The comments from your “correspondent” about Catholic seminaries being part of consortia of Christian seminaries in a geographical area in which candidates at any member seminary can take courses at any member seminary for full credit is also commonplace. Here in the Archdiocese of Boston, for example, St. John’s Seminary (our normal archdiocesan seminary), the Department of Theology of Boston College (Jesuit), and the Weston School of Theology (a Jesuit pontifical institute now known as the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry) joined the School of Theology of Boston University (United Methodist), the Episcopal Theological School, and Harvard Divinity School (originally Congregational Church, merged into the United Church of Christ, but now unaffiliated) as founding members of the Boston Theological Institute (BTI) in 1967.This may be the case in some dioceses, though I don't believe it's the case in Chicago or Los Angeles, unless someone can correct me. But this basically puts more responsibility on vocations directors, who must presumably make sure seminarians are choosing courses that stress Aquinas and not Karl Barth or Joshua Heschel. If I get lucky, I may get a chance to chat with a diocesan vocations director in coming months, and this will be among the questions I hope to put to him.Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (unaffiliated Evangelical Protestant), Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Seminary, and Hebrew College Rabbinical School have subsequently joined this consortium. According to the archdiocesan seminary’s course catalog, “[s]tudents from member schools enjoy cross-registration in more than seven hundred courses, and access to more than two million books in their respective libraries.” What’s especially interesting about this is that Boston College School of Theology and Ministry grants the pontifical degrees of Doctor of Sacred Theology (STD) and Licentiate in Sacred Theology (STL), the recipients of which are deemed by the Vatican to be accredited as Catholic theologians.
This still says that rigorous curricula are potentially available to seminarians if they're correctly guided. But then we have the problem that the OCSP vocations director, a former Anglican, may himself not be well-equipped either to evaluate candidates' formation or recommend remedial courses. Given the general mediocre caliber of OCSP intake due to the limited opportunities available, I doubt if any vocations director will rise above the mean or identify a better candidate or encourage anyone better to apply.
But my regular correspondent also chimes in:
I don't think the exams are particularly rigorous. Fr [redacted], a man without an accredited MDiv, skipped even the webinars from Houston and just wrote the exams. I am sure he is an intelligent man but clearly these exams did not require intensive preparation. We are not talking about the law boards here.So the picture that seems to be emerging is that in fact numerous candidates have been ordained without a two-year period of formation, and that the exams are perfunctory. This simply goes to the question I've been raising that if seminary course work alone isn't an assurance that Catholic priests get the formation we clearly see in many cases, then something else about formation must be responsible -- and this must be even more completely absent from Protestant clergy who want to wear a collar but don't really understand the faith, especially if they're mainly trying to jump-start failed careers.I do not see any evidence that anyone has begun formal preparation while continuing to function as an Anglican clergyman. I believe that the process you describe, of submitting a dossier which includes a letter resigning one's previous orders, has been adhered to in all cases. Fr Erdman resigned from TEC in January 2016 after a six month struggle with the parish Vestry and was received as a Catholic in June 2016. I think he turned to the Catholic option after exhausting his options at Calvary Church. The idea that he was simultaneously exploring a back-up plan is offensive, frankly, as is the suggestion that the CDF would collude.
