Priestly Formation in Indian Context: A New Pedagogy for Integral Formation of Candidates to Priesthood in India

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 신학과사상학회
· 수록지 정보 : 가톨릭신학과사상 / 75호 / 11 ~ 45페이지
· 저자명 : 요셉 베네딕트 마티아스 신부

초록

“Filii tui India, administri tibi salutis” (Your own sons, O India, will be the heralds of your salvation). These are the words with which Pope Leo XIII, a great visionary and a missionary, established the Papal Seminary for India, Burma and Ceylon in 1890. These prophetic words of Pope Leo XIII, of Rerum Novarum fame have indeed become a reality in the fact today India can boast of 170 dioceses with over 200 bishops and nearly 20,000 priests and over one lakh twenty five thousand religious women and men rendering yeomen service to the people of India. What is also very consoling and encouraging is the fact that for the past two decades a number of Indian priests and religious are serving as missionaries in the continents of Africa, South and Central Americas, Oceania and Europe. Our seminaries and formation houses still attract a fairly good number of young men and women and that too when demographically the families in India are increasingly becoming smaller and nuclear. Although numerically Christians are just 2% of the total population of India (around 25 million in a total population of 125 crores) the service rendered by the Church in India in the field of education, medical and social work is quite significant and laudable, a fact that is often publicly acknowledged and recognized by the Government of India.
India today has one of the fastest growing economies of the world and is making tremendous progress in manufacturing industries, information technology, bio technology, nuclear energy, etc. The urbanization and globalization is presently sweeping through the Indian sub-continent with an accelerated speed. This has undoubtedly brought about rapid sociocultural and economic changes in the Indian society. The priestly formation on the other hand still continues on the Tridentine model that is obsolete in many ways and fails to address the challenges and needs of modern India. Hence the need is urgent for a new pedagogy for Integral Formation of candidates to priesthood in India.
The need of the hour is to train the candidates to priesthood to become ‘mystics’ in keeping with the ancient and much revered religious tradition of India on the one hand and on the other to be ‘prophets’ in the midst of massive poverty, socio-economic and cultural disparities, dehumanizing injustice and exploitation of all kinds, gender inequality, communal disharmony, etc. Given this context of India, there is definitely a need for a paradigm shift in the pedagogy for the training of candidates to priesthood in India today. The existing priestly formation seems to be very much church centered with over-emphasis on cultic and ritualistic piety, conformism to external rules and regulations, fulfilling the academic requirements of the syllabus. More stress on content and external structures and very little attention to the process of transformation. And therefore it is imperative to evolve a new pedagogy that is integral and holistic in order to equip the candidates, the future leaders of the Church in India with experiential knowledge and skills that could gradually transform their personality as Disciples of Christ, men imbued with deep Christian faith, men of moral and spiritual integrity, men of affective maturity, men who are professionally competent in matters of religion, morality and spirituality. To sum up therefore the goal of Integral formation is to facilitate a process of transformation whereby the candidates become passionate lovers of Christ for compassionate service of God’s people.

참고자료

· 없음