High school seminary

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A minor seminary or high school seminary is a secondary day or boarding school created for the specific purpose of enrolling teenage boys who have expressed interest in becoming Catholic priests. They are generally Catholic institutions, and designed to prepare boys both academically and spiritually for a vocation to the priesthood and religious life. They emerged in cultures and societies where literacy was not universal, and the minor seminary was seen as a means to prepare younger boys in literacy for later entry into the major seminary.

The minor seminary is no longer very familiar in the developed world. The program of priestly formation of the USCCB refers to them as "high school seminaries" rather than minor seminaries.

Today, college seminaries, where philosophy is studied, are often called minor seminaries even though they are for those who have completed high school.

History

The 1917 Code of Canon Law described the purpose of minor seminaries as "to take care especially to protect from the contagion of the world, to train in piety, to imbue with the rudiments of literary studies, and to foster in them the seed of a divine vocation".^{[full citation needed]} Suitable boys were encouraged to graduate to a major seminary, where they would continue their studies for the priesthood.

The Second Vatican Council ruled in 1965 that minor seminaries, "erected to develop the seeds of vocations", should be places where students would be "prepared by special religious formation, particularly through appropriate spiritual direction, to follow Christ the Redeemer...", noting that some students would go on to train as priests but that others would "choose a different state of life" and that studies should be organised in a way that would enable such students to continue their education elsewhere. Also important for minor seminarians were understanding of child and adolescent development, contact with their family, and appropriate "social and cultural contacts".

Extant minor seminaries

External links

• Code of Canon Law (1983), IntraText edition with referenced concordance, hosted by the Vatican
• Catholic Encyclopedia: Canon Law
• Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen (sedevacantist)
• Blessed Jose Sanchez del Rio Minor Seminary
• Sacred Heart Apostolic School

References