This essay is the most tragic story that I have ever read and while I felt much frustration reading it, I found the truths described very profound.  Although one could spend much time dissecting the essay as it relates to the chaos and evil in the Church, mentioning several passages might highlight better my thoughts about the cause of the tragedy the author so well describes.  

 

"To embrace the priesthood I would have to give up substantial things – any chance of a family of my own, possessions, even my own will. This was the pearl of great price. I wanted to serve something pure, something greater than myself, and to be consumed by it. I had prayed and done novenas and consulted with priests; everyone agreed that it was my path to try. I expected that when I arrived at the seminary, I would be surrounded by people that burned with the same zeal and who would help direct my energy."


Ideals are the substance of great young people and they of course should be part the bedrock of great young priests, and their teachers!   High ideals must be nurtured because they are good and pure motivations.  While a good dose of realism must be present to provide context to the seminarian or young student, sacrifice of high ideals must not be given up to attain growth. The seminarian had high ideals and he rightfully expected his superiors in the seminary to have them as well.

An example of crushing the ideal is given by the seminarian:


"I often monitored the head table. It was my job to clear plates and serve the next course. Often, I misread or missed the cue and the rector would give me this look. Sometimes, exhausted, I would zone out and that always got me a light-hearted public humiliation. I really had to bite my tongue – this man expected to be served as if it was owed to him. It was my job yes, but as he was the leader and my example, I needed to see his humility more than my own. I hate assumed privilege – it’s one of the most unflattering and ungracious things someone can demonstrate."[/b]


Ideals are broken when those whom we admire or should do so behave in disappointing, despicable fashion. In the spiritual life, humility is something that is counter to pride.  We all know that, but why do spiritual men in power not practice it?  Is it necessary to demonstrate sinful behavior to young seminarians who seek the ideal in order to "break" them to be obedient?  Is obedience to man greater than virtue to a higher calling, to the ideal?  Third order members seek to perfect their lives so that we might be more pleasing and a blessing to our Blessed Lord, so that we might attain heaven.  It is no more necessary to embarrass or cause tortuous experiences to build character.  Those who envision a seminary as a boot camp are looking at experience in the flesh and not the spirit. Creating robot priests who behave the way the leadership wants them to be is not ideal, it is not honorable, nor is it holy.  Leadership without humility is dead leadership and leads only to sinful pride because it is driven by such. Wisdom and prudence?  These are mere words to such behavior as described by this seminarian of his superiors on this essay.


"The Catholic priesthood was the most noble of things a man could hope to serve. What a beautiful life: a double sacrifice, one of your own life, one of the altar. I understood that the priesthood was made up of men, but how could it be that so few aspired to be more than the sum of their proclivities? I didn’t need to see good men – I just had to see men fighting to be better."[/b]


The seminarian returns again to his dashed ideals.  Rather than being beaten down physically and emotionally to be an obedient soul, he needed to witness  ideals and humility in those who had charge of his formation.  "I just had to see men fighting to be better".  When we all fail to see that, we give up some of our own zeal and ideals.   It seems his spirit was crushed by those who should have modeled virtues that are good and pure rather than use contrary vices that should be shunned and abandoned.  

The lessons of this essay explain not only what is wrong with the Society of St. Pius X, but what is wrong with the whole of the Church. It is ironic and a lie from the pit of hell the seminarian was told he had failed at the seminary because he came into the influence of a "bad spirit" because the "bad spirit" is what has fatally wounded the Society of St. Pius X and the Church as a whole.  

Isaiah 5:20 has this to say:

"Woe to you that call evil good, and good evil: that put darkness for light, and light for darkness: that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter."

No offense to the author, but in the end, the man didn't have a calling to the priesthood.  All those other stumbling blocks described in the autobiographical account are in place to help young men decide if the priesthood is their calling and this man stumbled over ever single one of them.  Even stumbled over some blocks of his own imagination.  

I was bothered by his use of the phrase "save the world".  A priest is to save souls by providing the sacraments.  

It seemed too that it wasn't the SSPX but the ICRSS that he was describing but that's neither here nor there.  The part of the story that seemed most real was the exuberance he felt when he discovered the Traditional Latin Mass.

"It seemed" -- how so?

I had to look up ICRSS -- usually it's abbreviated ICK in the English-speaking world. I know, it spells "ICK!" but objectively speaking "ICK" is still the initials of Institute of Christ the King.

You're the first person to say this. I'm curious to know why.

You also reacted differently than just about everyone else so far.  Are you intentionally not mentioning the things others have pointed out? Or is this story just that ho-hum to you, being the story of what happens to a man who doesn't have a vocation when he goes to seminary?

I'd say you must not have read the story, except you claim to have read it. Are you sure you didn't just skim it?

I read most of it earlier today and have come across that story online somewhere else in the last year or two.  

Something struck me as odd.  I'm glad the guy discovered the TLM but to bounce from that to becoming a priest and acting on it seems like a disconnect.  There are SSPX priests who started life as novus ordites and even as protestants but their conversion usually happened earlier.  One particular priest was born as a protestant but his Mother converted to Catholicism (conciliarism) and when as a young college student he saw his first TLM, he went Traditional and that led to the seminary and to the Holy Priesthood.

This young man in this story had so many gripes on so many levels that he sure acted as if he was not at peace with himself internally pre-, during, and post- seminary days.

My reference to the Institute of Christ the King was that he confided in conciliarists before trying to go into the seminary.  So I deducted it, perhaps I was completely wrong but telling a post-Vatican II priest that you wanted to become a priest after assisting at the TLM they would steer you in the direction of the FSSP or ICKSP.  Add in the French seminary and learning French, I do remember reading that the ICKSP seminary is in French for the first two years with the last two years being in Latin entirely and that is where I drew my conclusions.

We should also turn the coin over and look at this from another perspective.  If this young man stumbled often and even took issues with the not having enough time to work out, what would happen if the seminary was so lenient as to ordain him and then set him loose on some small parish somewhere?  At one portion of the article, the part where he discussed how he devoured some Russian writers works in a matter of a couple months and this led him to bemoan his lack of worldliness when compared to his contemporaries out in the world, I thought he didn't really understand what he was undertaking.

Other posters pointed out different items.  Some posters commisserated with the author and I certainly can understand that.  My comments reflected how I saw the article.  

As someone considering STAS, this is an interesting topic.

This reminded me of a young Merton, "Seven Storey Mountain"-esque.
Extremely moving. Painfully able to express his tortured soul.
I sense this man will not find peace again in this life and longs for the next. Heaven is his only option now. Nothing mortal will do.
God bless him. 

Regardless of what you think of the "messenger", these are the issues that need to be addressed:

First year was a blur. Sometimes, seminarians left. Many times, there was no explanation as to why, and really, they didn't owe us one. But France was burned into my mind: they had struck me down without warning. In France, I had been the first to leave. Here, I was seeing better men than myself leaving and I couldn't understand why. Nor why I was still here and they weren't. A poor parallel would be to combat soldiers who come through a battle while some others don't and there's nothing but the mystery of the bullet's path to answer why. But vocations aren't mere chance. So I asked my spiritual director how one knew whether someone had a vocation or not. His response was vague: he was waiting. For what, he wouldn't say. And I became paranoid. It seemed to me just a matter of time until the carpet would be pulled out from under me. For every seminarian that left without a why, I became ever more fearful my turn was coming. The attrition rate for vocations when I was there was around 75% to 90% depending on the class...that's huge, and when no one can articulate how you become part of the 10% to 25%, you worry. This was a dєαdlу worm in my mind: my trust for authority figures would never fully recover after France. Investing everything you are in something that you believe can explode at any moment is a horrible mental anguish, like hugging a bσɱb to your chest and running, hoping you'll finish the race before it goes off. I would live like this for the next four years, my mind raw with worry and expectations of betrayal.

and

Year three. There was a new rector. I thought nothing of it at the time as the shuffling of personnel was normal and the previous rector had had an unusually long run at the seminary. The new rector was not a bishop, and he brought in a new regime and new ideas on priestly formation.  

I was now head of the Guest Department ... when a seminarian left, he did it through me. I had to arrange transportation. It was soul-crushing work. Too many times I’d open my door and be met with those eyes, those lost, defeated eyes. There were a few who left voluntarily, but even these rarely expressed or displayed any peace at their decision. Too many were just told abruptly…they had had no warning, no slow build of problems or cautions. You couldn’t prepare it seemed: the axe had just fallen and they didn’t understand why. And I felt it keenly, because I had been exactly where these men were – I was through the looking glass on this one. They deserved better: you have to give a man something to fix, or he’ll just dig into himself.

In that year, only one seminarian left with ease, with true peace. The rest specifically asked that I drive them out when the community was at prayer. They didn’t want to be seen. They didn’t want to say good bye. Some didn’t even tell anyone (but me) they were leaving. Those that did make it public had this aura suddenly around them, like a leper. It was heart-breaking. I began to have little anxiety attacks when someone knocked at my door – who was it this time? Whose eyes was it going to be? Why was leaving the seminary such a drama? If it wasn’t your vocation, there should have been such relief and rejoicing – you could go on with your life – you had put in the time! What friends you had made! You had been willing to make the sacrifice but were meant for something else! But I didn’t see this. Most were in shock. The car rides were silent. When was it going to be me again?

I knew the new rector. I knew that he would take the first year and watch, get the pulse of the place. I saw seminarians cozy up to him and knew they were cooked. He didn’t rebuke them, he let them hang themselves. Miserable. I gave warnings, but no one heeded them. Maybe they had to go. We all did in the end.

and

But the most horrible thing [the vice-rector] ever did was start telling me who was going to get kicked from the seminary. I don’t know why he did that. That was hell. I knew before the seminarian knew. I would leave his room and I’d see that seminarian, laughing and talking and doing his duties. He didn’t know it was over. Once I was told 3 months in advance of the actual culling of someone. There was no reason why. That ex-seminarian, to this day, doesn’t even know why he was asked to leave. He was just “unsuitable”. I knew the knock was coming. Oh, the rage, the helplessness. These were not humanities or first years he was name dropping, these were men who’d already put in 3 or 4 years, men who were committed. How can a vocation not be discerned after 2 years? That is a massive disservice. Sure, there might be exceptions, but this was becoming the norm. Their dreams were dead all over their face. Their efforts destroyed, reasons mysterious, and I felt party to it by my silence. But what was I to do? Tell them? What would that solve? I felt powerless.

There were clearly games taking place with regard to the elimination of seminarians.  My class started with 22 and finished with 3 being ordained.  I felt that of the 22, probably 19 seemed like they would have made good priests.  After all, doesn’t just the fact that they were there say something all on its own?  In fact, the 3 that made it were the very three I would have said would be gone first.

Another problem was that it’s possible that some of these men might have had callings to other expressions of the priestly vocation.  But the attitude was binary.  Either you had a vocation to SSPX or you had none.  There was never any talk of “you might be more suitable for the Dominicans or Benedictines or Redemptorists”.  Before V2 there was a spirituality for everyone ... whether you were more into Liturgy/chant or studies or pastoral work or missions or helping the poor.  Here, if you weren’t drawn to the SSPX quasi-secular priest model or a fit for that, they threw you overboard.  In retrospect, I don’t think I would have thrived in the SSPX priest lifestyle, but would have been happier as a Benedictine or Dominican.  Those one or two who were inclined to think of alternatives, they were nearly always discouraged and told they had no vocation.  If you have no vocation to SSPX, then you have none at all.