OSV: 'Conduct story of newly ordained'

from OSV Daily Take by John Norton

OSV's editorial board has called for a national study of newly ordained priests, as a follow-up to the release this month of the report on Vatican-commissioned "visitations" of U.S. seminaries. Here's the newsweekly's editorial from the Feb. 1 issue:

For many years now liberal and conservative Catholics have debated the quality of U.S. seminary education, and by extension the quality of the men who have been called to serve them as future priests.

Now, a 20-page summary of a recent Vatican-requested study of 229 college and theology-level seminaries gives a thorough appraisal of both the strengths and weaknesses of the seminary system today, concluding that they are, "in general, healthy."(See story, Page 5.)

It found that since the last major study of U.S. seminaries in the 1980s, there was more stability and many improvements on the campuses. The doctrine of the priesthood was well taught in the majority of diocesan seminaries, it said, and the candidates are generally "full of zeal, pious and faithful to prayer." Moral problems such as homosexual behavior were less in evidence.

Full story at OSV Daily Take