Can you leave the seminary?

Dear friends in Christ,

I hope everybody's weekends were good, spend with family and friends and enjoying the time away from either going to school or going to work. Recreation and leisure is an important aspect of life, and we should always remember that we work to live, not live to work. I have been under the weather, but I appear to be on the mend, and the weekend was an important time of recovery for me.

Today's question: If you enter the seminary do you have to become a priest? Is that the only option?

This question gets at the primary reason a man goes into seminary: to further discern whether or not God is calling him to the priesthood. When a man goes into the seminary, there is a distinct possibility that he is called to the priesthood. It is also a distinct possibility that he is called to married life, or some other personal vocation, such as being a doctor, or lawyer etc. A man goes to seminary to further try to figure out if God wants them to be a priest.

A healthy number of men leave every year to go do something else, many of whom because they have honestly discerned God's call to leave the seminary. And God does call men to leave. Sometimes God calls men to go into the seminary for a period of time to train him for something else, or to prepare him for someone else, a future wife. I know a good number of former seminarians who are now married with children. They are active in their local churches, and they raise their family Catholic.

In short, it is perfectly normal to leave seminary if you feel, with the help of spiritual direction, that a call to the priesthood isn't your call. At the same time, you must be cautious when you leave, and you must make sure you are leaving for the right reasons. The decision to leave, or even stay, should never be decided on a good or bad day in the seminary, but rather, over a longer period of time. You must defeat the temptation to leave after your first bad day, because there will be many bad days, but just because you have bad days doesn't mean that you aren't called. Now, if every day is a bad day and it gets to be painful, that's one thing. What I am talking about is a bad day every now and then, but they happen to everybody.

In short, you go to the seminary to further discern whether you are called to the priesthood. And you can leave if you realize it isn't what you are supposed to do. I hope this answers the question adequately. God bless.