On August 24, St. Mary’s Seminary & University welcomed 17 new seminarians to the newly renovated Baltimore seminary. They were greeted by a large orientation team of current students across all classes, from Pre-Theology to those in their four (and final) year.

The new arrivals come from diverse backgrounds and regions. At St. Mary’s, they will study for the priesthood for the (arch)dioceses of:

• Albany
• Baltimore
• Buffalo
• Pittsburgh
• Scranton
• Syracuse
• Wilmington
• Worcester.

Two new seminarians are members of the Trinitarian Order. And four priests from two dioceses in Cameroon arrived to study for the Licentiate of Sacred Theology (STL) degree. 

This results in a total of 80 men studying at the Roland Park seminary.

Following their arrival, the new seminarians commenced multiple days of orientation and introduction to life, prayer, study, and pastoral service in the seminary. Beginning Tuesday, August 31, they opened their year with several retreat days. Classes began on Thursday, September 2.

[Recording below]

On Tuesday, August 17, 2021, from 7:00-8:00 PM EDT, St. Mary’s, the first Roman Catholic seminary in the United States, presented Part III of the virtual discussion series created in honor of Blessed Michael J. McGivney, Class of 1877, and founder of the Knights of Columbus.

This third segment of “The McGivney Series” addressed the question: “what should seminaries be doing today to develop priests in the model of Blessed Michael McGivney?” The panelists for this presentation were:

• His Eminence Cardinal Edwin F. O’Brien, Former Grand Master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem, former Rector of the North American College in Rome and St. Joseph’s Seminary & College (Dunwoodie) in New York, and Archbishop Emeritus of Baltimore.
• Mr. Michael Schultz, 2nd Year Seminarian of the Archdiocese of Louisville and Grand Knight of the Blessed Michael McGivney Council of the Knights of Columbus at St. Mary’s.
• Rev. Phillip J. Brown, P.S.S., President-Rector of St. Mary’s Seminary & University (Host/Moderator).

We look to those the Church calls “venerable,” “blessed,” or “saint” as models. Their virtues, actions, and dispositions provide guideposts for measuring our lives and examples to strive for. Blessed Michael McGivney is no different. His life and ministry as a priest, particularly as an American priest formed in our own seminary, provides further opportunities for reflection. His priestly witness reveals a life that many priests can, and should, model their own after. Therefore, it is entirely appropriate to ask our thematic question: “what should seminaries be doing today to develop priests in the model of Fr. McGivney?” We will approach this question by way of two prior inquiries:

1. What are the “qualities” of Blessed Michael McGivney exhibited in his priesthood?
2. How can today’s priests (particularly the newly ordained just out of seminary) embody these qualities in their own ministry in the twenty-first century church?
3. Finally, what should we be doing in seminaries to develop these kind of priests: priests in the “model” of Michael McGivney?

On January 29, 2021, St. Mary’s Seminary & University presented a special online symposium on Catholic doctrine and the Church’s teaching about the sanctity of human life at all stages, featuring a panel consisting of:

• Archbishop William Lori (Archdiocese of Baltimore)
• Dr. Matthew Dugandzic (Professor of Moral Theology at St. Mary’s Seminary & University)
• Kevin Upendran (Seminarian, Diocese of Hamilton, Ontario)
• Mike Misulia (Seminarian, Archdiocese of Baltimore).

The presentation was recorded and uploaded to the St. Mary’s Seminary & University YouTube channel. It is available below:

By PHILLIP J. BROWN | FOR THE BALTIMORE SUN | NOV 18, 2020 AT 11:29 AM

In this Nov. 10, 2003 file photo, Cardinal Theodore Edgar McCarrick, Archbishop of Washington, D.C., center, joins fellow clergy in prayer at the end of the opening session of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops meeting in Washington. McCarrick – who was defrocked by Pope Francis in 2019 – served as head of Catholic dioceses in Metuchen and Newark, New Jersey, and in Washington. A report released by the Vatican on Monday, Nov. 9, 2020, found that three decades of bishops, cardinals and popes dismissed or downplayed reports of McCarrick’s misconduct with young men. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

The McCarrick Report investigating sexual abuse by disgraced former Washington, D.C., cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, released this month by the Vatican, catalogs facts that cannot be ignored, denied or explained away. The harm inflicted by Mr. McCarrick over decades is a source of deep remorse and shame for the Catholic Church. Like most, I am bewildered that he was able to advance in the ranks while preying on victims even while serious accusations about him were known or credibly rumored.

Before priesthood, I served as assistant attorney general for Pardons, Parole and Probation in North Dakota. I reviewed the files of every inmate in the corrections system, which included every kind of sex crime. Later I served as guardian ad litem for the juvenile court, representing the interests of children, including those who had been sexually abused. As a priest and canon lawyer, I have been deeply involved in cases of clerical sexual abuse of children and young people. I have had a life-long commitment to the welfare and well-being of children and young adults — that they be protected from sexual predators especially. That life experience has informed my work as a canonist and now as a seminary official.

The greatest value of the McCarrick Report will be what we learn from it to ensure that nothing like this is able to happen again.

We know so much more than ever before about how to cultivate human maturity, psychological and emotional well-being, and the qualities necessary to be a well-integrated, virtuous person. We need to be guided by scientific data and well-articulated criteria in judging whether a man is suitable to be ordained a priest, given the tremendous responsibility to care for others and everything else this vocation entails. There can be no room for wishful thinking or a misguided trust that sacramental grace will compensate for deficits in the human qualities needed to be a good pastor; no one should ever again simply ordain a man and hope for the best.

There must be a willingness to exclude anyone who does not fulfill objective criteria of maturity, self-possession, self-control, self-discipline and goodwill toward all others; to exclude anyone who presents any identifiable risk of the capacity to do harm to others. A “pastoral heart” full of good intentions is not enough; there must be a demonstrated capacity to behave in every circumstance as a good pastor and to function as a mature, psycho-sexually healthy person. The criteria have to be applied rigorously. Everyone must agree that “looking the other way,” waiting for someone else to make the hard calls, claiming “plausible deniability,” or naive credulity — all features of the institutional culture revealed in the McCarrick Report — are wholly unacceptable.

Seminaries must shed the veneer of being sacred enclaves that non-clerics are just not able, or qualified, to understand or critique — clerics forming future clerics with no input from others. Laypersons, and especially women, must be an integral part of seminary faculties with prominent roles in the formation and evaluation process. They bring an essential perspective to the closed clerical world with its inevitable blind spots that led to tragedies like the depredations of Theodore McCarrick.

Seminary officials have often had good instincts about suitability without the technical knowledge and other tools we have today for making sound judgments (sophisticated psychological evaluations, holistic developmental models based on sound science, etc.). Those in positions of authority and officials who serve them need to listen to the people charged with the responsibility of formation and evaluation and follow their recommendations, regardless of pressures to get men ordained and get them into service — service that has too often been marred, if not contradicted, by human immaturity and a lack of virtue in men who should never have been ordained in the first place.

Better to lose one priest than gain even one more victim of a morally depraved cleric. And those in authority have to want to know and be willing to turn those away who, however well-intentioned, are ill-suited to the rigors of ministry and a lifetime of service. That is what the seminary I serve is committed to. All schools of formation must be committed to these standards. Future failure is not an option. “Many are called, but few are chosen” must be a constant reminder for all those who dare to pursue the Catholic priesthood.

Rev. Phillip J. Brown (brownpj@stmarys.edu) is president-rector of Saint Mary’s Seminary & University, the United States’ first and oldest Catholic seminary, in Baltimore, Maryland.

The article can be found here in the Baltimore Sun.