The Deacon

By Deacon Victor Puscas

There are 194 dioceses and archdioceses in the United States, along with the Archdiocese for the Military Services and the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter. The Church in the U.S. also includes 16 Eastern Catholic eparchies and two archeparchies. Of those 214 territories, almost no two permanent diaconate formation programs are the same. However, one thing remains the same: men and women of good will from all over the country are doing their level best to form men into permanent deacons. But how do we form the formators?

In the Spring of 2015, the late Cardinal Francis George, Archbishop Samuel Aquila, Bishop Michael Byrnes, Bishop Andrew Cozzens, and other seminary formators spoke at a conference entitled, “Christ the Foundation and Center: The Integration of Human and Spiritual Formation” at St. John Vianney Seminary in Denver, Colorado. This conference, sponsored by the Institute for Priestly Formation (IPF), was attended by almost 100 seminary formation personnel from nearly every major seminary in the U.S. and several in Canada. It was the culmination of a consultation began by IPF three years earlier which brought together many experts in seminary formation around the relationship between and integration of human and spiritual formation for diocesan seminaries.

In particular, Bishop Cozzens gave a talk on the role of the Formation Advisor/Mentor whose role in seminary formation is described in the Program for Priestly Formation (PPF) and came about from the vision of St. John Paul II in “Pastores Dabo Vobis.” This formator, who is normally a priest, is the main person responsible for overseeing the whole formation of the seminarian and evaluating his readiness for Holy Orders. It is his job to help the man grow into priesthood in every area. In the talk, Bishop Cozzens acknowledged that given the importance and the relative newness of this role of the external forum formation advisor, our greatest struggle in today’s seminaries is that there is no comprehensive program of formation for these formators. For years, IPF and others have provided solid formation for seminary spiritual directors, but most of the priest formators in the external forum are thrown into this role with little or no preparation. Seminary faculty includes spiritual directors, administrative faculty, classroom teaching faculty, and human formation advisors. Often several hats are worn by those doing formation in the external forum.

After the Denver conference, a group of individuals who have extended experience in seminary formation began to talk about what could be done to try to solve this problem. A new organization, called the Seminary Formation Council (S.F.C.), was formed; it sponsors a two-year “Certificate in Formation.”

By now you may be asking yourself, “Why does seminary formation matter to diaconate formation?” Well, the Seminary Formation Council does admit, in certain cases, diaconate directors of formation to its two-year Certificate in Formation program. Furthermore, there is a certain amount of crossover in priestly and diaconal formation, particularly as it relates to human and spiritual formation.

The Seminary Formation Council serves diocesan seminary formation by providing education, practical tools, spiritual enrichment and fraternal support to seminary (and diaconal) formators. They want to provide every formator an in-depth and thorough formation for their important task. They want formators to understand and be able to do integrated formation through the accompaniment model based on the Ratio Fundamentalis (2016) and PPF 6. We deacons would be wise to learn from our presbyteral colleagues who are much further down the path of institutional formation. To learn more, go to their website at: https://seminaryformation.org. TD

DEACON VICTOR PUSCAS is the director of diaconal formation for the Diocese of Joliet, Illinois.