Why Saint Meinrad

Pastoral Formation

Saint Meinrad strives to prepare priests with a comprehensive pastoral outlook, enabling them to assume the pastoral duties that their service to God's people requires. This aspect of formation fosters in seminarians the habit of evaluating problems, establishing priorities, and looking for solutions on the basis of faith, through prayer and theological reflection. In this way, pastoral experience becomes integrated within one's personal life and academic preparation.

Saint Meinrad students perform supervised pastoral care ministry in their second semester, supervised parish ministry in their third and fourth semesters, and social ministry in their sixth semester. These ministry placements are designed to tap the students' theological knowledge while employing the Clinical Pastoral Education model of "learning-experience-reflection-insight."

Juxtaposing ministry experience and academic courses permits the students' ministerial experiences and academic study to enrich each other. Theological reflection seminars each semester, with the support of trained staff, specifically examine the interrelation of theology with the students' ministry experience.

Students are required to take a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education during the summer following their second or fourth semester of studies and to engage in a Supervised Pastoral Internship in their dioceses after their sixth semester of studies. They reflect theologically on their summer internships during their seventh semester.

The pastoral formation program at Saint Meinrad provides a wide diversity of experience and is designed to bring together the understanding of theology with the practice of ministry.

For more information, contact:

	Fr. Brendan Moss, OSB Director of Supervised Ministry 200 Hill Dr. St. Meinrad, IN 47577 (812) 357-6422 bmoss@saintmeinrad.edu
	Br. Zachary Wilberding, OSB Associate Director of Supervised Ministry 200 Hill Dr. St. Meinrad, IN 47577 zwilberding@saintmeinrad.edu