Saint Lawrence Philosophy

The mission of St. Lawrence Seminary is to provide the opportunity for young Catholic men in high school to lay a foundation on which they can build a life of ministry in the Church as laymen, deacons, brothers or priests.

The overriding purpose for St. Lawrence’s existence is to promote, foster, and live principles and values announced in the gospel of Jesus Christ and articulated in the Catholic Church. Everyone at St. Lawrence Seminary is expected to cooperate with this purpose by accepting the promotion of the reign of God as the essential priority of the school, worked out in the present historical and cultural context. This priority flows more directly from some areas of St. Lawrence than from others. Academic activities, for instance, or some student activities, can have a legitimate secular purpose as their immediate end. However, ultimately, all areas of participation should contribute in some way, directly or indirectly, to the overriding purpose described above.

St. Lawrence Seminary is especially directed toward implementing and nurturing gospel values within high school age Catholic adolescents. St. Lawrence has, as part of the concrete implementation of its purpose, the preparation of adolescents for active ministry in the Catholic Church. Therefore, the program includes a place for those adolescents who are interested to whatever degree, in becoming priests or religious.

St. Lawrence Seminary recognizes, accepts and depends on the presence within itself of Jesus Christ, the risen Lord. Without His presence and the subsequent and continuous outpouring of the Spirit, the above-mentioned main purpose could not be accomplished or even successfully pursued.

St. Lawrence Seminary is a school, an institution and a community. St. Lawrence is a school because it has students and has developed academic goals and objectives and the means of realizing them. St. Lawrence is an institution because student and staff life is organized around principles and rules, which are intended to promote specific goals and objectives. St. Lawrence is a community because its purpose extends beyond the provision of academic instruction and the maintenance of necessary order to include the comprehensive personal formation, growth and development of staff, many of whom live on campus twenty-four hours a day, and students.

St. Lawrence Seminary has existed, since its founding in 1860, as a school for the formation of Catholic high school and college youth interested in pursuing a vocation to ministry in the Catholic Church. As the understanding of ministry has grown within the Church, the school has historically adjusted its purpose to respond to the various ministerial needs of the Church and society. Underlying the school’s philosophy is the conviction that the primary obligation of all Christians is to witness to gospel values in that life vocation to which God calls them. Combined with this belief is the additional conviction that such values are not only the path to an individual’s eternal salvation and union with God, but also the only real remedy for the ills of the human community. Therefore, the staff of St. Lawrence Seminary wishes to promote and foster these values in themselves and in the adolescents who enter into and participate in the life of the community.

St. Lawrence Seminary is a seven-day residential school. Therefore, its life embraces the total life of the students. Students at St. Lawrence Seminary are accepted as active inquirers who desire to develop their capacities to think and to learn. All programs in which the students are involved—academic, social, spiritual, physical and vocational—should be inspired by and directed in some manner to the implementation of gospel values. The seeds of gospel witness, which are planted and fostered in St. Lawrence students, will bear fruit in their lives when they take their place as active ministers of this gospel in the larger community. Their lives will promote not only their own salvation, but also that of others, and will be a source of healing and growth in the human community. Both students and staff members should enter and remain at St. Lawrence Seminary because they recognize the goals and life of the community as not only compatible with, but also as supportive of, their personal development and their commitment to understand and live the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and because they are willing to make the sacrifices that are demanded in order to absorb, nurture and witness to these values.

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