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What about a married seminarian? Must he leave his family to live together with his colleagues?

Community life is very difficult, and the seminary is an unusual place. Priests and seminarians have confirmed that it is almost NOTHING like what they will get in a parish. The seminary is a bit of an illusion, being the product of Trent and resembling monastic living more than anything else. It is as if one is asked to live as a monastic for six years, only to return to the world later. The future priests will not have this kind of community in the parish. Things will be completely different, from what I've seen and heard. The common seminary system doesn't teach seminarians to live alone (with or without a family), and that is something that seriously needs to be reviewed. Furthermore, there seems to be absolutely no formation for those men discerning the married vocation, unlike the Orthodox that do provide this. While there are some very good things, there are not taught many life skills needed for the parish.

Any suggestions for improvement?

Well, both Saint Vladimir's Seminary and Holy Trinity Seminary (attached to Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville) seem to do an excellent job, and both schools have married students without pressing them to live in "temporary separation" from their wives and children. It might be wise to ascertain and carefully consider how these two schools do things.

Fr. Serge

St. Tikhon Seminary (OCA) in Pennsylvania also accepts married students and has an excellent pastoral program.

Wow, 4 pages of discussion. I think we can carefully analyze what we have so far and prepare a proposal sent concurrently to all the eparchs. I think we have to go formally public with these thoughts as everyone of us stands to benefit from this. I would love to help.

This is an important reality to recognize. I am going into my 8th (and final - hopefully!) year of seminary this August. In the two Latin seminaries I have attended, we all - including formation/faculty - that it is an artificial environment. However, there are some "failsafes" for lack of a better word. There are weekly "apostolates" or "field education experiences" whereby we have been evaluated by "REAL PEOPLE" who could (and did) say that we either did well or miserably in working with real people and in the real world.

Additionally, and more and more (Latin) dioceses are doing this, men in my diocese are assigned to live in a parish rectory during his summers in the graduate level seminary. Here the seminarian (and I speak from personal experience) lives in a rectory and learns to live in the place he works (not the best...), a place where the seminarian either sinks or swims with his prayer life (not having the structure of the seminary's day) and experiences what it is like to be in a big empty house (I kinda like it...).

Until somebody comes up with a better system of educating large amounts of priests in a timely manner, the Tridentine system is the best we've got!

I would think that much of that could be accomplished by making explicit the connection between the cathedral and the seminary - even seeing the seminary as the "Cathedral school" for clergy, which is I believe its true intent. I am impressed by how this is done, for instance, in Japan at Nicholai-do where the seminary is on the campus of the Metropolitan Cathedral of the Holy Resurrection. The transformation of the seminary into an academic institution modeled on the University system to my mind puts priest-candidates solidly in the "bubble" of university life.

Seminarians should to the extent possible live a common life with their bishop in his cathedral church.

Just my two cents...

Gordo