[Oldcath-l] Death of a 101 year old seminary and the future of the IC/OC movement

[Father Jim Balija]

Peace!

It was announced today that Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary in 
Chicago would close its doors at the end of the current academic year 
after 101 years of service to the Archdiocese.  This was the inevitable 
end to an institution in an archdiocese that failed to look beyond doing 
business as usual to find ways to seek individuals with vocations.  
While I am an alum of the Quigley system, that was 40 years ago and many 
things have changed in the world.  The claim was that few graduates in 
recent years went on to be ordained.  What they failed to realize is 
that these same non-ordained alums are the ones basically running the 
parishes in many other capacities.  While they failed to generate more 
sacramental ministers they produced a huge crop of spiritual ministers 
that fill the gap. It goes to show the truth of that the old maxim "If 
you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got 
but only if you are damn lucky."  They just didn't realize their luck.  
If they had treated their alum better they might have sent their 
children to the seminary and just maybe generated some dedicated priests.

In our OC/IC communities we must not fall prey to the same nonsense.  We 
should be developing new models for priesthood that are attractive and 
open.  The worker priest movement after WWII was a great example of 
forward thinking and most IC/OC priests have jobs and live in the 
community.  If we only concentrate on generating a group of people that 
like to dress up and "play" priest (or bishop) then we do a disservice 
to the People of God and to God.  Yes, I'm concerned about how we 
prepare people for minsitry but one element that I have not heard 
mentioned in all the recent communiques is a passion to serve.  Many of 
the best priests were no great shakes as theologians but they embodied 
God's love in what they said and did in people's lives.  During this 
past year I calculated that I preached to nearly 6,000 different people 
over the course of last year and so far have preached to another 3,000 
folk.  They have a hunger to hear how much God loves them and wants to 
be with them in their lives.  They want to know that God cares for them 
and makes them safe in a way that our armies and anvies cannot.  They 
want to know that they have God as their friend in the sorrow and pain 
and that he dances with them in their joy.  Give God individuals who are 
filled with the passion to serve in this way and God will change the 
face of the earth.  Filled with a passion to serve they will find ways 
and means to become better at understanding theology, Christology, and 
all the other "ologies." 

Peace!

+ Jim B