AmericanPapist Comments
A read of Michael Rose's Goodbye! Good Men! is all you need to confirm your suspicions of abuse of psychiatry in seminary formation programs. No secret there.
The undergraduate seminary from which I graduated applied psychology in an extremely inconsistent manner. Tests were used at admissions to screen out candidates with tendencies towards addictions and agression, but those with patterns of other sins were welcomed. Once inside, spiritual guidance was strictly along the "talking cure" lines [by all except one priest] and focused on the negativity of critical thinking and need for accepting the administration's decisions. This was a very unhealthy additude which promoted a culture that rarely mentioned the Church, but approved of everything else. Everything.
One priest stood against it. He summed up the backwardness of the entire school with one scathing sentence in his St. Patrick's Day evening mass homily... which only a few of us heard as the rest were at a party organized by the other priests. It was something about the same students who cry out for cassocks and authority being absent from their daily mass... are they wearing their party cassocks to the bar tonight?
Psychlogy is both a system of soft science, AND the name of a people driven cultural program with its own goals. Like most other pieces of culture today, it is not inherently sinful if limited to uses the Church approves.
Reading "The Changing Face of the Priesthood: A Reflection on the Priest's Crisis of Soul" will teach you a lot about the seminary I attended. By no means am I saying anythign in this book is correct or RIGHT, merely that it will show you how those people are thinking. After reading, please say a rosary for increasing vocations to the priesthood and religious lives.
"Fit it quickly"?
The Vatican has been fiddling while the church crumbles. The abuses have been perfectly documented for a full generation.
Sure I know how to type!
The post above should read "Fix it quickly"?
I believe psychology is a pseduo science. As if the problems that humans have experienced since the beginning can be solved by talking it out with a person. And clearly psychology failed miserably in the terrible pedophile scandal. Oh yeah we "cured" this monsters who molested kids so now they can minister again. Oh come on! Just absurd.
1980's seminaries: INTJs need not apply.
Jay McNally- You must not pay attention to what Pope Benedict has been doing on every one of his visits.
I'm a regular reader of this blog and while you are free to express your opinions-which turn out to be the same old "the Church is a big failure" spiel-at least be fair and acknowledge the great strides many of the hierarchy, including Pope Benedict, have made to address the clergy sex abuse scandal.
Like you they are only too human and won't be able to heal every wound. Only one Person is able to do that and it's best for us to seek His help and guidance in this matter.
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