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ROLES OF PARENTS, PRIEST COMPANIONS AND TEACHERS AS CO-FORMATORS, AND QUALITIES THAT THEY NEED TO DEVELOP IN THE SEMINARIANS
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Parents and teachers have the duty to cultivate their children or seminarians from the earliest years, and especially in those who manifest a docile and generous disposition inclined towards the ideals of priesthood, the spirit of prayer, humility, obedience, dedication, and sacrifice. They therefore are collaborators in the seminary formation.
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As collaborators, Parents do not overlap responsibility with the priest formators. Instead, they complement what the seminary can no longer do. The parents are responsible for the seminarian’s formation when the seminarian is outside of the seminary walls. They can also be called to closely supervise their children when inside the seminary if a special situation calls for it. Therefore, the parents are responsible for any unbecoming behavior of their children during vacation time, especially if the behavior is unbecoming of a seminarian.
While the child is inside the seminary, the seminary authority becomes “special parents”. The parents temporarily relinquish parental authority over their child to the seminary formators. Thus, the parents cannot in any way reverse whatever decisions the formators have given. However, the parents can always ask for reconsideration, but never demand for it.
- The superiors and teachers in the seminary have the duty not only to preserve and develop these qualities in the young men who have been admitted, but also to take care that as the years go by, there may appear and become firmly rooted in the hearts of the seminarians other qualities which are considered as essential to a solid and complete moral training:
- the spirit of reflection and right intention in acting;
- the free personal choice of what is good, indeed what is best;
- the mastery of one’s own will and senses in face of the promptings of self- love, of bad examples on the part of others, of temptations to evil proceedings either from nature as a consequence of original sin, or from the world and spirit of evil
- which still devotes particularly tenacious attention to the chosen ones of the Lord, being intent in their ruin
And as far as his dealings with others are concerned, anyone who aspires to be with Christ and for Christ, as witness before the world to the saving truth which sets us free, must be educated in the veneration of truth in words and deeds, and hence in sincerity, uprightness, consistency, and fidelity. (Paul VI 11-4-1963) |
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