Configuration Stage

Kenrick School of Theology

Everything in the Configuration Stage is ordered toward the judgment that a man is ready to receive Holy Orders for lifelong service to the people of God in his diocese.  

In service to this end, the Configuration Stage will:

1.      Help the man to develop a theological synthesis with these components:

• Synthesis – the ability to see the big picture

• Analysis – the ability to understand each of the component parts of the big picture, and how each part relates to the big picture

• Development – understanding how the big picture and the component parts came together over time in Church history.

2.      Help the man develop a pastoral synthesis with these components:

• Awareness – an awareness of how people often struggle to understand a particular Church teaching, or struggle to live it

• Creativity – the ability to bring creative solutions to those struggles, building bridges from what Jesus offers to where people are, and from where people are to what Jesus offers.

Some key highlights of the Configuration program are:

• Human: integrated counseling throughout, including both individual and group sessions, building on what a man has already revealed in his application

• Spiritual: silent directed retreats each year (with directors who regularly direct the 30-day exercises)

• Intellectual: faculty that specialize in integrated formation

• Pastoral: weekend parish assignments with a coordinated curriculum of pastoral growth; option for a guided and directed pastoral internship.

Our aim and hope for the man who completes the Configuration Stage is aptly summarized by the Ratio Fundamentalis (2016) this way: Indeed, it is expected of him that, day after day, he will internalize the spirit of the Gospel, thanks to a constant and personal friendship with Christ, leading him to share His sentiments and His attitudes. (41) A man who does so will acquire a stable interior maturity that leads to a durable freedom.