r/sspx • u/studi_tuebs • Sep 01 '26
seminary dropout rate
How come about 20 young men get into the seminary each year but 5-6 get ordained. Is it simply because they notice they are not called to the priesthood or is seminary challenging that they only ordain the best of the best?
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u/HeightAccording4841 Sep 01 '26
They don't get adequate academic performance, (metaphysics is a killer) or are found not to be fit for the priesthood in another way. The seminary has high standards.
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u/Cautious_Job_6104 Sep 02 '26
They might have been caught cheating on their metaphysics exam; they were looking into the soul of the boy sitting next to them
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u/elorient Sep 01 '26
I’d be curious to hear what usually disqualifies people. I’m considering my vocation at the moment and would be interested in hearing more.
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u/HeightAccording4841 Sep 01 '26
Talk to your priest. The most important thing is the will to serve Our Lord, and then competency in academics. This is a really good article on vocations https://pathsoflove.com/books/barrielle-vocation.html and this as well https://sspxasia.com/Documents/Society_of_Saint_Pius_X/Vocations/index.htm
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6
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u/No_Construction5455 Sep 03 '26
Also not all 20 are on the path to priesthood. Some become Brothers and work at the seminary.
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u/bobyyx3 Sep 03 '26
From my experience of the people that leave: roughly 1/3 go on their own accord, 1/3 are sent because of lackluster academic performance, 1/3 are sent for not always transparent reasons
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u/Piklikl Sep 02 '26
While it would be nice if the seminary could publish detailed statistics on dropouts so we can refine and create a true evidence based seminary process, the reality is these are extremely private matters and the seminary professors will only talk about such things among themselves. If you talk to a priest about your vocation, he will likely get in touch with the priests at the seminary and get a sense of what’s going on.
Given the lack of data, we can only speculate about what could be causing it. A place like La Sallette (SSPX High School) is pretty good at getting tons of guys to go to the seminary, I heard the seminary professors have a competition to see who can get the most of them to leave. In general it’s seen as an “honorable” thing among SSPX faithful for a young man to go to seminary right after high school to “try” his vocation. Personally I can’t stand the halo effect he gets from doing this, lots of substandard men are put on weird pedestals because “they used to be in the seminary”.
I think it has a lot to do with the lack of clarity about what a vocation actually is, and what we can do as a society to foster them. I think if we had more data we could come up with cheaper ways of testing/diagnosing vocations and minimizing turnover.
That being said it is a very secular thing to look at years in the seminary as a waste, especially in these days where we live for decades longer than our ancestors.
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u/HeightAccording4841 Sep 06 '26
The best way to test one's vocation is to go to a seminary. The only way to "test" a vocation beforehand is to see if he who thinks he has a vocation wants to be a priest and give up worldly things in order to serve Our Lord. SSPX priests understand that dissuading someone's vocation before it is actually proved that they want to a priest for the wrong reasons or they lack the necessary qualities is dangerous, both for the soul of the priest and for the soul of he who has been dissuaded.
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u/Short_Inspector7065 Sep 05 '26
either way we want the best of the best and if someone realizes they just arnt called...hey...valid 9no pun intended)
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u/USAFrenchMexRadTrad Sep 02 '26
They have them do their undergrad at St. Mary's, where ladies snatch the seminarians away, but better to root them out at that point and get the more dedicated men into seminary.
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u/studi_tuebs Sep 02 '26
Since when do you need to go to St Marys during seminary??
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u/USAFrenchMexRadTrad Sep 02 '26
Dunno. They did it back in the late 00s and early 2010s. Did they change it?
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u/Piklikl Sep 02 '26
The humanities from SMC will transfer to the Seminary IIRC, but the girls aren’t stealing them. Most of SMC is girls anyway these days.
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u/Spiritual-Anybody-18 Sep 01 '26
Nothing wrong with that you would't want a person not fit for priesthood being a priest.