How long does it take to become a priest?
It depends on if you're going for the diocese or priesthood. It will probably take you about seven years if you have no other education behind you. For the religious priesthood, it's a little bit longer. It took me nine years. This is partly because when you join, you do a nine-month probation as you call it. We call it a 'pre-novitiate'. In the diocese instead that it's called a spiritual year and it's just discerning if this is what you're about, if this is what God wants you to be about. The priest or the community where you're living will help you in that discernment, you'll work and you'll study a little bit of your congregation or the ideal of the priesthood. After the nine months, you apply to be accepted. Once those who are in charge, if they accept you, you go on to what we call novitiate. The novitiate is like a seminary for the diocese and priest, where in the seminaries where they begin to live out what they're trying to be. And the novitiate is also very intense period of religious life where you live out what you're trying to be. But it's a period in which your primary concern is to deepen your relationship with God, and you grow in your understanding of the community, the congregation that you're in. You begin to understand how to live the vows. You begin to understand the work of this congregation and then at the end of it you make your final commitment. You make your vows, not your final commitment, but you make temporary vows. And then you renew that for about 4 to 6 years, and during those 4 to 6 years that you're studying you have to fulfill priesthood, and you have to do two years of philosophy. Some people will do three years, like a degree. Then you do four years of theology. During that fourth year of theology, you're really preparing yourself for ordination. So for the priesthood, in diocese there's a two year Philosophy, four years of Theology, and in the seventh year they're being ordained. Whereas for Oblates, you have the pre-novitiate and the novitiate year, so that's two years gone. Two years Philosophy, that's four. Four years of Theology that's eight. And then, you have a pastoral year where you check out. Before you make your final commitment between your Philosophy and your Theology, you're checking out to see "does this really work for me?". Do I get energy from this kind of work. It's a lifestyle. So that's about seven to nine years.
