Seminary

A seminary, school of theology, theological college, or divinity school is an educational institution for educating students (sometimes called seminarians) in scripture and theology, generally to prepare them for ordination to serve as clergy, in academics, or mostly in Christian ministry.

The English word is taken from Latin: seminarium, translated as 'seed-bed', an image taken from the Council of Trent document Cum adolescentium aetas, 'Since the age of adolescence' which called for the first modern seminaries.

In the United States, the term is currently used for graduate-level theological institutions, but historically it was used for high schools.

The establishment of seminaries in modern times resulted from Roman Catholic reforms of the Counter-Reformation after the Council of Trent. These Tridentine seminaries placed great emphasis on spiritual formation and personal discipline as well as the study, first of philosophy as a base, and, then, as the final crown, theology. The oldest Catholic seminary in the United States is St. Mary's Seminary and University in Baltimore founded in 1791. In the United States, Protestant institutions also widely adopted the term 'seminary' for independent graduate schools (separate from a university) to train their ministers. The oldest such Protestant seminary in the United States was founded in Andover, Massachusetts, in 1807 as the Andover Theological Seminary and was affiliated with the Congregationalist Church. After two mergers and a number of relocations, Andover is now part of the Yale Divinity School, in New Haven, Connecticut.

General guidelines for seminary formation are set out in the governing document as of 2016 is Ratio Fundamentalis Institutionis Sacerdotalis, 1992's Pastores dabo vobis, and the Code of Canon Law. Seminaries are overseen by regional conferences of bishops. In the United States, the governing document is Program of Priestly Formation: in the United States of America (6th Ed.), published by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2022.

Seminaries in the Catholic Church are divided into minor seminaries for teenagers and major seminaries for adults, including both college seminaries, sometimes also known as minor seminaries, for undergraduate students and post-graduate seminaries for those who already have a bachelor's degree. There are also seminaries for older adults who are well out of school, such as the Sacred Heart Seminary and School of Theology in Wisconsin, and for other more specialized purposes.

All seminaries are run either by religious orders or by dioceses or other similar structures. Often a seminary will train both that particular order's or diocese's priests and the priests of other orders or dioceses that select that particular seminary for its priests. For instance, Saint John's Seminary in Boston, Massachusetts trains priests for many of the other dioceses in New England which are suffragan dioceses of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. Either way, a man who seeks to enter a seminary to become a priest must be sponsored by either a diocese or by a religious order.

Often a diocese might be attached to or affiliated with a larger Catholic college or university so that the larger college and its faculty provides more general education in history or theology while the seminary focuses on topics specific to the needs of future priests, such as training in canon law, the sacraments, and preaching, or specific to the particular order or diocese. For instance the Theological College in Washington, D.C., is part of The Catholic University of America.