"...and Frankly We Like It This Way." (Michael Rose)

Any chance you can find the names of the 13 bishops who sit on the board at Louvain. Might help us in our quest to understand what's happening around the dioceses and identify questionable bishops. Thanks.Oh,BTW,good article.

Ask, and you shall receive. :-)

Here's the Corporate Board of Directors:

The Most Reverend Francis J. Christian	Auxiliary Bishop of Manchester
The Most Reverend Matthew H. Clark	Bishop of Rochester
The Most Reverend Nicholas A. DiMarzio	Bishop of Camden
The Most Reverend John J. Kaising	Auxiliary Bishop Military Archdiocese
The Most Reverend Edward K. Braxton	Bishop of Lake Charles, Chairman
The Most Reverend James A. Murray	Bishop of Kalamazoo
The Most Reverend Benedict C. Franzetta	Consultant
The Most Reverend George J. Lucas	Bishop of Springfield-in-Illinois
The Most Reverend Samuel J. Aquila	Bishop of Fargo
The Most Reverend George K. Fitzsimons	Bishop of Salina
The Most Reverend James A. Tamayo	Bishop of Laredo
The Most Reverend Sylvester D. Ryan	Bishop of Monterey
The Most Reverend Roger L. Schwietz	Archbishop of Anchorage
The Most Reverend David L. Ricken	Bishop of Cheyenne
The Most Reverend Charles A. Buswell	Consultant
The Most Reverend Thomas G. Wenski	Auxiliary Bishop of Miami

Why did you excerpt this? Did the Diocese Report file a lawsuit against Jim too?

Ha ha. No. It's just the ethical way of posting a story.

I know Jim doesn't require it, but it's not really right, in my opinion, to repost complete articles without permission unless there is a good possibility that they will soon disappear.

But that's just me.

Read USC Title 17 Chapter 1 Section 107

"...and Frankly We Like It This Way."

by Michael S. Rose

Comments?:
editor@DioceseReport.com

July 15, 2003

A FEW MONTHS AGO the Jesuit-run America magazine ran a smartly-designed full-page ad headlined with a pithy statement in large bold typeface: "Small is Good."

The ad was for the American College of Louvain (ACL), the seminary in Belgium run directly by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the oldest national seminary for Americans, founded in 1857. "When it comes to business, bigger is usually better," the ad states. "When it comes to Church, does the same principle apply?" Heavens no, the ad claims, and ACL happens to be living proof-or so it claims: "For almost ten years, our seminary has been a small one…and frankly we like it this way" (ellipses in original).

Just how small is ACL? The ad doesn't say. You'd think that if the institution is so smugly proud of its smallness - "...and frankly we like it this way" - it'd want to brag about just how small it is. But no, the ad leaves it to the reader's imagination.

Well then, how big is a "big" seminary, one wonders? (If "small is good" does that imply that "big is bad?") Would a big seminary have, say, five hundred students? Being conservative, let's say that a big seminary-a place like the highly successful Mount St. Mary's Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland-has 200 or so seminarians.

Taking that as a modest measure, then a "small" seminary would have how many students? Forty or maybe fifty? I should think most reasonable people would agree that a seminary enrolling about fifty students could be considered "small," without resorting to exaggeration of any kind.

Yet, according to ACL's website (www.acl.be, as listed in the ad), the seminary enrolled only five, yes five, theology seminarians for the academic year 2002-03, down from seven theology seminarians the previous year, and down from 14 in the 1999-2000 academic year. That means that the incredible shrinking seminary is only one-tenth the size of even a "small" seminary. That might qualify as "tiny," "miniscule," "dwarfish," "atomic," "wee," "infinitesimal," or "undersized." But "small" would be quite a stretch. More accurate might be "stunted," "scraggy," "Lilliputian," "elfin," "puny," "truncated," "pint-sized," "vestigial," "snub," or "shriveled." Most accurate might be "inappreciable." But again "small" would be quite the exaggeration-hyperbole, a euphemism really.

Imagine if the ad would have spoken plainly about the Lilliputian institution. The large, boldface headline might have read: "Shriveled is Good." That might also better equip readers to evaluate ACL and its claims.

The ad also claims that Pope John Paul II himself "asks for" the kind of "community formation" found at ACL, when, according to the ad: in "Pastores Dabo Vobis…he calls for the seminary to be a community that offers the seminarian the opportunity of 'reliving the experience of formation which our Lord provided for the Twelve' (PDV #60)."

The ad actually implies that the Holy Father is asking for seminaries to limit their enrollment to just twelve seminarians, in honor of the number of disciples Jesus chose. But surely John Paul was speaking of the "experience" of the twelve apostles in terms of the quality and content of the education and formation, not in terms of the number of seminarians to enroll. To be sure, it would require a wild stretch of the imagination to conclude that the Pope is making a quantitative suggestion here.

After all this talk in the ad explaining how and why "small is good," one wonders why ACL has taken out a presumably expensive full-page ad in a national periodical to make known its self-important claim. First, if ACL views itself as so successful when it comes to being small, why bother with an ad campaign other than to simply toot its horn?

Second, one naturally wonders: to whom is ACL advertising? Potential seminarians? Well, considering that seminarians typically don't decide where they are going to study for the priesthood, it stands to reason that the advertisement is not geared to prospective seminarians.

Is it then geared toward vocations directors and bishops, the people who do make decisions as to where their future priests will be educated? If so, why take out a full-page ad in America? Why not just send a "Small is Good" advertising mailer to the nation's bishops and vocations directors? That would be a whole lot cheaper, and it would reach the entire targeted audience.

Another obvious question: if the American College has been "small" for "almost ten years," as it advertises, what will it do if, because of its advertising campaign, vocations directors and bishops come banging on its Flemish doors trying to get their seminarians enrolled there in order to take advantage of the seminary's cozy and intimate "smallness." The ACL, if its ad campaign is indeed successful, will have no small problem on its hands. At what point will the seminary have to start rejecting applicants simply because it would no longer be "small" as advertised?

Since ACL seems to believe that the Pope is calling for seminarians to be educated in groups of 12, it'll have to shut down its one lonely application window once it gets another seven students (that would be a 140% increase in enrollment, by the way). Or, could it be that ACL realizes that even if its ad campaign is highly successful, it could technically enroll ten times the number of seminarians than currently matriculates without worrying about outgrowing its claim to "smallness?"

Of course, there's another possibility. The ad may just be a public relations effort, albeit a poorly executed one. Might there be a niggling anxiety about having only five theology seminarians knocking around a seminary designed for hundreds. Might ACL be a bit self-conscious about its incredible shrinking seminarian population? It's obvious to many observers that ACL is a struggling seminary on life-support, fighting for its continued existence, grasping for its raison d'être.

Recent history indicates that much larger "small seminaries" have closed their doors-and for good. ACL owes its continued existence to the fact that the institution is operated directly by the U.S. bishops, one of only two oversees seminaries that can make that claim. (The other, the North American College in Rome, enrolls between 125 and 140 seminarians each year. I have yet to see them advertise in America or elsewhere.) But, how much longer can the U.S. bishops justify pouring hard-earned and generously-donated Catholic money down this financial drain?

Instead of trying to justify its smallness, its failure-or even its very existence, the 13 bishops sitting on the board of ACL ought to try to understand why their institution is so unpopular. Considering that bishops with horrible vocations track records in their own dioceses - e.g., Matthew Clark of Rochester - sit on the board of ACL, "frankly" they just might "like it this way." The rest of the world, no doubt, has eyes to see, and it sees ACL's shriveled seminary as an embarrassment to the U.S. bishops, or worse yet-an unjustifiable money pit.

More columns from Michael S. Rose

Michael S. Rose is author of four books, including the NY Times bestseller Goodbye, Good Men. His writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Newsday, The American Conservative, Catholic World Report and many other venues. He writes (usually) from Cincinnati. He can be contact at msrose@diocesereport.com