seminary doc draft leaked

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Nov 07, 2005

While emptying a wastebasket next to the third-floor photocopier, Nino Ganganelli, night-shift janitor of the Congregation for Catholic Education, discovered a typescript that looks to be the penultimate draft of the notorious Doomsday Doc on seminary admissions, here reproduced. Please do not pass on this information to others. As it touches on a sensitive issue with grave pastoral implications, the content is guarded by strict confidentiality, and, prior to publication, is restricted to designated curial employees, their waiters, and their waiters' boyfriends. We found it on e-Bay. It must be emphasized that this is a provisional text, and may not in all respects reflect the final official version.

To our dearest brothers in the episcopate and co-workers in the Vineyard:

It was St. Thérèse of Lisieux, we believe, who said she preferred a spiritual director who had "demonstrated a capacity to live a celibate life for at least three years." The Little Flower, perhaps, was more of an idealist than a realist in this respect, yet she is hardly alone in her desire for a holy and hygienic clergy. Everybody wants priests with "clean chins and shins" -- men with whom you can safely share a syringe, as well as your joys and sorrows -- and this Congregation wishes to leave no doubt concerning the standards of fitness relevant to seminary admissions. To this end, we may establish the following pastoral directives:

• A seminarian is to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, cheerful, considerate, thrifty, and respectful -- or, if not, at least accompanied by a parole officer who is.
• A seminarian's jewelry and piercings should signal libidinal irregularities that are neither "strong, nor permanent, nor univocal."
• A candidate should not be admitted to a seminary with whose dean he has danced.

• A seminarian's tattoos should be in keeping with the spirit of Pastores Dabo Vobis (especially §§7, 29, 44), should demonstrate affective maturity, and should conduce to spiritual repose.
• Do not bring your cat.

We may say, without fear of contradiction, that careful attention to these simple but vital guidelines will play no insignificant part in the formation of the fully renewed presbyterate mandated by the Second Vatican Council and the Circuit Court of Maricopa County, Arizona.

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