A Modern Seminarian’s Dictionary, Revisited

By Fr. Jerry Pokorsky ( bio - articles - email ) | May 11, 2026

Among the joys of entering the twilight years of one’s priesthood is the memory of looking back on the “Spirit of Vatican II” in the decades that followed the Council. Except for important pockets of Catholic sanity, the seminary (back in those days) was mostly doctrinally dissident. I recently remembered (and rediscovered) a piece that I wrote in 1987 as a seminarian. It was published in September of that year, in Fidelity magazine, without attribution. The revised version that appears below is appearing for the first time under my name.

Ambrose Bierce’s famous The Devil’s Dictionary was the near occasion of sin. Most credit, however, goes to a seminary professor who taught us to enter the minds of so-called liberation (read, “Marxist”) theologians rather than imposing our misconceptions on their words. So, for example, when they used the word “salvation,” they didn’t mean “heavenly glory.” They meant the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” The exercise was among the most valuable courses I’ve taken because it helped me decode the contemporary dissident Catholic pop-psychology lexicon then in vogue. Many of these terms remain hot-button topics today.

At the time, I didn’t realize the extent of the reach my satire had. The illustrious (now deceased) Jesuit, Father Paul Mankowski, sat next to then-Cardinal Ratzinger during the 1990 dedication of the John Cardinal Krol Chair of Moral Theology at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia. To my enduring delight, Father Mankowski told me Cardinal Ratzinger laughed at my definition of someone who was “PRE VATICAN II.” To wit: “A person who accepts at face value the teaching of the Church and who reads the documents of the Second Vatican Council without reference to a commentary.”

In recent years, the Synod of Synodality and other organizations subverting Church doctrine, like Old Man River, just keep rolling along. For example, Katholikentag is a traditional large meeting of Catholic laypeople in Germany: “This year, the Ecumenical Working Group on BDSM and Christianity will be represented. The group explores ‘sadomasochistic sexual preferences’ from a Christian perspective. Tomorrow, all donations collected during Masses throughout Germany must be given to the ‘Katholikentag’….”

It seems my generation of Church leaders is in the death throes of post-Vatican II chaos. But surveys suggest the new crop of priests generally takes the Catholic faith seriously. Hence, as a public service, an abridged reprint of the 1987 satire follows.

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AFFIRMATION: The flattery due to someone who is in a position of authority.

CATHOLIC FUNDAMENTALIST: A simplistic person who tries to live the Faith in a docile and pious way.

CELIBACY: Refraining from heterosexual genital activity.

CHURCH: Me.

CLERICALISM: The attitude of priests who knowingly and willingly practice the sacramental aspects of the priesthood with diligence, reverence, and joy.

CLOWN MASS: Liturgical innovation comparable to the innovation of Gregorian chant; relevant: “A clown liturgy may sound sacrilegious but those who attended a special Mass at St. Agnes Church described it as moving, uplifting, spirited and colorful” (Catholic Herald, Milwaukee, February 16, 1984).

COMPLEX TECHNOLOGICAL WORLD: The reason for resisting one’s conscience when opposing the teaching of the Catholic Church; also, the standard response a flexible person uses when a rigid person seems to be winning an argument.

CONSCIENCE: The final arbiter of the correctness of one’s action, always to be guided by the latest in Church dissent.

CONSCIOUSNESS RAISING: The method of argumentation used by radical feminists moving adult males to action: “Better to live in a corner of the house top than have a nagging wife and a brawling household.” (Proverbs 21:9)

COUNCIL OF TRENT: A convenient summary of medieval myths and superstitions.

DIALOGUE: The deft use of banal clichés in conversation.

EASTER DUTY: Annual sacrilege.

ECUMENISM: The process of transforming the liturgical rites of the mainline Christian denominations into a single rite of coffee, donuts, and dialogue.

EMPOWER: To encourage others to think for themselves; cf., Evelyn Waugh: “Every effort was made to encourage the children at the public schools to ‘think for themselves.” When they should have been whipped and taught Greek paradigms, they were set arguing about birth control and nationalization. Their crude little opinions were treated with respect. Preachers in the school chapel week after week entrusted the future to their hands. It is hardly surprising that they were Bolshevik at 18 and bored at 20.”

FEELING: The highest faculty of the human person left fully untouched by original sin.

FEMININITY: A word created by a sexist, male dominated society to subjugate women in the maternal role.

FLEXIBLE: You agree with me.

FORMATION: Kindergarten.

GAY: Deeply sensitive person who naturally possesses the skills for effective pastoral ministry; oppressed minority; in no way connected with pederasty: cf. Fr. James L. Arimond: “Don’t confuse homosexual orientation with other sexual minorities: transexual; pederasty; bafoonery; etc.” from an Archdiocese of Milwaukee workshop in Gay Ministry. [ Update: In 1989, allegations surfaced that Arimond had sexually abused a teenage boy in the late 1980s. In 1990, Arimond pleaded no contest to fourth-degree sexual assault and was sentenced to 18 months’ probation and 45 days in a House of Correction work-release program.]

GETTING IN TOUCH WITH ONE’S FEMININE SIDE: An essential requirement for ordination to the priesthood.

HIGH RISK SEXUAL ACTIVITY: Sodomy; the term neo Victorian Catholics use when referring to the kinds of sexual activity St. Paul warned against.

HOMOPHOBIC: The psychological condition of those who witness and report acts of homosexuality to seminary authorities.

HUMANAE VITAE: The biggest mistake the Church has made since the Council of Trent.

HUMANKIND: The human race free of sexism (see SEXISM).

INTELLECTUALIZING YOUR FEELINGS: Controlling one’s temper.

JUDGMENTAL: A person who judges the sin but not the sinner. A non judgmental person judges the sinner but not the sin.

LEGALISM: Accepting at face value and obediently implementing what a document, law, or guideline reads.

LIBERATION: The replacement of existing structures of constraint with new and improved structures of constraint.

LITURGICAL DANCE: Liturgical innovation comparable to the innovation of Gregorian chant: “‘For me, my body is my instrument; it’s my way of expressing myself,’ she said, gesturing frequently with hand to convey her thoughts. ‘I feel free when I dance; it’s a natural expression.’” (Sister Barbara Linke, quoted in the Milwaukee Sentinel, August 3, 1985).

LITURGISTS: “A society of men among us, bred from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid” (Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels).

LOVE: A nice feeling.

MACROCHURCH: The male-dominated, sexist, oppressive, authoritarian hierarchical Church.

MICROCHURCH: The pastoral, flexible, open-and-honest, compassionate, open-to-change, local Christian community.

NETWORKING: Allowing nuns to run parishes.

OFFICIAL CHURCH TEACHING: “I don’t expect it to change anybody’s mind one way or another. Catholics today have learned what it means to be selectively obedient to the Church’s teaching” (Father Richard McBrien, Washington Post, December 16, 1981).

OPEN AND HONEST: Telling religious superiors what they want to hear.

ORDINATION: An archaic celebration in the Church still useful to mark the beginning of full-time ministry.

PREFERENTIAL OPTION FOR THE POOR: Socialism.

PRE VATICAN II: A person who accepts at face value the teaching of the Church and who reads the documents of the Second Vatican Council without reference to a commentary.

PROCESS: The spontaneous movement in the dialogue of group therapy sessions, never to be disrupted by thinking.

PROGRESSIVE: Pouring the wine of old heresies into new wineskins.

PSYCHOLOGIST: Infallible teaching authority in the Church.

RELEVANT: Anything to do with dissent from Church teaching.

REPRESSED ANGER: If detected, a cause for dismissal from the seminary; probable cause of both world wars, the Holocaust, and the election of Ronald Reagan; a technique absolutely essential for an orthodox seminarian to get ordained.

RIGID: Your view is not my view. A rigid person holds that the ordination of women is not possible; a flexible person holds that to fail to ordain women is an example of sexism. Evelyn Waugh was rigid: “It is better to be narrow minded than to have no mind, to hold limited and rigid principles than to have none at all. That is the danger which faces so many people today ‚ to have no considered opinions on any subject, to put up with what is wasteful and harmful with the excuse that there ‘is good in everything’ ‚ which in most cases means an inability to distinguish between good and bad.”

SAFE SEX: Taking appropriate precautions during high-risk sexual activity,

SELF ACTUALIZATION: Salvation; no longer a mortal sin.

SEMINARY: A school where men and women are prepared for full-time ministry.

SENSITIVITY: The ability to identify and agree with the conventional wisdom of left wing political issues, such as feminism, gay rights, dissent, etc. Tim Unsworth of the National Catholic Reporter describes a sensitive priest: “But Vince Connery also cries a lot. He cries openly and unashamedly in private conversation and in public. He doesn’t cover his face or hide it in the crook of his elbow. He simply stands there and cries, letting the tears flow, and the voice break; and if someone reaches out even slightly, Connery will share an embrace while he cries some more. It soon becomes clear that this is an emotionally healthy priest in an emotionally unhealthy church” (NCR April, 1987). [ Update: He was received in holy orders in the Episcopal Church in July, 2020, by Bishop Susan Haynes.]

SEXISM: The sin associated with being male.

SEXUAL PREFERENCE: Feeling good about some or all objects of desire, whether animal, vegetable, or mineral.

SHARE: The practice of discussing the deepest intimacies of one’s life in front of complete strangers.

SIMPLISTIC: Having to do with common sense.

SPIRIT OF VATICAN II: Church activities and programs which have absolutely no relationship to the letter of the documents of Vatican II.

THINKING: The most dangerous activity in a seminary; cause for psychological counseling; those who think “disrupt the process”; see PROCESS.

TRADITION: A practice established before the Middle Ages or after the Second Vatican Council.

VALUING YOUR SEXUALITY: Obsession with the usual adolescent preoccupations.

VOCATIONS CRISIS: Refers to the Church’s failure to relax the rules on celibacy and failure to ordain women.

WE ARE ALL SEXUAL BEINGS: The reason to overlook sexual misbehavior in seminaries.

WE HAVE NO RIGHT ANSWERS/WE DON’T HAVE MANY ANSWERS: Except this one (cf. Archbishop Rembert Weakland on homosexuality): “...I would like to state that I do not have all the answers on this highly complex issue…” (Catholic Herald, July 19, 1980.) [Update : The Vatican accepted Weakland’s resignation immediately after revelations became public that the Archdiocese of Milwaukee had paid $450,000 to settle allegations involving a former adult seminarian, Paul Marcoux, with whom Weakland acknowledged having had an “inappropriate relationship.”]

WHERE YOU’RE AT: Your psychological condition when you’re in the state of mortal sin, calling for acceptance and a non judgmental attitude.

WORKSHOP: A church-sponsored meeting to ensure that the issues of optional celibacy, women’s ordination, the Sandinistas, and leisure suits are still being addressed.

The end, thank the Lord.