Extra year prepares seminarians for challenging calling

By Lidia Wasowicz

What a difference a year makes!

At seminaries around the country, the preparatory, probationary “propaedeutic year” that precedes formal studies is providing critical time and tools for the making of a priest.

Added to the curriculum in response to rising levels of anxiety, stress and self-centeredness spawned by cultural chaos, confusion and consumerism, the change is having major impact.

Students and teachers laud the plan, called for by Pope Francis in 2016 and mandated by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ revised norms for priestly formation, effective Aug. 4, 2023, the feast of St. John Vianney, the patron of parish priests.

At St. Patrick’s Seminary and University in Menlo Park, 17 of 19 candidates who have completed the 12-month program since its launch there in July 2021 gave it a “positive to very positive” review.

With the encroachment of social media, artificial intelligence and other secular influences that sway societal norms, “life has become so much more complicated in just the past 10 years,” noted Propaedeutic Year Director Father Gary Thomas.

Fasting from technology and other worldly distractions and feasting on union with Jesus and each other, the men can delve more deeply into discerning their vocation and developing their faith community, he said.

“In the busy world it can be very difficult to know who you truly are, especially in the eyes of God, and being able to spend a year devoted to prayer and working with others allowed me to more clearly see myself as a whole person in relation to Christ,” said Joseph McIntire, 26, of San Francisco, a convert from atheism in college and one of eight members of the inaugural propaedeutic class four terms ago.

“I was able to build the foundation of a prayer life and relationship with Jesus that would have been difficult had I entered straight into academic formation,” he added.

Absence of grades and absorption in the spiritual self during the introductory year he just completed encouraged “us to get healed from any trauma and addiction we might have (and) build up a brotherhood relationship among our group-mates so that we can walk together in the next years of seminary formation,” said Osvaldo Zuniga, 26, of Stockton, who in April 2022 realized his heart belonged to Christ more than to his fiancée of six months.

One of his seven classmates during the 2023-24 session, David Sibrian, 26, of Redwood City, found the extra year “most useful for being able to take a step back and ask the Lord, ‘Am I really called for this?’”

It enabled Matthew Grehm, 25, of Rocklin, California, who entered St. Patrick’s in August 2022, to answer that question with a firmer “yes!”

“The propaedeutic year strengthened my initial sense of God’s call to priesthood and helped me not only deepen my prayer life but also come to appreciate prayer as the center of my day,” said the third-year seminarian.

“These foundations continue to help ground me in the somewhat busier rhythm of seminary life I’m experiencing now,” Grehm added.

Such testimonials fall in line with aims enshrined in the modern program and envisioned decades ago by Pope St. John Paul II, said Father Brady Wagner, director of propaedeutic year and its predecessor and model, spirituality year, introduced in 1999 at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver, where he himself experienced its benefits prior to ordination.

The pontiff’s 1992 warning about the deception of “self-sufficiency” inherent in the worldwide spread of “practical and existential atheism” becomes “even more acute in our time with the continuing deterioration of the understanding of truth, the makeup of the family and family life, virtue and sexual ethics,” Father Wagner wrote in a seminal paper he coauthored to mark the spirituality year’s 20th anniversary.

“Many of the seminarians coming to us have been formed more by the secular culture than by a true, intimate, personal encounter with Jesus Christ,” Father Wagner said.

With room for customization and adjustment, the program strives to encourage such encounters through an array of activities and agendas.

“At St. Patrick’s, the propaedeutics — affectionately called ‘the propaedudes’ — would have a formal schedule six days a week, with Saturday as a personal day off,” said Steven Ellison, 34, of Philadelphia of the most recently concluded course.

The routine began with a 7:30 a.m. Holy Hour and morning prayer, typically the Liturgy of the Hours, followed by breakfast, a 90-minute class on Scripture, catechism, saints and other spiritually enhancing topics, Mass, lunch, work assignments — such as stacking wood, setting up tables and chairs, cleaning hallways — three hours of free time until the 5 p.m. evening prayer and rosary and 6 p.m. dinner.

In the off-hours, the bucolic 40-acre campus offered inviting spots for contemplation and quiet conversation with the Lord.

Friday night movies, bowling, pool, golf, board games and other recreation, Sunday Mass at local parishes and a “field education day” distributing food, serving at a Missionaries of Charity hospice or tutoring at a Catholic elementary school rounded out the week.

The May immersion mission for the 2023-2024 propaedeutic year sent Zuniga and his group to his home diocese in Stockton for a week to pick blueberries four hours a day with migrant fieldworkers.

“The beauty of this program is that we can tailor it quite a bit to each new class and the particular needs of the men within it,” said Father Michael Niemczak, formation director and coordinator of the propaedeutic stage, instituted in the summer of 2023 at the 135-year-old Mount Angel Abbey in Saint Benedict, Oregon, the West’s oldest seminary.

To build bonds with each other and ease into a strikingly different lifestyle, the newcomers start out sleeping, dining and praying in quarters separated from the more advanced and acclimated segments of the community. As they adjust, they incrementally integrate into the larger seminary community.

“The program (is) structured based on the four pillars of seminary formation: human, intellectual, spiritual and pastoral,” said Grehm, who heard God’s call in high school in 2017 and answered it five years later in St. Patrick’s second propaedeutic class.

To assess and assist with growth in these pillars, every candidate is assigned an accompanying formator, or faculty priest.

“Each seminarian is discussed thoroughly at faculty meetings both in the fall and spring semesters, and each man is voted on to continue toward the next year and phase of formation or not,” explained Father Thomas.

Of the 25 propaedeutics enrolled in the first three years of the program, 19 remain among the 75 seminarians advancing toward priesthood, with 12 headed for ordination, Father Thomas said.

At Mount Angel, 12 of the 18 men in the first propaedeutic class and all 26 admitted for the current term number among the student body of 75.

“These two incoming classes of propaedeutic-stage seminarians — last year and this year — are significantly bigger than the last several incoming classes of what was formerly known as College 1 or Pre-Theology 1,” Father Niemczak reported.

St. John Vianney, with a current enrollment of 80, also has seen a seesaw climb of entrant totals — ranging from 15 to 24 in the past eight years — since the first spirituality year class opened its doors to nine hopefuls.

“The number of applicants varies year to year, but in the past few years, we’ve had a tremendous spike in those applying from our local Denver archdiocese,” Father Wagner said.

Not all who are called are chosen, and not all who are chosen end up feeling called.

“It often happens that a few applicants are not accepted each year, mainly because they are not quite ready to enter into formation,” Father Wagner said.

“As the men grow more in their relationship with the Lord throughout the year and as they come to understand their identity in Christ, about one-third of the men discern they are not called to the priesthood,” he added.

Father Thomas took issue with a public perception that seminaries are lax or lacking in vetting candidates.

“There is a very rigorous process that every man goes through,” he emphasized.

Starting with an educational minimal requirement of an associate degree from a two-year college, it makes a series of strict demands.

During initial inquiry, the aspirant consults with his vocation director, submits a resume and attends preliminary meetings.

If he passes, he completes more in-depth application forms and autobiographical compositions, undergoes physical, psychological and spiritual evaluations, and responds to queries from diocesan priests, admissions panels and the bishop.

Once they validate his potential calling and deem him a qualified candidate, he follows similar steps in seeking approval from the seminary that culminates in interviews with the faculty and rector.

It took nearly a year to receive the longed-for acceptance notification, said McIntire, a parishioner at St. Stephen’s Church in San Francisco in his fourth year at St. Patrick’s.

In the interim, Father Thomas has tweaked the propaedeutic year and solicited suggestions “as a way to help the men attain ownership in the program itself.”

Aside from making some minor modifications — expanding the exercise and labor segment, clarifying expectations, refining customization — seminarians told Catholic San Francisco they would leave the program intact.

Ellison, propaedeutic class of 2024, particularly praised the prayer-centered schedule and “psychological and spiritual healing through the added support of regular therapy, spiritual direction, positive and faithful community and healing (and) prayer retreats.”

Sibrian, a parishioner at St. Anthony of Padua in Menlo Park in his second year at St. Patrick’s, judged the program as essential and effective for himself and others.

“I have heard positive feedback from the other upper seminarians who have had the propaedeutic year, and they have all told me that without (it) their discernment would look absolutely different,” he said.

Father Thomas summarized the main benefits as enabling seminarians to:

• Identify and cope with family issues from the onset.
• Collaborate with mental health professionals provided by the seminary to foster physical, mental and emotional health.
• Develop a strong prayer life and fraternity among peers.
• Better prepare for the philosophical studies that lie ahead.
• Discern their vocational call in a setting free of traditional academic demands and at an earlier stage.

Since becoming the spirituality/propaedeutic year director at St. John Vianney eight years ago, Father Wagner has “yet to hear a man speak of the year without tremendous gratitude, even if it was deeply challenging.” 

“As they learn to follow the Lord, listening to his voice in their own lives, they will also learn how to guide others to encounter the love and mercy of God in Jesus,” he added.

“What the world hungers and thirsts for is this encounter which radically changes one’s whole life, an encounter that offers the peace and joy that remains in the midst of the crosses of daily life and abides unto eternity.”

The enhanced preparation will better equip future shepherds to lead their flocks to Jesus, Ellison agreed.

Grehm expressed confidence that “this additional step in formation will help to anchor priests to Christ through prayer, particularly amidst their busy lives and ministerial duties (and strengthen) relationships among brother priests to support each other in sometimes isolating parish environments.”

In his overview, Father Wagner pointed to the “tremendous fruit” already born of St. John Vianney’s expanded formation program.

In published reflections, graduates ordained since 2008 detailed its influence and impact.

One cited “a rhythm and method of prayer (that) is still a foundation of my priestly prayer life.”

Another related “healing — of deep spiritual wounds — that I do not believe would have happened if I had gone directly into studies.”

Declared a third: “Now, as a priest, the graces and gifts I received in the spirituality year have proved invaluable.”

Zuniga regards these as so invaluable, he encourages all single men to consider the consecrated life.

“If it turns out that the priesthood is not their vocation, the time discerning the priesthood in seminary won’t be wasted,” he said. “On the contrary, it could make them better future husbands.”

Concurring, Ellison pointed out that no matter the personal dreams or ambitions, only God can provide the deepest sense of satisfaction.

“Our faith is full of paradoxes that the secular culture cannot understand, such as joy in suffering, freedom in obedience to God, dying to self in order to live more fully in God and spiritual richness in poverty or detachment,” he said.

Grehm urged all men to give a listening ear to the Holy Spirit and a trusting heart to the Almighty.

“The propaedeutic year is a response of the universal Church to this need to form and support holy priests, and each member of the faithful can work to build a culture of holiness through their own prayer, virtue and service within their proper vocation,” he said.

“For those who are called to it, the priesthood is truly one of the greatest privileges and greatest blessings that God offers to His people.”

Lidia Wasowicz is an award-winning journalist, former West Coast science editor and senior science writer for United Press International She has written for Catholic San Francisco since 2011.