A Rome-based Catholic foundation is offering a course to help educators ensure the spiritual and psychological formation of candidates for the priesthood and the consecrated life.
Cardinal Elio Sgreccia, who served for many years at the helm of the Pontifical Academy for Life, said May 27 that the crisis in the church over the problem of the sexual abuse of minors by priests was an important factor in establishing the course, but not the only one.
The Italian cardinal is president of the Ut Vitam Habeant Foundation, which is working with the Camillianum International Institute of the Theology of Health Care to offer the course in Rome beginning in November.
Canossian Father Amedeo Cencini, a psychologist and expert in religious formation, said the course is designed to ensure candidates for the priesthood and religious life are formed as whole people, with healthy and deep relationships both with God and others.
The classes listed in the prospectus address the spiritual and psychological development of candidates. Sexuality is discussed from the cultural, biological and psychological points of view. A section on immaturity and psychological problems will include a discussion about masturbation, homosexuality and pedophilia.
Dr. Manfred Lutz, who heads the psychiatry department at a German hospital and has acted as a consultant to the Vatican on the sex abuse issue, said the formation of a candidate for the priesthood or religious life is essential, but those responsible for preparing candidates also need to understand when a candidate is unfit.
"There are people who cannot become priests, and it's not just a question of the right formation," he said.
Lutz said that future priests and religious need to be well prepared for a life of celibacy, but insisted that celibacy was not the cause of sexual abuse of minors. Instead, celibacy "renders a priest free to develop his pastoral relations" and put all his energy and enthusiasm in his pastoral work, he said.
Helping candidates learn to live happily in celibacy, he said, is much easier than helping a candidate overcome a tendency toward narcissism, a pathology he said was very difficult to eradicate even with good formation.
Cardinal Sgreccia told reporters the course is the first of its kind to be offered to Catholic educators and "if the course is good and effective, others may follow" in other parts of the world.
The course was designed as two intensive, three-week seminars in a two-year period. It is open to priests, religious and laypeople who educate candidates in seminaries or religious communities, as well as psychologists, doctors and others who support their work from the outside.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith released a letter May 16 ordering bishops' conferences around the world to draw up guidelines to protect children from harm.
The letter reiterated the need for bishops and religious communities to exercise special care when accepting candidates for the priesthood or religious life and to provide them "a healthy human and spiritual formation" and a clear understanding of the value and meaning of chastity.
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