The following comes from an October 22 Archdiocese of San Francisco press release:
Yesterday the Archdiocese was informed by the Society of the Priests of St. Sulpice (Sulpicians) that, after 118 years, they will be withdrawing their administrative and academic services from the Seminary at the end of this academic year, June 30, 2017.
We sincerely thank the Sulpicians for their very long service to the archdiocese and to those other dioceses served by the Seminary. Before being informed of this decision, the Board of Trustees had intended to begin discussions that might lead to new Seminary administrative models with the Society. We regret that we did not have the opportunity to explore the possibility of forming a new collaborative model with the Sulpicians.
The Chancellor of the Seminary, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, said, “After such a long-standing and beneficial partnership, we all feel sorrow as the Sulpicians will be leaving St. Patrick’s Seminary. Generations of seminarians and priests have been formed and educated at St. Patrick’s under their leadership. We intend to continue that fine tradition as we meet the challenges of the future.”
The Board also announced the formation of a search committee to assist Archbishop Cordileone in filling the position of the Rector of the Seminary and University.
I would like to know whether Sulpicisnas are Francisquistas. Pray
tell.
I wonder whether the Sulpician priests are Communists. We are all being called to stand up and be counted in these times of our Argentinean Pope. I would like to be counted against the Vatican II Commies. I stand with Donald J. Trump the reasonable Presbiterian and against our Argentinean Master.
Why is Communism the first category you reach for? I am thinking many of the Trumpettes are refugees from the John Birch Society who never quite got their conspiracies right. The religion closest to Trump’s heart is about 3,300 years older than Presbyterianism-I will let you guess what it is.
Archbishop Cordileone has treated the Sulpicians disrespectfully and rudely. It is no surprise they have decided to leave the seminary and go elsewhere.
Harold, i’m on the east coast, cali news. not in on day=to day please give me more backround on the cordileone-sulpician relationship. thanks, dd
I doubt “Harold” has any hard objective facts, anonymous.
This is excellent news. While the Sulpicians have, in the (far) past offered great service to the Church and St. Patrick’s seminary, recently they have been horribly damaging. The rector at the seminary when I was there was distinctly light-in-the-loafers. They also took great pride in shoving the heretic Fr. Brown and his ramblings down the throats of unsuspecting seminarians.
Let us pray that Archbishop Cordileone keeps making positive changes!!
This unjust of Father Raymond Brown as a heretic is unjustified and most distressing. It is a pet cause of the “rad-trads”, and was specifically denied and disowned by the late Terence Cardinal Cooke, who pointedly invited Father Brown to concelebrate, and give the homily at, Christmas Midnight Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral—-to counter the baseless accusations fomented by some wackos about Father’s universally applauded “The Birth of the Messiah”. It was hard to find a bishop more theologically orthodox than Cardinal Cooke.
I infer from alan’s post that he was never ordained a Catholic priest. For that favor, Deo gratias.
Raymond Brown,SS, in “Priest and Bishop” (1970) expresses doubt that Catholic priesthood or episcopacy was instituted by Christ; that the early Christians believed that Mass was a sacrifice; that early Christians even had priests; or that the early bishops were successors to the Apostles. Read it for yourself.
Add to that his statement of doubt in the historicity of the Virgin Birth (cf. pp.17, 32, “Virginal Birth and Bodily Resurrection” [1973]: “The presence of the Virginal Birth in the infancy narratives of 2 Gospels contains no absolute guarantee of historicity.”); Or that the Magi existed (“Birth of The Messiah”), and you have a picture of a man permeated by his own doubt, fed by the historical-critical method, who…
..who believed in little or nothing. He was influenced heavily by Bultmann’s idea of yhe Scriptures as pure myth, and perhaps Emil Durkheim’s theories about ancient religious groups creating epic fantasies.
As for Terence Card. Cooke’s benighted endorsement of the man who mistranslated “Hail, most highly favored One” to supplant Mary’s rightful and title, “Hail, Full of Grace”, Brown’s own bishop, Lawrence Card. Shehan (Baltimore) wrote a formal critique of Brown’s errors on priesthood and episcopacy. (Was Card. Shehan a “wacko rad-trad”—homage to the name-callers—too?)
And by the way, “Alan”, you are owed an apology for the ungracious personal slam above (“Deo gracias.”) No one has a right to belittle the grace of vocation, and particularly in this case where you were so correct about the faithless rationalism exhibited over and over in the late Raymond Brown’s writings.
Biblicum professor Dennis McCarthy, SJ, an oustanding Scripture scholar, once said of Brown that “he operated out of a ‘squirrel cage’—running round and round in circles, always returning to the same point—doubt.” You see that esp. in his “The Birth of The Messiah”: essentially, he regarded the infancy sections of the Scriptures as myth, nothing more.
So, Alan, you were absolutely right about your…
..observation regarding the late Raymond Brown, may God have mercy on his soul.
Terence Cook of the Light in the Loafers Society.
This is an odd announcement.
The Sulpicians just decided to toss it in after 118 years and left w no avenue of address? Doesn’t pass the smell test. It’s obvious they were booted. This isn’t directed against the Sulpicians as I’ve never heard of the order. Wht I do know is tht many seminaries have become heterodox factories of Christo-socialism and homosexual activism and therein might lie part of the reason behind this strange occurrence.
Re Francis…sigh…I too see him as a threat to the Church, the triumphant victory of the utopian modernists. Tradition will win in the end, just as it will in America eventually. A Catholic can never vote for a modern day Democrat without moral complications, go Trump! We will never surrender…
William, I’ve never heard of the Sulpicians, either, until I went to Baltimore and was told that their mission was really the formation of priests, that’s why they are confined to administering seminaries. Their motherhouse is located next door the house of Saint Elizabeth Seton, where she and her family and her newly-formed Order lived after having driven out of New York. Worth visiting. :)
In Emmittsburg?
The Suplicians founded St. Patrick’s and have run it ever since the last century. There has always been a healthy tenseness between them and the Archdiocese.
Hopefully, to refer to Gratias’s comment, the Suplicians are supporters and followers of Pope Francis. By the way, Francis is not the “Argentinean Pope,” his IS the Pope who happens to come from the country of Argentina in America. Again, for Gratias’s benefit, a stand with Trump is to against most of the teachings of the Catholic Church, except, obviously, for his stand on abortion.
?? Gratias, what does Trump have to do with the Catholic Faith, and its seminaries?? And Trump would not know a new Mass from an old one! Probably never in his life went to a Catholic Mass!!
Not all on the faculty are Sulpicians.
I have heard that in recent years St. Patrick’s has been turning out some fine priests. And that there are current seminarians who are interested in the Extraordinary Form and they are not being discouraged.
Bp. Barber of Oakland was one of those outstanding priests
As an alum, there was a time that I would have rejoiced at this news as the place was a moral and doctrinal sewer for much of my time there. However, in recent years the seminary faculty has cleaned itself up, with the current rector Fr. Stevens in particular being a fine priest. Theological doctorate holders are the mainstay of a seminary faculty: I wonder if the archbishop thinks he can find enough orthodox ones to run St. Pat’s. Certainly the Bay Area, overrun by heterodox GTU, St. Mary’s, USF, and SCU grads, is not a plum location to find adequate substitutes.
This looks to me as a prelude to the closing of St. Patrick’s. I certainly hope I’m wrong!
“There has always been a healthy tenseness between them and the Archdiocese.”
Not many laity know the internal history of the seminary. Makes me think you were a former seminarian, Bob One.
However, I don’t think most of the tenseness was healthy. For most of the past half century, it was archbishops trying to keep their seminary orthodox while the Sulps were far more “progressive.” That’s not healthy. I have to admit the most recent contretemps between Archbishop Cordileone and the Sulps haven’t made sense to me, since the principals involved have been all conservative.
You are right, TVT:
Bp. Barber of Oakland was one of those outstanding priests on the staff of St. Pat’s, also being spiritual director, for some years (2002-2010) prior to his appointment.
The late Fr. Ray Gawronski, SJ (yes, there are still some extraordinary Jesuits here and there), for 2 years prior to his untimely death due to cancer this past April (Apr. 21, ’16) was also spiritual director and an outstanding and beloved scholar, teacher and professor of dogmatic theo at St. P’s, and an impossible loss to replace.