Buffalo Seminary Closure Speaks Volumes to Other Dioceses

National Catholic Register, 06 February 2020

The decision removes a source of toxins that the seminary injected in the life of the local Church.

The closure of Christ the King Seminary in Buffalo, New York, is sad news, insofar as it is always sad when an institution is no longer capable of doing what it was founded to do. But Christ the King stopped doing that a very long time ago, and so its closure is also welcome news.

It staunches the financial bleeding for the diocese, as the seminary ran an annual deficit of $500,000 a year. That was the main reason offered for its closing, as Buffalo seeks to recover its footing after the resignation of its bishop and in the face of a new wave of sexual abuse lawsuits.

But to vary the medical metaphor, the closure also removes a source of toxins that the seminary injected in the life of the local Church.

There will be laments — many of them sincere — for the closure of Christ the King. Certainly, over many decades there was some good accomplished there and many priests look back on their time there with fondness. Yet on balance the preservation of Christ the King as an institution was a mistake. Therein lies a tale for other dioceses.

Christ the King was not unusual among seminaries in falling into a period of doctrinal confusion and/or moral corruption in the 1970s and 1980s. It was a widespread problem in the Church, in diocesan seminaries and even more so in religious houses. Yet many of them began a slow process of reform in the 1990s, rooting out doctrinal dissent in teaching and demanding virtuous behavior of both faculty and seminarians.

Christ the King somehow missed out on that reform stage, as has been covered recently in the Register. As scandals swirled around Buffalo these past two years, Christ the King was often at the center. Faculty were accused by seminarians of hosting raunchy gatherings. At one point, Bishop Richard Malone himself asked his staff about how a particular priest — a “sick puppy” in his characterization — ever was approved for Holy Orders by the seminary.

A seminary that has lost its way is not just a missed opportunity but an active threat to the health of a diocese — or dioceses, if it educates men from other places as well.  Once ordained, it is difficult, but possible, to fill in gaps in a new priest’s formation. But if the seminary experience has actually deformed him in some way, it is near impossible to correct it later. False theological ideas, dubious pastoral practices, moral corruption — all this sits like a malignant tumor in the body of the local Church.

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