As noted in our Mission Statement, Saint Joseph’s Seminary and College primary mission is the formation of candidates for the ministerial priesthood in the Catholic Church. Our principal responsibility, therefore, is to attend to the human, spiritual, intellectual, and pastoral formation of our seminarians – the four pillars of priestly formation outlined by Pope Saint John Paul II in Pastores Dabo Vobis and mandated by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in its Program of Priestly Formation (P.P.F.).
Saint Joseph’s Seminary offers its students a comprehensive program of priestly formation which fosters the integration of these four dimensions. The goal of our program is to form each seminarian to be a priest “who understands his spiritual development within the greater context of his call to service in the Church, his human development within the greater context of his call to advance
the mission of the Church, his intellectual development as the appropriation of the Church’s teaching and tradition, and his pastoral formation as participation in the active ministry of the Church” (P.P.F., 71). In this way, seminarians are prepared for the three-fold office of Jesus Christ: proclaiming the Gospel, celebrating the sacraments and shepherding God’s people.
Each seminarian must actively engage in and be responsible for his own formation, incorporating and integrating the many lessons of formation into his own identity as a future priest, as Pope Saint John Paul II states clearly in Pastores Dabo Vobis:
“[W]e must not forget that the candidate himself is a necessary and
irreplaceable agent in his own formation: All formation, priestly
formation included, is ultimately a self formation. No one can replace us in the responsible freedom that we have as individual persons.”
And so the future priest also, and in the first place, must grow in his awareness that the agent par excellence of his formation is the Holy Spirit, who by the gift of a new heart configures and conforms him to Jesus Christ the good shepherd. In this way the candidate to the priesthood will affirm in the most radical way possible his freedom to welcome the molding action of the Spirit. But to welcome this action implies also, on the part of the candidate, a welcome for the human “mediating” forces which the Spirit employs. As a result, the actions of the different teachers become truly and fully effective only if the future priest offers his own convinced and heartfelt cooperation to this work of formation.
(P.P.F., no. 69)
The priestly formation program at Saint Joseph’s Seminary consists of eight semesters of full-time study with concentration on theology and allied disciplines. Theological study at Saint Joseph’s presupposes an educational background prior to admission which is broadly classical in scope and tradition, humanistic in approach, and scientific in method.
Upon admission to the seminary, all seminarians are registered in the Master of Divinity, Bachelor of Sacred Theology and Master of Arts Degree Programs, as the coursework for these degrees are required for Priestly Ordination according to the mandates of the P.P.F. During the Spring Semester of Third year, seminarians take both oral and written Comprehensive exams as the capstone requirements for the degrees of Master of Divinity from Saint Joseph’s and Bachelor of Sacred Theology from the University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) in Rome. During their Third year, qualified students may apply to write their Master of Arts Thesis in order to complete the Capstone requirement for the Master of Arts in Theology degree.
After six semesters of professional study and priestly formation, all seminarians are evaluated by the Rector and the Faculty in order to be presented to their bishop or religious superior as worthy for ordination to the Order of Deacon. During the Spring semester of fourth year, students are evaluated once again in order to be presented as worthy candidates for ordination to the Priesthood of Jesus Christ.