Religious and priestly formation process until very recently gave little attention to the mental and emotional health of their candidates. The focus was on helping one become a good priest or religious with great emphasis on the religious and spiritual dimensions of life. The result was that many religious and priests remained emotionally immature, compromising their inter-personal and ministerial functioning. There is some research evidence to support the above statement.
Relevant Studies
A 1991 study by Lourdes, Patel and Paranjpe that compared the personality traits of 300 clergy (priests, sisters and seminarians) and 300 lay persons found that clergy on the whole were far less mature psychologically than lay persons. Of the eleven positive traits measured, lay persons scored more positively on nine. Of the eight negative traits, clergy faired worse on seven. “More clergy than lay persons were also characterized as having excessive nervousness, bad temper, exhibitionism, excessive conservatism and jealousy, and being easily led away…” (p. 131)
The studies on vocation and formation undertaken by Paul Parathazham and colleagues at Jnana Deepa, Pune, highlight serious gaps and flaws in our current formation practice. In one study (2006a) which investigated how seminarians and religious sisters assessed the effectiveness of their formation, most participants rated their peers in the society outside as better than themselves on all eight criteria of psychological and emotional maturity measured. As many as 36% of them felt that the formation they received, overall, was not worth the time and energy invested in it. Another study (2006b) which sought to elicit the views of formation personnel on issues and challenges in the formation of priests and religious in India concluded:
Human formation, which is the foundation of priestly formation, is arguably the most neglected aspect of formation in India. We seem to be concentrating all our efforts on building a spiritual “superstructure” without the human “base structure,” thus rendering the entire enterprise tenuous and futile. Every other aspect of formation, be it intellectual, spiritual, or pastoral, is institutionalized in seminaries with a specific programme, designated personnel, and prescribed activities or exercises. But for human formation there is no such programme in place. It is largely taken for granted!! (p. 7)
Recent Church documents stress the importance of human formation. In 2008, the Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education promulgated a document entitled, Guidelines for the Use of Psychology in the Admission and Formation of Candidates for the Priesthood. This document highlighted the need for a formation programme that fosters a solid psychological and affective maturity in the candidates to the priesthood.
Many of the views expressed in this document are not really new. More than fifty years ago, Vatican II (in the document, Perfectae Caritatis) had declared that only those should be accepted into religious and priestly life who “have the needed degree of psychological and emotional maturity” (1966, #12) and, more specifically, demonstrate a capacity “to develop a due degree of human maturity, attested to chiefly by a certain emotional stability, by an ability to make considered decisions and by a right manner of passing judgment on events and people” (Optatam Totius, 1966, #11). John Paul II’s Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Pastores Dabo Vobis (1992) had also stated emphatically that human dimension is the foundation of all formation and listed a series of human virtues and relational abilities needed in the priest.
FR JOSE PARAPPULLY SDB
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