Vatican City, Oct 30, 2008 / 13:42 pm
The Congregation for Catholic Education has issued a new document whose purpose is to ensure that adequate discernment and formation is used in recruiting candidates for the priesthood.
According to Father Carlo Bresciani, a psychologist and adviser to the Congregation, the documented presented on Thursday by the prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, follows up on the contributions made by the 1974 document, “Educational Orientations for formation in priestly celibacy,” which recognized that “errors in the discernment of vocations are not rare, and too many psychiatric ineptitudes, more or less pathological, only show up after priestly ordination.” “Discerning them in time will help avoid such dramas,” it said.
The new document, titled, “Orientations for the use of the psychological competencies in the admission and formation of candidates to the priesthood” was discussed by Fr. Bresciani and other contributors at a press conference this morning.
Father Bresciani synthesized the five fundamental points of the new document as follows: