The initial full community mass of the 2000-01 academic year was celebrated Aug. 30. Earl Boyea, Ph.D., defined the role of priests today as both encouraging and challenging. Boyea noted that seminarians learn how to approach the conversion of the world through the various aspects of the formation process.
Intellectual formation promotes both faith and reason.
We respect the contributions of science and embrace the historical critical method of study, while at the same time holding fast to the whole corpus of the Church's Magisterial teaching. In personal formation, the seminarian comes to understand the loving embrace of celibacy as a model of the true understanding of friendship and a rejection of cultural individualism. Our religious zeal is expressed not only in liturgy, but in sustained conversation with God. Our culture holds a distorted view of freedom in which individuals consider themselves to be the standard by which everything else is judged. The obedience learned in pastoral formation does not abandon reason, but recognizes the truth in love.