Tuesday, March 22, 2011

New guidelines for philosophy

Seminarians need more philosophy than before if they want to complete the course of study for ordination to ministerial priesthood.  This was the news published in the Vatican today.

Following on the reforms published regarding the study of Canon Law (2002), the Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, head of the Vatican's Congregation for Education published some revised norms today (English translation not yet published) which will govern the study of philosophy.  Normally, candidates for priesthood (known as seminarians) have been required to complete at least two years of study in Philosophy (there were also a few exceptions to this rule) prior to embarking on Theological studies at the Masters level.  With these new guidelines, the minimum number of years of study for Philosophy will now be increased by an additional year.

Having recently completed a visitation with various Ecclesiastical Institutions of higher learning, the Congregation for Education has concluded that modern challenges such as relativism have made it more and more apparent that additional emphasis must be placed on such disciplines as Metaphysics, which is meant to help priests to think and to reason (at times on their feet) solidly based on principles learned through the study of Philosophy.

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