A Vatican official has urged that a year or more of initial formation focused on Catholic culture and catechetics is "indispensable" for those studying for the priesthood. This would take place before their formal studies of philosophy and theology," said Dominican Archbishop Jean-Louis Bruguès, secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education, the Vatican department with authority over seminaries and houses of religious formation.
It has become necessary, he said, because of a "generalised lack of Catholic culture" caused by secularization.
Speaking to the annual meeting of pontifical seminary rectors in Rome last week, Archbishop Bruguès gave an address entitled: Formation for the Priesthood: Between Secularism and the Ecclesial Model.
He went on to highlight two conflicting trends which, he said, are causing a line of division or fracture in the Catholic Church in Europe and America: he named these as "a current of controversy" and "a current of integration".
The current of controversy, he said, questions aspects of Catholic doctrine or morals and tends towards a model that is critical of the Church. This model emerged immediately after Vatican II and was the ideological mould for interpretations that were promoted at the end of the 60s and in the 70s.
The current of integration, he explained, gained strength around the beginning of the 80s, principally though not exclusively under the influence of Pope John Paul II. This trend accepts that there are Christian values in secularization - equality, liberty, solidarity and responsibility - and holds that it should be possible to integrate these without compromising ecclesial values.
The diverging trends, he said, have been causing problems in universities and Catholic schools, but especially in seminary and religious formation. But they also affect the wider Church.
Where there has been an adaptation to secularized society, there is a tendency to distance from and be critical of Church positions. Where the current of integration is cultivated, there is a clearer confession of the faith and a more active participation in evangelization.
To respond to this negative division, the archbishop encouraged an authentic interpretation of the Second Vatican Council and a synthetic, organic theological formation that concentrates on the essential.
Archbishop Jean-Louis Bruguès served as prior of Dominican houses in Toulouse and Bourdeaux and as professor of fundamental moral theology at the Institute Catholique at Toulouse.
He was member of the International Theological Commission from 1986 to 2002 and bishop of the diocese of Angers in France from 2000 to 2007, when he was appointed to his present position.
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