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ON NOW : Westminster Hour
19/05/2013

Westminster Hour Weekly political discussion and analysis with MPs, experts and commentators.

Image for Life in a Seminary

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Life in a Seminary

Duration:
30 minutes
First broadcast:
Sunday 10 June 2012

In Something Understood this week, Mark Tully is intrigued by life in a Roman Catholic seminary. How are young men trained for the priesthood?

At Allen Hall Seminary in the busy heart of London, Dean of Studies and Formation Advisor Father Stephen Wang explains the need for his students to train for their pastoral role within the Catholic community. Seminarians at Allen Hall spend much of their time in local parishes, schools and hospitals preparing for life as a Diocesan priest. And yet it's also crucial that they have the quiet, contemplative space they need to develop spiritually. They must become men of God and men of communion.

Mark explores the history of the seminary system, with readings from Anthony Kenny and Denis Meadows, and hears music written by ancient monks in isolation. He speaks to writer and academic John Cornwell, whose own time at Upholland Seminary in the 1950s left a strong imprint on his spiritual life. The Junior Seminary system he experienced from the age of 12 no longer exists, but John believes that there are still serious flaws in the way the Catholic Church trains its priests. He argues that seminarians are too separated out from the world and from the people they are destined to serve once ordained.

Ultimately, becoming a priest requires huge dedication - what Jesuit Father Pedro Arrupe described as a 'falling in love' with God. Perhaps what is also needed is a balance, between the prosaic and the spiritual, between being within the world and being apart from it.

Producer: Hannah Marshall
A Loftus production for BBC Radio 4.

Music Played

5 items
  • Image for Maurice Duruflé

    Maurice Duruflé Ubi Caritas

    Hallelujah – Great Sacred Choruses, Virgin TV, B0001FUIQU, CD 1, track 19

  • Image for [traditional]

    [traditional] Summer is Icumen In

    Performer: The Choir of New College, Oxford

    Early One Morning, Erato, 0630-19065-2, 12

  • Image for Samuel Barber

    Samuel Barber The Monk and his Cat

    Performer: Leontyne Price

    Leontyne Price Sings Barber, 09026 61983 2, BMG Classics, 8

  • Schola Cantamus Exsultet – Easter Proclamation

    Exsultet – Chant for Holy Week and Easter, The Music Makers, LCD006, 16

  • Image for Sir Charles Villiers Stanford

    Sir Charles Villiers Stanford St Patrick’s Breastplate Prayer

    Performer: Winchester Cathedral Choir

    Sacred Choral Music - 3, Hyperion, CDA66974, 5

  • READINGS

    Title: Fall in Love
    Author: Father Pedro Arrupe
    Publisher: Supplied by interviewee
    ISBN: N/A

    Title: ‘Singleness’ from “The Last Dreamers: New and Selected Poems” (1999)
    Author: Padraig J Daly
    Publisher: Dedalus Press
    ISBN: 1901233456

    Title: A Path from Rome
    Author: Anthony Kenny
    Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
    ISBN: 0192830503

    Title: Obedient Men
    Author: Denis Meadows
    Publisher: The Catholic Bookclub
    ASIN: B0007JPKR2

Broadcasts

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