Accompanyment and moral development.

The Racio Fundamentalis Institutionis Satchedotalis, issued on 8 December 2016, entitled

The Gift of a Priestly Vocation, employs the word accompaniment

or form of the verb to accompany some 45 times.

This document marks the second time since the close of the Second Vatican Council

that the church has addressed at this level the project of forming priests for her service.

Now, bear in mind that this lecture inquires about the role that personal and community accompaniment plays

in the development of everyone's moral life. Put otherwise, our purpose seeks to illuminate

how one person can help another person grow in virtue.

Still, I mentioned the recent Vatican document

to highlight that the above-mentioned emphasis on accompaniment information,

with its decided preference for personalist categories, signals that an appreciation for moral

mentoring has invaded even the precincts of the Roman congregations.

One may reasonably assume that several difficulties with the lives of Catholic priests,

especially those that have been brought to public attention since shortly after the new millennium,

have moved even Vatican officials and their consultants

to encourage what one may call a heightened interpersonal approach

to the formation of clerics.

In any event, for the moment, accompaniment enjoys,

within Catholic circles, a renewed place of prominence.

I say renewed place because accompaniment once figured in the development of Christian life

and from a very early period. Think of the biographies of those many first millennium saints who sought

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