St. John’s Seminarians Reflect on Jesuit Discernment Process

In a hall at St. John's Seminary on Brighton Campus, a collection of men, mostly in black, sing the Regina Caeli in Latin before sitting down to lunch. Together in time and rhythm, the voices envelop the dining room in a  low octave. Amid summer squash pasta, chocolate brownies, and a salad bar, all courtesy of Boston College Dining Services, the song is just one more reminder, one more moment of reflection, one more instance of a community sharing faith and love.

Dressed in black slacks and short-sleeved shirt and an unassuming priest's collar, Donato Infante, BC '09, stands in line at the lunch buffet, singing. It is still Easter season according to the liturgical calendar, and the men at St. John's Seminary sing the hymn at both lunch and dinner.

Like almost every other day of the week since he entered the seminary in August, Infante woke up at 6 a.m., had morning prayer at 7, community mass at 7:30, breakfast as soon as mass finished, the Ignatian examen at noon, and then lunch. The days will vary depending on his classes, scheduled meetings with his faculty advisors and spiritual director, and personally allotted exercise time, but today is an exception. Infante will meet with a group of several other seminarians for their recently-established book club at 3 p.m. After, he will have evening prayer as usual from 5 to 6 p.m., followed by dinner. Curfew is always at 11 p.m.

In 1976, the total number of diocesan priests for the Boston Archdiocese was 2,401. In 2006, this number had dropped to 1,408 along with the number of total seminarians from 563 to 88, according to the Official Catholic Directory. The total Catholic population for those years in the archdiocese also dropped from 5,539,700 to 3,974,846.
In the United States, the Catholic population has steadily represented between 24 and 22 percent of the population since 1965, according to the Center for Applied Research of the Apostolate at Georgetown University.

 But the number of priestly ordinations throughout the country has risen from 442 in 2000 to 472 in 2009 along with the number of graduate-level seminarians from 3,172 in 1995, to 3,472 in 2000, and 3,357 in 2009.

According to the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops, the 1940s and 1950s saw a significant rise in the number of diocesan and religious priests, the numbers since represent a "balancing out." In any case, the numbers change from year to year, but the decision to enter the diocesan priesthood or religious life is still the same even if the context may have changed.

Delving into the particulars of Catholicism and studying books on faith, the idea of the priesthood only came to Infante with the discovery of a  prayer that read, "Lord, I will do whatever you want me to do, go wherever you want me to go, say whatever you want me to say, I will love as you want me to love."

Praying this for the first time, the thought popped into his head, "Be a priest."

"I thought, ‘Absolutely not, this is not for me. I want to get married, I want to have kids, I want to coach my kids' soccer team,' but the idea didn't go away," he said. He is now finishing his first year at the seminary.

There are some seminarians that wonder every day if this is right for them, while others are positive in their choice early on, Infante said.

The application is rigorous. There is a medical exam and a two-day psychological evaluation that can go longer than that. The discernment process does not stop once the men are at the seminary. Men still continue to "purify their desire," some realizing the vocation is not their own, or that they are called to something else.

In Boston, diocesan priests usually complete six years at the seminary to build the spiritual, human, and pastoral elements required of a priest, although some can skip the first two years of pre-theology courses if they have already attended a college seminary or have fulfilled these philosophy requirements while at a university.

Each summer they are placed at parishes in their diocese, and during what amounts to their academic year, they are required to do work within their diocese in addition to attending class. In their final year, seminarians are ordained as deacons before they are ordained priests. Through this whole process, those first moments of wanting to enter religious life come to realization.

Walking through the central corridor of St. Mary's, Rev. Casey Beaumier, S.J., points out the gothic architecture, characteristic of one of the oldest buildings on campus, and in particular stops in the silent, dimly-lit chapel. Walking under a cast-iron arch, Beaumier enters a parlor to the right and sits down.

"Discernment by definition is listening for the sincerity of desire. For every human being, discernment is a craving of the heart," Beaumier said.