Rev. Dr. Michael Doyle and Jean Khoury

Summary: This article began from an unlikely starting point: the language of operational productivity, borrowed from the world of management, and applied — carefully, and with the necessary theological corrections — to the formation of priests. The exercise is not an attempt to reduce grace to an efficiency ratio. It is an attempt to ask a question the Church cannot afford to keep postponing: after years of formation, considerable resources, and the sustained effort of many good people, what has actually changed in the man? We argue that spiritual growth, while never identical with grace itself, is nevertheless the observable fruit of a person’s reception of and cooperation with grace, and is therefore assessable in much the same way that human and psychological maturity already are. We argue further that the reluctance to assess it systematically has produced a formation model that is, de facto, weighted toward what is easiest to measure — academic achievement — while spiritual and human maturity are allowed to remain at the threshold of “acceptable.” We distinguish, as the tradition itself distinguishes, between the internal forum proper to spiritual direction and the external forum proper to the spiritual master or formator, in order to show that a serious, structured, periodic assessment of spiritual growth is not an intrusion into the sanctuary of conscience but a recovery of a formative responsibility the Church has always recognised. And we propose that spiritual life must be understood not as one department among five, but as the integrating axis through which intellectual, liturgical, human, and pastoral formation become one life configured to Christ. Our purpose is not to condemn what has been built, often at real cost and with real dedication. It is to name plainly what is missing, so that formators, heads of seminaries, spiritual directors, and bishops can, together, do something about it.

Introduction

Every organisation that takes its own work seriously eventually asks a version of the same question: given what we have invested, what have we actually produced? In the world of management this question has a name, “operational productivity”, and a simple formula: output divided by input. A factory measures units per labour hour. A hospital measures patients treated per bed. A customer service centre measures issues resolved per agent per day. Behind the formula lies something more important than the arithmetic: an institutional habit of asking not merely “did we work?” but “did the work bear fruit?”

We want to ask that same question of priestly formation, and we want to ask it without embarrassment. A diocese or a religious congregation invests staggering resources in the formation of a single priest: six, seven, eight years of a man’s life; professors, spiritual directors, formation staff, retreats, pastoral placements, community life, accommodation, administration, psychological assessment, liturgical training, and thousands of hours of personal and communal accompaniment. That is a formation input of an entirely different order from anything a factory manages. The question, then, is not a trivial one: after all of this, what fruit has actually been produced in the man?

We want to be clear from the outset about what this article is not. It is not a plea to run seminaries like businesses, nor to reduce the mystery of a vocation to a productivity ratio, nor to suggest that grace itself can be quantified. It is, rather, a plea for honesty. We already assess academic formation with real rigour: examinations, essays, grades, degrees, viva voce defences. We increasingly assess human and psychological formation with real rigour too, using validated instruments, interviews, and longitudinal observation. But when it comes to spiritual formation, i.e. the very heart of what a priest is meant to become, our assessment culture becomes vague, private, and largely impressionistic. A candidate is “doing fine spiritually.” He is “satisfactory.” Nobody quite says what that means, how it was determined, or what would count as evidence to the contrary.

This asymmetry is not a minor administrative gap. It shapes what an institution actually takes seriously, and therefore what it actually produces. What follows is an attempt to name this weakness plainly, to show why the usual objections to naming it do not hold, and to propose a constructive path forward. The intention is not to discard the very real efforts already made in seminaries and formation houses, but to complete them at the point where they are currently weakest.

I. From Operational to Formational Productivity

The economic analogy, taken on its own terms, is too thin for what happens in priestly formation, but it is not therefore useless. It gives us a chain worth preserving: inputs, a formative process, outcomes, and — in the specifically Christian case — fruit. The inputs, as we have said, are considerable. The crucial move is to refuse the question “how much formation have we provided?” in favour of the question Christ himself gives us: “Every tree is known by its own fruit” (Luke 6:44). St. Paul gives the same logic an unmistakably formative shape: “My little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you” (Galatians 4:19). That, we would say, is the deepest possible definition of formation productivity: Christ being formed in the person.

This reframing changes what counts as “output.” The output of seminary formation is not, in the first instance, a man who has acquired a set of competencies: theological knowledge, liturgical correctness, pastoral technique. Those competencies matter, but they are not the end. The end is a man progressively configured to Christ, having a deep relationship with Christ, and because of this capable of mediating Christ to others. And there are, in fact, two levels of fruitfulness that formation must be judged by. The first is the transformation produced in the seminarian himself. The second, downstream of the first, is the transformation his ministry subsequently produces in the people entrusted to him. A formation system that produces competent but spiritually shallow priests will eventually produce parishes marked by the same shallowness. The chain runs: formation inputs, transformation of the priest, transformation of the people he serves. If the first link is weak, everything downstream is compromised, however excellent the externals of the ministry may appear.

This is why the biblical criterion Christ gives, i.e. “you will know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16), cannot remain a pious slogan. It has to become an operating principle. A seminary can be extremely active — courses, conferences, retreats, assessments, pastoral placements, community activities — without being proportionately fruitful. Activity is not the same thing as fruitfulness, and an institution that has not learned to distinguish the two will keep mistaking a full calendar for a formed man.

Two Movements within Seminary Formation

In general terms, and necessarily simplifying, seminary formation can be understood as involving two major movements. The first is a period of vocational discernment: the progressive discernment, by the candidate himself and by the Church, of whether he is genuinely called by God to the diocesan priesthood. Ideally, this discernment should take place principally during the earlier years of seminary formation, well before the candidate reaches the diaconate and assumes the lifelong commitment of celibacy.

During this period, the fundamental question for the seminarian is not simply whether he can fulfil the requirements of seminary life, nor whether he is capable of exercising priestly ministry, but whether, at the deepest level of his being, he recognises that God is calling him to become a diocesan priest. The seminary therefore becomes a privileged context for testing and clarifying this call. His theological and philosophical studies, his life in community, his pastoral experiences, his human formation, and above all his growth in prayer and relationship with Christ all contribute to this discernment.

At the centre of this process is the action of the Holy Spirit, who is the principal and indispensable agent of all genuine formation. Without docility to the Holy Spirit, no lasting vocational discernment or spiritual growth is possible. The seminarian must therefore learn to discern the movements of grace and to cooperate with them. His relationship with his spiritual director in the internal forum is particularly important in this regard, while his relationship with the principal formator in the external forum enables those responsible for his formation to observe and accompany the development of his vocation without intruding upon the confidential content of spiritual direction.

Vocational discernment is therefore not exclusively an interior judgement made by the candidate, nor is it simply an institutional decision made by the seminary. The candidate must progressively recognise and freely embrace the possibility of a genuine call from God, while those responsible for formation must, through sustained observation and accompaniment, discern whether the signs of such a vocation are present and developing. A growing conviction of vocation on the part of the candidate should therefore be accompanied by an increasingly mature recognition of that vocation on the part of the Church through those entrusted with his formation.

The second movement begins when a sufficiently mature vocational discernment has taken place and the candidate has freely embraced the priesthood as the fundamental direction of his life, with this vocation having also been recognised by the Church. Formation then moves progressively from primarily discerning whether he is called to priesthood towards preparing him to live that vocation faithfully and permanently. The question is no longer simply, “Am I called to the priesthood?” but increasingly, “What must I become in order to live this vocation faithfully, fruitfully and permanently?”

At this point, the formation process takes on a more explicit character of preparation for ordination and for the priestly state of life. The candidate moves towards the diaconate and ultimately towards priestly ordination, with all that these entail: sacramental configuration to Christ, a life of celibate chastity, pastoral charity, obedience, prayer, self-gift and permanent service of the Church.

This distinction is important because these two movements require different emphases in formation. The first is fundamentally concerned with vocational discernment and the testing of authenticity: is this truly the call God is placing before this man, and is he capable of freely embracing it? The second is concerned with the progressive transformation of the man who has discerned and embraced that call: is he actually becoming the kind of man and priest whom this vocation requires him to become?

The distinction also has consequences for assessment. A candidate may be academically capable, psychologically suitable and outwardly successful in seminary life while still requiring substantial time and freedom for vocational discernment. Conversely, once a vocation has been sufficiently discerned and ecclesially recognised, the central question becomes increasingly one of transformation: is the formation process actually producing in him the spiritual, human and pastoral maturity required for priesthood?

This is precisely why the assessment of spiritual growth cannot be reduced to determining whether a candidate has reached a minimum level of suitability. Formation must be capable of recognising both the authenticity of the vocation being discerned and the degree to which the man who has embraced that vocation is actually being transformed by grace into the priest he is called to become.

The transition from vocational discernment to a firm commitment to priesthood and preparation for ordination does not take place at the same pace or rhythm for every seminarian. Each man has his own history, personality, circumstances and relationship with God, and these must be respected within the formational journey. Formation cannot therefore be reduced to an inflexible timetable in which every candidate is expected to reach the same point at precisely the same moment.

Respect for individual pace, however, must not be confused with an absence of progression. If, after a significant period of formation, a seminarian is not demonstrating meaningful growth towards the formational goals expected of him, this needs to be recognised and addressed. This is necessary both for the good of the man himself, who deserves an honest discernment of his vocation and the help he needs to respond to it, and for the good of the Church, which entrusts the priesthood only to those who have demonstrated the necessary maturity and readiness to assume it.

A seminarian should therefore not simply drift through the years of formation towards ordination by virtue of the passage of time. Progress through formation must be accompanied by concrete evidence of growth: not merely the acquisition of knowledge or the completion of programmes, but an increasingly integrated human, spiritual, pastoral and ecclesial maturity. The question is not whether every seminarian progresses at the same speed, but whether he is genuinely progressing towards the formational goals appropriate to his vocation and stage of formation. This is precisely where the need to assess genuine growth becomes unavoidable.

II. The Objection Reconsidered: Can Spiritual Growth Be Measured?

The most natural objection to everything we have just said is theological, and it deserves to be taken seriously rather than waved away: grace cannot be reduced to an efficiency ratio; the Holy Spirit is the principal agent of formation, and spiritual growth cannot be manufactured mechanically. We want to affirm the truth in this objection and then show precisely where it goes wrong.

The truth is this: what is being assessed is never grace itself. Grace is God’s gratuitous action in the person, and no instrument can measure it. But spiritual growth is not grace. Spiritual growth is the growth of the person insofar as he receives, responds to, and cooperates with grace. It is the effect of a reception, not the gift itself. Once the distinction is made this precisely, the objection collapses, because there is no theological reason why the effects of grace’s reception should be less observable than the effects of any other formative process in the person.

Consider what the Church already does without hesitation. Formators in seminaries make judgements, repeatedly, about a candidate’s capacity for prayer, human maturity, affective maturity, obedience, capacity for self-gift, fidelity to commitments, freedom from serious impediments. These judgements are not treated as impossible intrusions into the mystery of grace; they are treated as ordinary, necessary elements of discernment toward ordination. A novice master accompanies a young religious precisely in order to discern whether and how he is progressing. A spiritual director recognises and says that a directee is becoming more free, that his prayer has deepened, that he responds differently to trials, that he is moving from one stage of the spiritual life to another. None of this is controversial. What is controversial, apparently, is doing it consistently, with defined criteria, on a regular schedule, in a way that produces a record rather than an impression.

And here the comparison with psychological assessment becomes decisive. We are entirely comfortable using validated instruments, interviews, and longitudinal observation to assess a candidate’s psychological health, his risks, his strengths, his developmental needs. Nobody argues that psychological maturity is too sacred or too private to be assessed. Why, then, does spiritual maturity — which should matter more, not less, to a priestly vocation — receive comparatively little structured attention? If a candidate can be given a defined psychological profile, there is no coherent reason he cannot also be given a defined spiritual-developmental profile, built from indicators that are just as real, even if their theological vocabulary differs from that of clinical psychology.

That vocabulary, in fact, already exists, in far greater richness than anything psychology offers: faith, hope, charity, prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude, humility, obedience, chastity, poverty of spirit, prayer, recollection, discernment, self-denial, docility to the Holy Spirit, conformity to Christ. These are not abstractions. They become visible in behaviour. Humility becomes observable in how a man receives correction. Charity becomes observable in how he treats people he finds difficult. Interior freedom becomes observable in his reaction to frustration. Growth in prayer becomes observable in fidelity, recollection, and the transformation of his relationship with God over time. Growth in discernment becomes observable in the quality of his decisions. Growth in pastoral charity becomes observable in whether he increasingly seeks the good of the other rather than his own affirmation. None of this requires access to the content of confession or to the intimate detail of spiritual direction. It requires only the willingness to look, consistently, at what is already visible.

Discernment of Spiritual Growth and the Integration of Formation

There are at least two major transformations that can take place in the human person and that, with sufficiently discerning observation, can become perceptible in the person’s life.

The first is what St. Teresa of Ávila describes as the “union with the will of God”. This corresponds, in the language of the spiritual tradition, to a profound purification of the sense and to the liberation of the higher faculties from the domination of the lower, sensual part of the person. After conversion, the person must be formed to face the struggles that arise in the new life of grace. Through perseverance in prayer, the practice of perfect charity, self-denial and a wholehearted commitment to God, the person gradually becomes capable of living according to the spirit rather than being governed by the impulses of the lower appetites. The result is not yet spiritual marriage, nor is it the definitive transforming union with God. Rather, it is a profound conformity of the human will to the divine will, stability, regularity, fervour, commitment, a purer love of the neighbour, detachment from possessions: the person has learned, in a stable and practical way, to desire what God desires.

St. Teresa places enormous importance on this transformation. She insists that it is not reserved to those who receive extraordinary mystical favours, but can be attained through a genuine surrender of the will to God. She writes: “This is the union which I have desired all my life; it is for this that I continually beseech Our Lord; it is this which is the most genuine and the safest.” (Interior Castle, Fifth Mansions, 3, 6).

This is therefore a decisive stage in formation. The person is no longer simply trying to practise virtue while continually being pulled in opposite directions by disordered appetites, self-love, self-esteem and the desire to preserve his or her own preferences. Rather, the will has become increasingly rooted in God. Teresa herself warns, however, that even religious observance and the practice of virtue can conceal deeper roots of self-love. She speaks of “a few little worms” which remain hidden within our virtues and identifies among them “self-love, self-esteem, censoriousness” and a lack of genuine charity towards others.

The second transformation is much deeper and considerably rarer. It is the profound purification traditionally described by St. John of the Cross as the “dark night of the spirit”. Here God himself takes the person into a participation in Christ’s Passion and permits the person to experience, at a depth that ordinary ascetical formation cannot reach, the radical poverty and helplessness of the human person before God. The discovery of the radical Mercy of God. The purpose is not merely to correct particular faults or to strengthen the practice of virtue. God reaches the very roots of the “old man” within the person and progressively purifies everything that remains opposed to the fullness of divine love.

At this level, the person is purified not only from manifest attachment to creatures, but from the deeper roots of self-reliance, self-love, self-esteem and spiritual appropriation. What human formation and the deliberate practice of virtue can achieve is therefore brought to a limit: God himself must act upon the deepest layers of the person. Through this purification, the person is brought into a radical humility, obedience and conformity to God that cannot be produced by human effort alone. The person is progressively stripped of everything that is “not God”, so that God may become the principle and centre of the whole person.

These two transformations should therefore not be confused. The first, the union with the will of God, represents a profound liberation of the human will and its stable conformity to God’s will. The second, the dark night of the spirit, reaches much deeper: God purifies the very roots from which the remaining resistance to divine love proceeds. The first can already produce a remarkably mature Christian life; the second is a far more radical work of divine purification, preparing the person for the deepest transforming union with God.

A properly trained spiritual formator can, therefore, discern with prudence, through the observable fruits of the person’s life, where a candidate may be situated in this process of spiritual growth. Such discernment must always remain humble and cautious, since the deepest movements of grace cannot simply be measured from external behaviour, and the formator must never confuse psychological maturity, natural ability or external observance with genuine spiritual transformation. Nevertheless, a formator who is well trained in the spiritual tradition can learn to recognise the signs and fruits associated with the different stages of growth and can consequently make a prudent judgement concerning the candidate’s spiritual development.

This discernment, however, cannot be reduced to the candidate’s interior prayer life alone. Other criteria are essential, particularly the progressive integration of the different dimensions of formation. Theological studies, liturgical life and pastoral activity must increasingly become integrated into the person’s spiritual life rather than remaining separate domains: integration here means seeing and living the deep connections and interaction with each aspect of these areas of formation and his personal spiritual life. The question is not simply whether the candidate studies theology, participates faithfully in the liturgy or carries out pastoral responsibilities, but whether these realities are being progressively interiorised and unified in his life with Christ. Theology should nourish prayer and contemplation; the liturgy should become the living centre of the person’s relationship with God; and pastoral charity should flow from that relationship and lead the person back to it. In this way, the maturity of spiritual life becomes visible not only in prayer but in the integration of the whole person and of the whole formation process around Christ.

III. What Is Measured Is What Is Taken Seriously

If a serious system of periodic spiritual assessment were introduced — say, twice a year, with defined and progressively more demanding criteria, tracking a candidate’s trajectory as stable, progressing, significantly progressing, stagnating, or regressing — its first effect would not be to judge candidates. It would be to expose the actual shape of contemporary formation, and we do not think that exposure would be comfortable.

Academic formation possesses a highly developed measurement culture: examinations, essays, grades, credits, degrees. It therefore acquires institutional visibility and accountability almost automatically. The other dimensions — human, spiritual, liturgical, pastoral — are assessed, but far less systematically, and the result is that a candidate who is broadly acceptable, who causes no particular concern, can be considered to be progressing well enough. Average, in other words, is treated as sufficient in precisely the dimension that ought to matter most. What is measured rigorously becomes what the institution takes most seriously in practice, whatever it says it values in principle.

This produces a genuinely uncomfortable possibility that most formation systems currently have no good way of confronting: a candidate who is academically excellent and spiritually mediocre. Because his academic record is documented and his spiritual life is not, the institution has an easy way to describe him as “doing well” overall. But the priest is not, in the end, an academic product. If spiritual maturity is treated as a minimum threshold to be cleared rather than as one of the principal outcomes formation exists to produce, we should not be surprised when the priests who emerge are administratively competent and interiorly thin.

A structured assessment system would also let a seminary learn something it currently cannot easily learn about itself: not merely which candidates are ready for ordination, but whether the formation process itself is transforming the men who pass through it. A seminary might discover that its candidates progress considerably in the first two years and then stagnate. That academic formation produces little integration with personal prayer. That pastoral placements produce real growth in charity while classroom instruction does not. That one approach to spiritual direction produces more interior freedom than another. This is not a threat to formators; it is a gift to them. It converts formation from a system that merely delivers programmes into a system capable of learning from its own results — which is, after all, exactly what “productivity,” rightly understood, was always meant to measure.

IV. The False Opposition: Internal Forum and External Forum

The deepest resistance to everything proposed above usually takes a single, apparently unanswerable form: spiritual life is a private matter, entrusted to the internal forum of spiritual direction, and therefore cannot be assessed from outside without violating conscience. We want to state as plainly as we can: this is a confusion, and a costly one. It rests on collapsing two distinct relationships into one.

The tradition has always distinguished between the spiritual director and the spiritual master or formator, and the distinction is not a technicality. The spiritual director operates in the internal forum: the relationship is confidential, and it concerns the person’s intimate conscience — his struggles, temptations, sins, and the personal movements of grace properly disclosed there and nowhere else. A candidate must remain free to choose his own director, and this freedom, is inviolable. But the spiritual master — the novice master, the master of students, the principal formator of a seminary — operates in a different forum entirely: the external forum, freely accepted by the candidate as part of entering formation. He is not the confessor. He is not the spiritual director. But spiritual formation is explicitly, properly his responsibility, and he therefore has both the right and the duty to ask about the candidate’s spiritual life, to form him in it, to follow his progress, and — in doing all of this — to assess him.

St. Teresa of Ávila is instructive here, because her own legislation for Carmel assumes exactly this distinction rather than denying it. She asks the prioress and the mistress of novices to function, in effect, as spiritual directors of the nuns, without this creating any ambiguity about the nun’s separate right to seek direction outside the house if she wishes. The same structure appears in Benedictine monastic life, where the abbot bears real responsibility for the spiritual formation of his monks without thereby becoming their confessor: he is the Father of the Monastery. The two relationships — direction in the internal forum, and formation in the external forum — are not competitors. They are both necessary, and they have always coexisted in the tradition without confusion, precisely because their boundaries were understood.

Once this distinction is restored, the whole objection loses its force. A formator does not need, and should never seek, the content of what a candidate confesses or discloses to his spiritual director. He does not need to ask what God said to him in prayer, or what movements of conscience he is working through with his director. But he can, and should, ask: How is your prayer developing? What is happening in your relationship with Christ? How is your theological study affecting your spiritual life? How are you growing in charity? How do you respond when you are corrected? How is your participation in the Eucharist changing? These are not violations of anyone’s interior privacy. They are precisely the observable, external dimension of spiritual formation — the dimension the formator is charged to accompany. The candidate remains entirely free regarding how much personal detail he chooses to share on any given point. What he is not free to do, if formation is taken seriously, is to treat the entire subject of his spiritual life as none of the formator’s business. That would not protect the internal forum; it would simply abandon the external one.

The consequence of ignoring this distinction is more serious than a missed opportunity. If spiritual life is placed entirely behind the wall of confidentiality, we end up with the strangest situation any formation system could produce: academic competence assessed, pastoral competence assessed, psychological suitability assessed, human maturity assessed — and spiritual maturity, the one dimension that should define the whole enterprise, left to be “between him and his spiritual director” and therefore institutionally invisible. That is not reverence for grace. It is a formation system quietly abdicating its central responsibility.

V. Spiritual Life as the Integrating Axis of Formation

Even a well-designed assessment system, applied to spiritual formation as one department alongside intellectual, liturgical, human, and pastoral formation, would still miss something essential. Spiritual life is not one of five parallel subjects. It is the principle that is meant to integrate the other four, and unless it is treated that way, integration will not happen on its own.

Consider what actually occurs, in practice, when it is left to chance. A seminarian studies Bible, Dogma, Moral Theology, Pastoral Theology, etc. Each course delivers real content, competently taught. But nobody systematically asks the next question: what has this study done to him? Has his study of Christology deepened his personal relationship with Christ, or has it remained a body of propositions he can explain but not inhabit? Has his study of the Eucharist changed the way he participates at Mass? Has his study of moral theology deepened his own examination of conscience? Without someone whose explicit task is to ask these questions, formation risks producing exactly what we sometimes see: men who are theologically fluent and spiritually undernourished, liturgically correct and interiorly unmoved, pastorally trained and personally uncentered on Christ. The elements were all delivered. They were simply never integrated, because integration was left entirely to private initiative — which is to say, in practice, largely left to chance.

The same pattern repeats across every dimension. A seminarian can learn to celebrate the liturgy correctly without becoming a profoundly liturgical man — he can master the rubrics without acquiring the deep interior participation the rubrics exist to serve. He can acquire pastoral techniques without acquiring pastoral charity. He can become socially competent in community without becoming genuinely capable of self-gift. In every case, the missing element is the same: nobody has taken responsibility for asking how this formation is becoming, organically, part of his relationship with Christ.

This is why spiritual formation cannot remain what it too often is in practice: a few talks on this or that topic, offered alongside the “real” curriculum. It must become the engine that integrates everything else — first and above all the intellectual formation, but also the liturgical, human, and pastoral formation. If this integrating work is not undertaken deliberately, and is not supervised by someone with real responsibility for it, then even excellent formation in each individual department will not add up to a formed priest, because the addition itself — the becoming-one-life-in-Christ — is precisely what was never asked for.

And this integrating task cannot rest on good intentions alone. It requires a serious spiritual theology beneath it: a coherent account of conversion, of growth in virtue, of the stages and dynamics of the spiritual life, of the interplay between grace and cooperation. Without that theological framework, a formator has no way to recognise developmental progress even when he sees it, and spiritual formation degenerates into exhortation — “pray more,” “be more generous,” “go deeper” — which may be perfectly true and is nevertheless not a method. Recovering spiritual formation, in other words, requires first recovering spiritual theology as a serious discipline in its own right, capable of describing what growth actually looks like, so that formators can be equipped to accompany it rather than merely encourage it.

Note: This reveals a twofold task that theology has, to a large extent, ceased to pursue. First, Spiritual Theology needs to be renewed and restored to its proper place as the integrating and directing discipline of theology: not merely another theological subject alongside the others, but a kind of “master module” that receives, organises and directs the contribution of the other theological disciplines towards their proper end, namely the transformation of the Christian person in Christ. This is the perspective developed in the Integral Theology Project. Second, genuine intellectual bridges need to be established between each of the principal theological disciplines—Sacred Scripture, Dogmatic Theology, Liturgical Theology, Moral Theology and Pastoral Theology—and its corresponding dimension within Spiritual Theology. Theology cannot remain divided into parallel academic compartments, with Spiritual Theology treated as an isolated or merely optional discipline. The truths studied in Scripture, dogma, liturgy, morality and pastoral theology must each be shown to have their proper spiritual dimension and to converge in the concrete life of the Christian. This intellectual work is indispensable. Without it, the formation proposed in this article risks remaining fragmented: theological knowledge on one side and spiritual formation on the other. If the goal is to offer a truly solid and integral spiritual formation, then these bridges must be deliberately constructed, so that the whole of theology can become ordered towards the formation of the person in Christ. See: Integral Theology Project.

VI. Toward a Method: Criteria, Rhythm, and the Formator’s Role

What we are proposing, concretely, is neither a vague call for “more spirituality” nor an intrusive surveillance of conscience. It is a method, and it has several concrete elements.

First, defined criteria. The formator needs a clear framework covering the candidate’s relationship with Christ, personal prayer, Scripture and Lectio Divina (being formed in it and checking it), Contemplative Prayer, sacramental life, growth in the virtues, ascetical life, discernment, and capacity for charity and self-gift — together with the integration of study, liturgy, human formation, and pastoral experience into that spiritual centre. These criteria should become progressively more demanding as the candidate advances through formation, precisely as academic expectations already do.

Second, a regular rhythm of accompaniment. A monthly meeting between the principal formator and each candidate, sitting alongside — never replacing — the candidate’s ongoing relationship with his spiritual director, creates a genuine formation loop: the candidate reflects on his own development, the formator observes and questions within the bounds of the external forum, both identify what is progressing and what is not, and concrete means are proposed for the period ahead. A formal, twice-yearly or annual written assessment can then rest on top of this continuous accompaniment, giving the institution — and eventually the candidate himself — a longitudinal picture rather than a series of disconnected impressions.

Third, a specific criterion for the integration of study, because this is where the gap is often widest and least examined. We would propose something like a five-level scale: does the candidate understand the spiritual significance of what he studies; can he relate it to his own spiritual experience; does it actually influence his prayer and personal conversion; does his growing understanding increasingly shape his virtues, his discernment, and his manner of living; and, at the furthest point, has his theological understanding become a source of wisdom he can offer in accompanying others. Applied consistently, year after year, across the whole curriculum, this single criterion alone would tell a seminary a great deal about whether its intellectual formation is producing theologians or producing disciples — ideally, of course, both at once.

Fourth, and perhaps most important, the recognition that the candidate himself must gradually become an active agent of his own formation, not merely its object. The purpose of this accompaniment is not solely for the formator to render a verdict. It is to teach the candidate, over years, to recognise his own spiritual development, to name his own deficiencies honestly, to understand the concrete means available to him, and to cooperate deliberately with the grace he is receiving. A man who leaves the seminary having learned to observe and direct his own spiritual growth carries something into his priesthood that no course can substitute for.

None of this requires abolishing the internal forum or diminishing the freedom a candidate must always retain to withhold personal detail. It requires only that the formator take up, explicitly and with proper tools, the responsibility that has always belonged to his office: to know whether the man in front of him is actually growing, and to help him grow further.

VII. Why This Matters: The Priest Who Emerges

It is worth pausing on what is actually at stake, because the argument so far can sound procedural, and the reality it concerns is not. A spiritually immature priest can still administer the sacraments validly, preach competently, organise a parish efficiently, and teach theology accurately. None of that is nothing. But a spiritually mature priest becomes something more: an agent, in a much deeper sense, of the spiritual transformation of others — because his own interior life has become the source from which his ministry actually flows, rather than a private compartment running alongside it. Formation exists to produce the second kind of priest, not merely the first. A formation system indifferent, in practice, to which of the two it is producing has not yet asked its most important question.

Practical Consequences

For those responsible for formation — rectors, formation teams, spiritual directors, and the bishops and major superiors who set the framework within which they work — we would draw out the following concrete steps.

• Restore and strengthen spiritual theology as a serious discipline within the formation curriculum, on the same level of seriousness already given to dogmatic and moral theology, so that formators possess an actual theological framework for recognising and accompanying spiritual growth rather than relying on impression and good will.
• Build a genuine programme of spiritual formation, rather than a series of occasional talks loosely attached to the timetable, with defined content appropriate to each year of formation and explicit attention to how each area of study, liturgy, and pastoral experience is meant to be integrated into the candidate’s relationship with Christ.
• Give the principal formator — the equivalent, in religious life, of the novice master or master of students — explicit responsibility and adequate competence for the spiritual formation of each candidate in the external forum, clearly distinguished from, and never substituting for, the candidate’s freely chosen spiritual director in the internal forum.
• Establish a monthly meeting between formator and candidate built around a defined set of criteria covering prayer, virtue, discernment, and the integration of study, liturgy, and pastoral experience into spiritual life, with the candidate free to decline personal detail on any point while remaining expected to engage with the subject itself.
• Adopt a formal, periodic — ideally twice-yearly — written assessment of spiritual development for every candidate, tracked longitudinally across the years of formation, using a trajectory framework such as stable, progressing, significantly progressing, stagnating, or regressing, so that both the candidate’s growth and the formation programme’s own effectiveness can be observed over time rather than assumed.
• Apply a specific integration criterion to intellectual formation, asking after each major course or module not only what the candidate has learned but what that learning has done to his relationship with Christ, his prayer, and his manner of living.
• Use the resulting data honestly, at the institutional level, as a diagnostic instrument. Where candidates repeatedly fail to integrate theology with prayer, examine whether theology is being taught too abstractly. Where liturgical formation is not producing interior participation, examine whether it has become merely technical. Where pastoral placements are not producing growth in charity, examine whether they have become professional training in disguise. The candidate’s difficulty is often, in part, the institution’s own difficulty seen from the other side.
• Treat this whole reform as protective of, rather than opposed to, the confidentiality of spiritual direction and of confession, since it is built precisely on the distinction between the internal and external forum that the tradition has always maintained.

Conclusion: The Roots of the Tree

We would like to close with the image that, to my mind, holds everything above together. A deep spiritual life and a healthy, honest human understanding and acceptance of oneself are the roots from which integrated priestly formation grows. The intellectual, liturgical, human, and pastoral dimensions of formation are not the roots of the tree. They are its branches, and in due season, its fruit. A tree can be pruned skilfully, watered generously, and admired for the shape of its branches, and still be dying at the root if no one has thought to examine the root at all.

The two roots are, moreover, bound together. A man who does not honestly know and accept himself — who remains dependent on external affirmation, or unable to face his own weakness — will meet real obstacles in his relationship with God. And conversely, a genuine relationship with Christ progressively heals a man’s self-understanding, teaching him to receive himself truthfully as a creature who is loved and called. Neither root grows well in isolation from the other, which is one more reason why spiritual and human formation cannot be relegated to the margins of a curriculum organised, in practice, around what is easiest to grade.

None of what we have written here is meant to erase the real dedication already given to priestly formation by so many formators, spiritual directors, and bishops, often at real personal cost, and often with fruit that is genuinely visible in the priests they have formed. But dedication is not the same as a method, and good will is not the same as a system capable of learning from its own results. If we cannot say, with any precision, what actual spiritual transformation our formation programmes are producing in the men who pass through them, then we have not yet asked the question priestly formation exists to answer. The moment has come to ask it — not to accuse those who have laboured faithfully within the structures we inherited, but to give them, finally, the tools that the intellectual and psychological dimensions of formation have possessed for a long time and the spiritual dimension has not. A seminary that learns to examine its own roots, rather than only the shape of its branches, will be able to say, with much greater confidence, what kind of priest it is actually forming — and why.

Read Also

The Meaning of Sapiential Formation in Priestly Formation

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“Apostolate and Growth of Love”, Bl. Marie Eugene OCD. A masterful study of the relationship between the apostolate and the growth of love in St. Teresa of Avila, which, when applied to the priest, implies that he must himself grow spiritually if his apostolate is to become increasingly fruitful.

according to St. Teresa of Avila

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About the Authors

Rev. Dr. Michael Doyle

Rev. Dr. Michael Doyle is a priest of the Archdiocese of Westminster. He holds a doctorate in Clinical Psychology and an STL in Spirituality. For most of his priestly ministry, he has been engaged in seminary formation and was instrumental in developing the present formation programmes at Allen Hall Seminary in London and St Mary’s College, Oscott, in Birmingham. He has also led workshops on priestly formation at the Venerable English College in Rome.

He remains pastorally active in the parish of the Sacred Heart in Henley-on-Thames while continuing his involvement in seminary formation, with a particular focus on the urgent need for in-depth training in the ministry of spiritual direction for both seminarians and priests. Through the School of Mary, he is currently developing a formation programme in spiritual direction specifically for priests.

Jean Khoury

Jean Khoury is a French Catholic theologian specialising in Spiritual Formation, with over thirty years’ experience working with both consecrated and lay people. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and a Master’s degree in Spiritual Theology, obtained in Toulouse, France, and at the Teresianum in Rome. He is currently completing his Ph.D. in Spiritual Theology at the Teresianum in Rome, having previously undertaken his doctoral studies at the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum).

Jean’s theological and spiritual formation was greatly enriched by the Discalced Carmelite Fathers, particularly by Rev. Father François-Marie Léthel, O.C.D. He has lectured in Spiritual Theology at various universities, with a particular emphasis on its practical application to the formation of the Christian life. His articles, studies and books have been published internationally.

In 2003, Jean discerned a call, through the inspiration of Our Lady, to found the School of Mary, a Catholic school dedicated to the formation of adults in the spiritual life. Its principal areas of work include Lectio Divina and Contemplative Prayer, steady spiritual growth through integral spiritual formation, the development of Integral Theology, and the training of spiritual formators and spiritual directors. Jean regularly gives spiritual direction and retreats.

He is married, has a daughter, and is based in London.

Rev. Dr. Michael Doyle and Jean Khoury collaborate through the School of Mary in providing three-day formation sessions for seminary formators. These sessions seek to support those entrusted with priestly formation by integrating the human, spiritual, theological and pastoral dimensions of formation, with particular attention to spiritual growth and the ministry of spiritual direction. See here: Three-day Formation Sessions for Seminary Formators