This whole situation has had so many inintended consequences.
One part which I find particularly disturbing and puzzling as well is the following:
A candidate for the seminary will almost always be asked the question, “are you a lector or acolyte at your home parish?” No matter how it’s phrased, the question will be asked. And of course, it’s expected that he will answer in the affirmative.
Depending upon which seminary (or diocese formation program) seminarians are often expected not to be lectors and acolytes either at the seminary itself, or even at their home parishes.
So, here’s a summary of what happens in the formation of seminarians:
They perform a function before they become seminarians
They join the seminary, and are then told they can’t do it anymore
They come home for holiday breaks, and they are told that either they are expected to perform the function because they are seminarians,
…or…
they are told that they cannot perform the function because they haven’t been instituted, but have to step aside in favor of someone else who is not a seminarian, and has no intention of ever becoming one, and has sometimes gone through no more formation than a signup sheet in the back of the church after Mass.
Then they’re instituted to perform the function that they used to perform before they became seminarians
They spend a few months at the seminary, being Instituted Lectors and Acolytes, for the benefit of their classmates (who will most likely never have Instituted Lectors and Acolytes at their parishes after they’re ordained priests and sent out into the real world) and perhaps a few Sundays at a parish. At the parish they’re likely to be told not to function as Lectors and Acolytes because that would interfere with the parish schedules, and would offend people who would accuse them of “clericalism” and of interfering in the “ministry of the laity” of the parish who expect to be readers & acolytes.
Then they’re ordained deacons, and they are no longer Instituted Lectors and Acolytes, and they scratch their heads and ask themselves why they even bothered to be Instituted in the first place, except to satisfy a canon which says that they could not have been ordained unless they were first Instituted.
Finally, they are ordained priests, and never again experience an Instituted Lector or Acolyte except for the occasional visit to the seminary, or perhaps the Chrism Mass at the Cathedral, or just maybe a visiting seminarian who happens to have been Instituted.
Am I missing anything here? Am I the only one reaching for the aspirin at this point???
