A DESERT PLACE

In this decayed hole among the mountains/In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing/Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel/There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home. T.S. Eliot

Ed. Note: Over the past two months, Pistrina has revealed that the Most Holy Trinity (MHT) Clerical Vocational Program is an intellectual and liturgical desert. This post exposes the pesthouse as a spiritual wasteland as well. The problem lies not simply in weak or inept spiritual formation. Rather, as the following pasticcio of anecdotes from MHT survivors suggests, the institution itself may be radically opposed to Catholic spirituality in any form.

By the rector’s misguided rule, MHT seminarians were forced to choose from a very limited number of priests as spiritual directors.* Accordingly, sacramental confession was infrequent. First-year seminarians were advised to take the clone (the “vice rector”) as their spiritual director, but the problem was that the clone only showed up about once monthly. Apart from the few occasions for confession, there were no other pious exercises. **⁽⁵⁾ Even thanksgiving after Mass was often restricted to a few brief minutes, as seminarians were fearful that lingering in prayer**⁽¹⁾ might result in a fierce scolding from the irascible prefect. The administration often canceled Vespers**^{(1), (3)} or the Rosary**⁽¹⁾ for more important and pressing matters -- like attending to household cleaning chores.

Seminary staff often irreverently reinforced the official MHT aversion to spiritual growth in every way possible. It was not uncommon to hear celebrants snarl sharp corrections duringMass! **⁽¹⁾ Once, Scut the Prefect, with the Blessed Sacrament in his hand, harshly ordered a seminarian to go to his proper place to receive communion.**⁽²⁾ On another occasion, when a seminarian sang the wrong note, the horn-mad prefect loudly interrupted the chanting of Vespers**⁽¹⁾ to discipline the offender sternly. In another instance of shocking behavior, as a seminarian silently prayed the Holy Rosary in the car during a drive, the prefect's toady assistant (a.k.a.Grover Dill) savagely barked: “Don’t pray in the car!” **⁽¹⁾ In addition, there were no annual retreats**⁽⁴⁾ other than the almost spontaneously scheduled ego-fests presided over by the discredited “One-Hand” Dan Dolan whenever he needed to escape the bleak Ohio weather or the wrath of former parishioners. (Dolan once publicly gushed how solicitously the seminarians attended to him and served his meals, so you can imagine that no retreat is ever held for the young men’s spiritual benefit.)

Bottom Line: The MHT pesthouse is dangerous to the interior life of young Catholic men with a vocation to the holy priesthood. The place is a spiritual frozen tundra, which decent young men must avoid or from which they must escape.

The laity must not support MHT, its clergy, or its rector in any form. The time is past. Starve the beast. Do not be a benefactor. Tell prospective seminarians you know to run for their spiritual lives. If you live in Europe, find out the names and email addresses s of the three young men in France whom the rector is recruiting: Warn them before it's too late.

* It’s instructive how the rector cannot adhere to authentic Catholic tradition. Here’s a quote from the canon-law commentary of Bouscaren, Ellis, and Korth regarding seminary confessors:

In addition to the ordinary confessors, others are to be designated to whom the students can freely go (c. 1361, §1). If these confessors live outside the seminary, and a student asks that one of them be called, the rector must call him without inquiring in any way into the reason for the request, or showing any displeasure; if the confessors live in the seminary, any student may freely go to them, without prejudice to the discipline of the house (c. 1361, §2). When there is a question of admitting any student to orders, or of expelling him from the seminary, the advice of the confessors is never to be asked (c. 1361, § 3).

** Compare to Bouscaren, Ellis, and Korth note on the exercises in piety required by canon law:

The Bishop is to see to it that the students: (1) every day, say morning and evening prayers in common, spend some time in mental prayer, attend Mass; (2) confess at least once a week; (3) receive communion frequently, with due devotion; (3) on Sundays and feast days, attend solemn Mass and Vespers, serve at the altar and practice sacred ceremonies…; (4) every year, make the spiritual exercises for several days continuously; (5) at least once a week, hear a spiritual instruction closing with a pious exhortation (c. 1367).