Minor seminary
A minor seminary is a secondary boarding school created for the specific purpose of enrolling teenage boys who have expressed interest in becoming priests. They are generally Roman Catholic institutions, and designed to prepare boys both academically and spiritually for vocations to the priesthood and religious life. They emerged in cultures and societies where literacy was not universal, and the minor seminary was seen as a means to prepare younger boys in literacy for later entry into the major seminary.
The minor seminary is no longer very familiar in the English-speaking world, as it once was in Europe. The 1917 Code of Canon Law described the purpose of minor seminaries as: "to take care especially to protect from the contagion of the world, to train in piety, to imbue with the rudiments of literary studies, and to foster in them the seed of a divine vocation". Suitable boys were encouraged to graduate to a major seminary, where they would continue their tertiary studies for the priesthood.
The program of priestly formation of the USCCB refers to them as "high school seminaries" rather than minor seminaries.[1]
Today, college seminaries, where philosophy is studied, are often called minor seminaries even though they are for those who have completed high school.
Currently Operating Minor Seminaries
United States of America
The following minor seminaries operate in the USA today.
- Bl. Jose Sanchez del Rio High School Seminary (Mankato, Minnesota). Run by the Institute of the Incarnate Word, opened in 2008
- Cathedral Preparatory Seminary (Elmhurst, Queens, New York)
- Sacred Heart Apostolic School (Rolling Prairie, Indiana) run by the Legionaries of Christ, opened in 2005
- St. Lawrence High School Seminary (Mount Calvary, Wisconsin) run by the Capuchin Friars, opened in 1860
- Servants of the Holy Family (Colorado Springs, Colorado)
Canada
External links
- Code of Canon Law (1983), IntraText edition with referenced concordance, hosted by the Vatican
- Catholic Encyclopedia: Canon Law
- 1999 Foundation of St Joseph's Minor Seminary in the USA – Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen (sedevacantist)
- Blessed Jose Sanchez del Rio Minor Seminary
- Sacred Heart Apostolic School