council
Among the many proposals to the Plenary Council in 2019 from 17,457 submissions of individuals and groups, one relating to the ‘Better Selection and Formation of Candidates to Priesthood‘ was: ‘there should also be an increased role for women in formation’.
Earlier in 2017 Archbishop Mark Coleridge had said that the Royal Commission was ‘on the mark’ when it spoke of clericalism, and that means ‘we need to reconsider the recruitment and formation of candidates for ordination’ and how to include lay people – especially women …. It should be a question for the Plenary Council’.
However, at the First Session of the Council in 2021 there was no mention of this proposal and at the Second Session there was no Motion presented on this issue. The only information that Members received was that a revised version of the Ratio nationalis had been sent to the Holy See prior to the 2nd Session, but Members were not shown the content. Catholics For Renewal believes this was a serious and purposeful omission.
Synod on Synodality
When Pope Francis announced the Synod on Synodality in 2021, he called for discernment from dioceses across the world. The Australian Synthesis said nothing about women’s role in priestly formation. Another serious omission.
However, the Federation of Catholic Bishops Conferences of Oceania (FCBCO), who met in Fiji in February 2023, noted that in some dioceses in Australia and New Zealand ‘women already do work in this area’ and the New Zealand bishops called for ‘a greater involvement of women in the formation of seminarians and priests’.
At the 1st Assembly of the Synod a clear call for women to have a role in priestly formation emerged. The Synthesis Report contained two recommendations: ‘women should be integrated into seminary teaching and training programs to foster better formation for ordained ministry (SR 9.p)’; and ‘a range of members of the People of God should be represented in formation programs for ordained ministries, with the involvement of women of particular importance’ (SR 14.l).
In the ACBC’s May 2024 response to the Synthesis Report it recognized that there was ‘an urgent need to rethink the formation of clergy and seminarians’, and ‘a need to review seminary formation in the light of synodality, which must include lay women and men’.
In the July 2024 Instrumentum Laboris the role of women in priestly formation emerged as a major proposal: ‘Finally, there has been a clear insistence on the need for a formation that is communal and shared, in which lay men and women, consecrated men and women, ordained ministers and candidates for ordained ministry participate together, thus enabling them to grow in their mutual knowledge and esteem for one another, and in their ability to co-operate. To this end, special attention is required to promote the participation of women in formation programmes alongside seminarians, priests, religious, and lay people. It is crucially important that women have access to teaching and formation roles in theological faculties, institutes, and seminaries’ (para 57).
Catholics for Renewal
In 2020 Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops said that during formation it is important that there is contact, discussion, and exchanges with women, and that having women on seminary formation teams as professors and counsellors ‘would help a candidate interact with women in a natural way’, [for] ‘a priest, learning to relate to women in the environment of formation, is a humanising factor that promotes equilibrium in the man’s personality and affectivity’.
Catholics for Renewal is aware that in many Australian seminaries there are women involved in the selection and formation of candidates for the priesthood. We would, however, urge the Members of the Synod on Synodality to oblige the bishops and religious superiors who have charge of those seminaries to provide greater opportunities for lay and religious women to have a more significant role in the selection, instruction and formation of future priests.
[1] Council of Trent: “Whereas the age of youth, unless it be rightly trained, is prone to follow after the pleasures of the world; and unless it be formed, from its tender years, unto piety and religion, before habits of vice have taken possession of the whole man, it never will perfectly, and without the greatest, and well-nigh special, help of Almighty God, persevere in ecclesiastical discipline” (SESSION XXIII, CHAPTER XVIII).