It has been a blessing to be involved in the formation of seminarians and religious for the past seven years—and counting. In that time, I have had the joy of accompanying many young men, most of whom I have found earnest, diligent and deeply devoted to preparing for the priesthood. Nothing that follows should be read as questioning their integrity or the good they will bring to the Church.

These years have also taught a harder lesson. A house can lose its power to form people when a few learn how to weaken accountability without ever looking like rebels.

When Formation is Resisted from Within
In every large group of men in formation, a small but influential minority stands out. For lack of a better term, and drawing on Dostoevsky's language in Crime and Punishment, I have come to think of them as "would-be destroyers." They do not storm the gates. They work in small circles, sowing discord, eroding trust and weakening the structures meant to form them.

They resist accountability and deflect blame. Instead of engaging honestly with formation, they create confusion, exploit tension, and bend the process towards their own comfort. Authentic formation aims at growth, discernment and maturity. Those aims require structure and scrutiny. Some candidates try to soften both. Skilled at spotting vulnerabilities, they evade the scrutiny a vocation needs. Rather than being raised by the vision of formation, they lower the vision to fit themselves.

This is not the same thing as disagreement. Formators make mistakes. Candidates must be able to raise concerns about decisions, treatment or fairness. A concern offered in good faith is not disobedience. The difference lies in how concerns are raised and whether a man remains willing to be formed. Repeated evasion, rumour and the manufacture of grievance are another matter.

A common tactic is to weaken the formator's authority without open defiance: spreading dissatisfaction, approaching him under the guise of honest feedback and leaving him with a distorted picture of his standing in the house. Over time, he begins to doubt his judgment, confidence, and sense of efficacy. Energy drains away. He grows hesitant. Then any decisive step he takes is easily recast as bias or error. Authority that governs by fear of rumour is already half defeated. Authority that refuses to listen is no better. The formator must hear criticism, test the facts and still have the courage to act.

This is not only a seminary problem. It appears wherever formation, authority and human weakness meet. Alessandro Manzoni saw the type clearly in The Betrothed: in a tumult there are always some "who do all they can to push matters to the worst ... and wish for nothing so much as that the tumult should have neither limits nor end."¹

One afternoon, sorting old books in the dusty archives of our priory with a few student brothers, I came upon an essay by JB Priestley. His account of English university crowds was unnervingly familiar. In "Student Mobs," he describes "howling, destructive" groups of young men who turn themselves into mischievous and sometimes dangerous crowds, yet are treated with a curious indulgence, as though they were a different species from ordinary hooligans. He notes their "frenzied delight in destruction," their "cold disregard for others," their arrival at university "eager not to create but to destroy." "The students," he writes, "never march to build a house but only to knock one down."²

Priestley, past the illusions of youth, saw calculated disorder used to weaken authority for private gain. The parallel is hard to miss. Whether in a university or a house of formation, the mission of the place is at risk when a few sow enough confusion to make honest leadership nearly impossible. He who spares the wolf sacrifices the sheep. The formator's first duty is not to hunt enemies. It is to protect the conditions in which the sincere can grow.

The Silent Erosion: Creed Without Conviction
Beneath the ordinary life of a house there is often a subtler, and more serious problem: a gap between what is professed and what is lived. It is not always open unbelief. It is faith reduced to routine, "having a form of godliness but denying its power" (2 Timothy 3:5).

Many stand at the altar and recite the Creed. How many believe in their hearts the truths they speak? The same question belongs to those in the pews. Aaron had seen the glory on Sinai and still made the calf (Exodus 32:1–6). Ritual can continue after conviction has thinned.

A weakened faith is not the same thing as resistance to formation, and struggle in belief does not by itself explain a man's conduct. But when religion is treated as outward compliance, the harder work of formation becomes easy to postpone. Challenging questions can be evaded. Growth can seem optional. The task is to address what can be seen—patterns of evasion, lowered standards, the draining of zeal—without pretending to read a soul.

The roots are not always personal. Family pressure, inherited custom, digital noise and the hope of a secure life all play their part. Joe Mannath has warned that in India and the Global South formation can become a route to middle-class advancement rather than discipleship.³ That is a warning about the surrounding pressures, not a verdict on every candidate.

Many who enter are cultural Christians: fluent in the rites, less sure of the faith those rites confess. A house that treats participation as proof of vocation leaves the deeper work unfinished. Mannath is right that conformity is not conviction. He asks for "an atmosphere where young persons can be themselves without undue fear, where they feel secure enough to voice their views and doubts." He also says the Church is better served by fewer, more committed priests and religious than by a crowd of the half-hearted.? That is not cruelty. It is respect for the office and for the men asked to carry it.

Family love can become pressure. Prestige, security, and honour still send sons into seminaries and novitiates. Gertrude in The Betrothed, forced into the convent for her family's sake, remains a warning. Houses should "make it easy for candidates to opt out" when the vocation is not theirs.? The first discernment is older than any particular call. It is the yes of baptism: holiness before ministry. Until that is faced, a house risks preparing men for a life they have not freely chosen.

The Price of Inaction
An old maxim, often linked to Seneca, puts the danger bluntly: Bonis nocet qui malis parcit—he harms the good who spares those who do wrong. Adam Smith said the same in another key: "Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent."? When a house tolerates repeated evasion, the whole community pays. Sincere men begin to wonder whether honesty still counts. One unchecked promotion of the cunning over the conscientious teaches a bitter lesson. Zeal fades. The genuine look for the door. The rest learn that standards are negotiable.

When authority grows timid, rules slacken, and a spirit of insubordination takes hold. The sincere suffer. The weak are scandalised. Those who profit from confusion are emboldened. Looking away is not always gentleness. Sometimes it is a failure to protect the men entrusted to the house. Addressing the problem still requires justice: listen, check the facts, apply the same standard to everyone, and give a man a fair chance to respond.

Conclusion
From Exodus to Manzoni, from Priestley's student crowds to the corridors of our formation houses, the tension is the same. Most men in formation act in good faith and already serve the Church by consenting to be formed. A few can quietly undo what the rest are trying to build. Vigilance is not suspicion. It is fidelity to the sincere.

Hope remains. Every generation has men and women who want depth, not the appearance of it. The Church lives by their perseverance. Our work is to restore seriousness where faith has become bland, to seek conviction where there is only compliance, and to clear what blocks grace without losing the person who needs accompaniment.

A gardener, asked why his plants grew well, is said to have answered, "I don't force them to grow. I remove what stops them." Formation is like that—but not only that. It means removing obstacles: imposed vocations, tolerated mediocrity, habits of evasion. It also means cultivating growth: presence, example, honest conversation, patient guidance. Then a house can breathe.

In practice, that means honest evaluations, the courage to ask a man to leave when the vocation is not there, and a community where the sincere are not made to feel foolish for trying. It also means formators who stay close to the men, hear legitimate criticism, and refuse to govern either by rumour or by fear of it.

If this millennium is to see a deeper and more convinced faith in Asia, as Pope St. John Paul II hoped, priests, seminarians, and religious will have to believe what they profess when they recite the Creed. And when the prodigal returns, may those of us who serve at the altar remember how to rejoice.

Notes
1. Alessandro Manzoni, I Promessi Sposi: The Betrothed, part 21, Harvard Classics (Mineola, NY: Kessinger Publishing, 2004), 214–15.
2. J. B. Priestley, "Student Mobs," in Choice and Master Spirits, ed. C. A. Sheppard (Essex: Orient Longman, 1973), 111–16.
3. Joe Mannath, "What Is Formation," The New Leader, October 16–31, 2001, 7.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. Ryan Patrick Hanley (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 132.