For some time now, the Italian magazine Jesus, a monthly publication of St. San Paolo, has chosen to speak about the Church as if it were its mission to “break the mold.” In reality, what is being broken is not so much the mold as the internal coherence of faith. The magazine — which defines itself as Catholic — seems increasingly interested in capturing the attention of nonbelievers and critics of the Church, rather than enlightening the faithful with a serious theological perspective.
The formula is simple: one takes an ecclesial theme — in this case, the vocation crisis — and turns it into a psychological, sociological, and emotional narrative, where the spiritual dimension remains merely decorative background. The result is a debate where people talk about priests and seminaries without ever uttering the word Christ, except as a citation of obligation.
The Rhetoric of Crisis
"Vocations are declining, priests are exhausted, some fall into depression, others develop predatory behaviors.” This is how the article begins: a nearly cinematic sequence of dark images, designed to shock rather than to understand. Certainly, the vocation crisis is real, but reducing it to a matter of burnout or pathology means erasing the mystery of the call and reducing the priesthood to a tiring profession rather than a response to God. It is the logic of the ‘functionary priest,’ not the shepherd priest.
The problem, however — and it’s worth repeating — is not the number of those who are called, because God’s call is not in decline at all, but rather the number of those who choose to enter the seminary. And these are two profoundly different realities. Whoever fails to distinguish these levels shows a willingness to manipulate the very meaning of grace, leading people to believe that “all those called” coincide with “those who enter the seminary.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Then, when it is added that the root of the clergy’s problems lies in a “sacral model” that must be overcome, the issue becomes doctrinal. Because if the priest is not the sacramental sign of Christ the Head, if he is not the one who mediates grace — as one seminarian stated, scandalizing theologian Simona Segoloni — then we are no longer speaking of the Catholic Church, but of an academic boarding house.
A Debate Flawed from the Start
The debate organized by Jesus brings together four figures: a lay theologian, a nun, and two priests (one a “psychologist,” the other a formator). It looks like a balanced exchange, but in reality it begins from a clear ideological premise: that the current seminary model is “Tridentine,” separated from the world, and therefore harmful. Simona Segoloni speaks of a “hatred of the world” among seminarians; Sister Curreli claims that “the sacred no longer exists”; and Father Antonelli, rector of the Pontifical Lombard Seminary, explains that “being separated from the world is an anthropological mistake.” In this vision, the priest should no longer be distinct, but indistinguishable — “one like everyone else,” living like everyone else, feeling like everyone else. But this is precisely the breaking point: the Church has never formed priests to separate them from the world, but to consecrate them for the world. Separation is not isolation; it is exclusive dedication. The seminary is not a bunker, but a spiritual desert where one learns to listen to the voice of God.
The Reality of Seminaries
Those who talk about seminaries — and here lies the core issue — often no longer know them. Many who now pontificate about priestly formation have never lived that journey, or have left it wounded, resentful, or frustrated. On one side, we find “experts” who have turned their negative experiences into a chair of cheap psychology; on the other, those who have never set foot in a seminary yet feel entitled to explain its “systemic pathology.” And yet, true problems in formation do exist: there is often a lack of deep and ongoing affective and relational formation; spiritual accompaniment is confused with psychological counseling; and some formators pretend to be experts in everything — theologians, psychologists, educators — without being any of them. Seminarians, on the other hand, need well-prepared guides, but above all free ones, capable of looking at the individual, not through the ideology that shaped them. There is no need to impose “female figures” to balance male presence, nor to introduce “worldly experiences” into formation paths. A seminarian is not formed by “sniffing a woman,” as someone absurdly suggested, but by learning to see Christ in every person.
The Illusion of Psychologization
The "Jesus-theology" (Theology according to this magazine) is the one that has replaced discernment with diagnosis, vocation with psychological profiling. Every gesture, inclination, and emotion must be read in the light of the DSM-5, not the Gospel — except, curiously, when it comes to homosexuality, for which some revert to the DSM-I. Outdated and unscientific terms reappear: “structural or non-structural,” “transient or rooted,” “tendencies,” “dysfunctions,” and other similar nonsense.
But the risk of this drift is that the seminary becomes a clinic, and the priest a patient. Formation is not a clinical experiment. The Church does not need psychoanalysts of the sacred, but spiritual guides who know the human heartand can orient it toward God. The true “healing” does not come from external supervision, but from prayer, spiritual direction, and the inner freedom born of the Gospel.
The Freedom of the Seminarian
Another aspect the article fails to grasp is the personal freedom of the seminarian. Too often he is reduced to a number, a case, a behavioral profile to be molded. But authentic formation cannot be a process of cloning. There are no priests produced in series: there are men with different stories, vocations, and temperaments. One may feel called to mission among the poor, another to preaching, another to contemplation. The seminary’s task is not to standardize, but to help each one recognize his personal vocation within the call to priesthood.
The Ideology of the “Non-Priest Priest”
When Segoloni says that the priest should not “mediate the grace of God,” she reveals the root of the problem: the idea of a clergy reduced to a social function, no longer a sacrament.
And yet, the Second Vatican Council — so often invoked but rarely read — teaches that priests “are marked with a special character which configures them to Christ the Priest, so that they can act in the person of Christ, the Head of the Church” (Presbyterorum Ordinis, 2); that Christ “appointed some… as ministers endowed with sacred power to offer sacrifice and forgive sins” (PO 2); and that “through the ministry of priests, the spiritual sacrifice of the faithful is made perfect in union with the sacrifice of Christ, the one mediator… it is offered through the hands of priests, in the name of the whole Church, in the Eucharist” (PO 2). Therefore, “God… chose men as his associates and helpers, that they may serve humbly in the work of sanctification” (PO 5), and in liturgical celebrations they “represent Christ in a special way in person” (PO 13). The priest is not a group facilitator, nor a social worker of faith. Behind this anti-sacral rhetoric lies a deep fear of mystery. Much is said about the “humanity of the priest,” but little about his configuration to Christ — as if evangelical mission were just another profession, and not a calling that transforms the whole being.
Family, Woman, and Reality
The Jesus article also addresses the so-called “female issue” with the usual accusations: that the Church is misogynistic, that women have no voice, that seminaries exclude them. But anyone who truly lives in the Church knows the opposite is true: parishes, sacristies, pastoral and economic councils, and diocesan offices are full of women. It is not a matter of power, but of different vocation. The discussion about the presence of women in seminaries seems based on the assumption that one must, at all costs, “make women visible to seminarians,” as if the problem were that they have never seen one or are not attracted to them. The woman’s presence is automatically assumed to be maternal and nurturing, as though it were the antidote to any potential “deviation.” But this notion reveals, instead, a sick obsession with sexuality that does not belong to seminarians but, too often, to their formators — exposing an affective dependency on the maternal figure among certain rectors and even bishops. This is the sign of a Church struggling to understand that the family is no longer automatically the place where young people learn healthy and stable relationships. A woman is not, by definition, a figure of tenderness and care: reality shows us, sadly, also violent women, who abuse, abandon, even kill their children. The news reminds us of this with brutality.
As a Church, we still seem unable to accept that today’s family is not the idealized one preached for decades: there are broken, wounded, dysfunctional families. But this does not necessarily determine — or compromise — a young man’s vocation. And above all, it is not only within the family that he can experience authentic and healthy relationships. He should be able to live them in the Christian community and in the seminary — places meant to educate toward communion and inner freedom. Instead, too often he finds himself in judgmental environments, marked by divisions and ideologies, where gossip and finger-pointing prevail over welcome and accompaniment.
Rediscovering the Center
The impression is that many of these so-called “experts” speak more about themselves than about the Church. They project their wounds, discomforts, and psychological readings onto an institution they only know through their own lenses. And while they try to “humanize” the priest, they end up de-humanizing him, depriving him of his spiritual dimension, his freedom, and his uniqueness.
The true reform does not pass through hybridized models or gender parity in seminaries, but through a return to the primacy of humanity, prayer, and freedom. Only those who have encountered Christ — and encountered Him as a person — can truly fall in love with Him. The words of these interviewed priests, rather than describing a shared experience, seem to narrate their personal story. It is normal for a young man to enter the seminary after meeting a priest who fascinated him — but perhaps Father Nicosia forgets that this priest was, for that young man, the concrete face of Christ. It was through that encounter that he met Jesus Christ, and often through it that he experienced conversion.
Of course, there are cases where a young man fixates on a particular model of priesthood, imitating external traits or the rigidity of the priest who inspired him. But this cannot be demonized — it is part of the human and spiritual journey. The formator’s role is not to reformat the seminarian, erasing what shaped him, but to help him discern and mature the spark of love for Christ already lit within him. It is neither useful nor safe to teach a young man to despise or renounce the priestly figure that inspired him. If a twenty-year-old tends toward imitation or rigidity, it simply shows his age. Growth will make him freer, more understanding, and more capable of integration. This process must unfold in the seminary — not before, and not through premature judgment that risks suffocating the grace of vocation.
What purpose does the seminary serve if we think we should accept only “perfect” candidates? Those who speak in such terms often impose unrealistic models that they themselves do not meet. If the criteria certain formators demand were applied to themselves, they would be the first to leave the presbytery.
The seminary is not an academy of the flawless, but a school of redeemed humanity, where grace works through fragility. Christ Himself surrounded Himself with men who, today, would likely be rejected by any discernment committee. Church history is full of figures who would now be marginalized: Peter, impulsive and contradictory; Paul, critical and independent; Aloysius Gonzaga, deemed “too mystical” and “uncomfortable around women”; Philip Neri, “too playful”; John Bosco, “too close to the young”; Joseph Benedict Cottolengo, “too nonconforming.” And yet, through these imperfect but genuine men, God built His Church. If the seminary becomes a place that selects people rather than discerns God’s will, it ceases to be a house of formation and becomes a showroom of appearances. Christ did not seek the perfect, but hearts open to transformation.
Even the nun who warns against “the risk of imitating the priest instead of Jesus Christ” knows that this distinction, while theologically correct, can become abstract rhetoric. We all — laypeople, religious, or priests — have encountered Christ through someone. It is always a personal mediation that introduces us into the mystery of faith. Spiritual maturity does not consist in denying that influence, but in transforming it into freedom, developing one’s own gifts, and expressing one’s personality in the light of that first encounter. It is not a “sin” to imitate, for a time, someone who showed us the face of God: it is part of the journey toward full configuration to Christ. If a twenty-five-year-old speaks with the same tone as his ninety-year-old pastor, imitates his gestures, or obsesses over vestments — then yes, there begins a problem. But it is precisely the ecclesial community, and if he is in seminary, the seminary itself, that must help him mature, understand that a reference model is legitimate and even necessary, but that each one must live his own age, guard his inner freedom, and cultivate his own talents, not become a faded copy of someone else. The maturity of a priest is recognized in his ability to accompany others, helping them to understand that true discipleship does not mean clinging to rigid human models, but living the freedom of the children of God, learning to express one’s own personality in the light of the Gospel.
An Examination of Conscience
Jesus believes it is shaking the Church, but in fact it empties it of meaning. It is not by denying the structures that wounded us that we build something new, nor by placing ourselves or our ideologies at the center that we renew ecclesial institutions. The seminary is a complex reality, called to hold together two inseparable dimensions: being with Him and walking with others — with one’s brothers, with the holy people of God. But if one does not first remain with Him, cultivating a living relationship with Christ, there is nothing to bring to others. If the seminarian is not given time in the desert — that is, in the seminary — to question his vocation, tomorrow we will have priests who quit, overwhelmed by endless activity, because they were already doing “do, do, do” while still seminarians. Those who today speak of “reforms” often ignore this spiritual root — and it shows when they reduce everything to a lack of pastoral experience, failing to see that the real wounds are born within the seminary itself: there, where fraternal bonds should be formed, there are often no sincere or deep relationships. How can a seminarian learn pastoral relationships in a parish if he cannot live them within his own community? The toxic dynamics are many and concrete: misuse of social media, jealousies, fears, labels, calumny, gossip, ideologies, factions — all of which destroy fraternity and prevent authentic growth. The same happens in the relationship with superiors: constant judgment, imposed ideologies, psychological projections, favoritism, senseless prohibitions, accusations, and suspicion.
f.G.F and F.P.
Silere non possum