Priestly Formation has been always a challenging task. Changing conditions of our society bring new challenges as well as opportunities to this special mission in the Church. The Church has always taken great interest in the formation of her priests and has offered her guidance from time to time. Priestly formation has a long history.[1] It began with our Lord Jesus Christ who formed the Apostle. In our country, it is said to have begun with the coming of the faith with St. Thomas the Apostle. It began in Malabar, the southern part of our country. This early stage of Priestly formation followed the Gurukulavasam system that was prevalent among the upper caste in our country at that time. The candidate usually stayed with the parish priest or an elderly priest who initiated him on the basis of catechetical principles. The formator was called the Malpan. Hence, it was called Malpanate system[2] which slowly vanished after the coming of Portuguese into India. Seminaries sprung forth in our country soon after 1598 because of the efforts of Jesuit, Franciscan, Dominican and Carmelite missionaries. With the erection of College of St. Paul in 1543[3], Goa has the credit to be the first place to establish seminary (college) to train native priests from the East. The Council of Trent (1546-1563) became an important millstone that initiated renewal in the formation programme to priesthood.[4] Besides, the establishment of the Congregation for the propagation of faith (1622), THE Council become a turning point concerning the formation of native clergy. The great Council of Vatican II revolutionised seminary formation all over the world and indicates how the major semiainarians are to be in initiated into the ministries of the word, worship, sanctification and ministry of the parish. The great Council knew that the desired renewal of the Church is depended to a great extent on the formation of the priests. Its degree of Priestly Training (Optatum Totious) and the degree on the Ministry and Life of the Priest ( Presbyterorum Ordinis) let the transformation in the realm of priestly formation. The collegiality of Vatican II brought in a great impetus to priestly formation and Ratio Fudamentalis Sacerdotalis of 6th January 1970 encouraged the local Churches to form the local clergy with the vision of the Vatican Council. The first chatter of Priestly formation for the Church in India was approved in 1988. The vision of the great Council was taken forward by the Apostolic Exhortation, Patores Dabo Vobis of St. Pope John Paul II which clearly identified human, spiritual, intellectual and pastoral areas of formation. Today, the guiding light is shining from Ratio Fudamentalis Sacerdotalis of 8th December 2016. The Church in India is developing its own Ratio that will integrate the teachings given the Ratio of 8th December 2016.
The Church in Goa has always kept priestly formation as its top most priority. Rachol Seminary right from its inception first as the college of Salcete[5] and then as the seminary of Good Shepherd has made tremendous contribution to the work of priestly formation in Goa as well as India and the world at large. Working as a formator in Rachol seminary for last nineteen years, I thought it fit to initiate profound philosophical reflections on the noble task of formation. It will take up the role of power-desire-resistance dynamics in the context of priestly formation with an especial reference to Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Gilles Deleuze and Felix and Guattari. One can notice that the above thinkers have assisted us to understand Sovereign societies, disciplinary societies and societies of control. Seminaries closely resemble disciple societies. But this does not mean that other two kinds of societies are irrelevant. In fact, all the three kinds of societies co-exist but each on them manifest and become dominantly operative depending on the types of power-desire-resistance alignment that irrupts in the seminaries. Next our study will dive deep into power-desire-resistance dynamics in the light of assemblage / actor –network theories . This exercise is profoundly important as it opens new vistas on the dynamic processes and programs as well as how they are accepted or resisted by both formators and the formees. Finally, we delve deep into the way the self of the seminarians and formators act using the structures and networks to form or impart formation or promote one’s interest and subvert the formation process.
Sovereign Societies, Disciplining Societies and Control Societies
Foucault and Deleuze seem to have foreseen the coming of this new age and have already critically analysed it. Foucault associates disciplinary societies with enlightenment era of the eighteen and the nineteen centuries and states that it reached its climax at the beginning of the twentieth century. Deleuze adds that disciplinary societies had earlier succeeded sovereign societies and have radicalized into societies of control. Here while considering the sovereign societies, we shall briefly understand assemblage theory of Guattari try an examine how it assist us to understand what we call sovereign societies, disciplining societies and societies of control are assemblages that depict power, human desire and resistance in those respective society.
Sovereign Societies
The assemblage theory of Deleuze and Guattari and its subsequent development in Manuel Delanda[6], considers periodization of human societies as fluid and open-ended bundles of associations which emerge from past practices. It considers power as irrupting out of human actions. Assemblage theory teaches that ideas, institutions, rituals, ways of brought together by dominating human desire which then become apparatuses that mediate power in a particular society. In other words these assemblages limit the manner in which power can be actualized . This means human desire can bring together ideas, belief, institutions and practices and territorialize its power but at the same time the very same ideas, beliefs, institutions and practices may be already or even later territorialized by other human desires in another manner. Thus, assemblages simultaneously exist as territorialized, deterritorialized and in the process of reterritorialization. Since, they can be entangled elsewhere, they can be disassembled and re-assembled in accordance to the human desire that has the teeth to attack and deconstruct the constituents of the reigning assemblages. Thus, we can see how new structures like flows of money, capital, Cartesian rationality, modern science, birth of the individual broke the back of the medieval society that was built around God, theology, clerical/ priestly hierarchy and absolutism of the Monarch. Foucault views sovereign power as legislating, prohibiting and censoring.[7] There are powers that operate between two poles: right to sovereignty and disciplinary mechanism.[8] When people began to ride the new wave of desire that installed reason, supremacy of individual liberty, capitalism steadily the sovereign societies of the medieval period that were built around God, his Priests, and the King gave way to modern secular, democratic societies which are termed as disciplining societies by Foucault. In sovereign societies there is no room for the individuals. It is a society of hierarchy where power is ordered from top down. The community becomes larger than the individual and loyalty take precedence over freedom in such a society. These societies order death rather than life
Disciplining Society
Foucault brought to our attention about the disciplining societies that arose under the force of modernity where an individual was disciplined to fit into the structure of society. Under disciplining societies enclosed structures like the school, prison, hospitals, homes, barracks, factories etc became major sites of disciplining the individual.[9] These enclosed structures became sites of confinement that assigned the place and role of an individual in a society. Individuals always moved from one enclosed site to another. Disciplining societies ranked people hierarchically and kept them under watch. Punishment was employed to normalise behaviour and everyone was examined and measured for approved behaviours according to common standards that help in categorizing people.[10] The disciplining practices employed in these societies were not power from outside as in the sovereign society. Power in these societies operated from inside over the mind of the person. Thus, schools nurtured the minds, the prison largely disciplined the convicts by torturing the mind and not the body as in the previous regime, hospital or clinics began to treat the disease that is inside the body. Thus, operation or governmentality of power over the people was very different from the sovereign societies. Power operated on the bodies but become internalised. It became bio-power.[11] Foucault offers the structure of panopticon[12], the architecture of the prisons built in the modern period as model of internalization and self policing.[13] Everyone become something of an azad Kaidi[14] or free prisoner in disciplining societies. These societies ordered life rather than death. With new disruptive structures like the internet, artificial intelligence, robotics etc, we can already identity ruptures in disciplining societies as the enclosed spaces of disciplining our breaking down. This allows possibility of turning the disciplining structure into one that enables the disciplined individual ride a wave of freedom. The dying disciplining societies have entered what Deleuze calls control societies.
Control Societies
Deleuze taught that disciplining societies have given way to control society.[15] In these societies, confinement is replaced by information that enables a free but perfectly controlled movement. This means information itself becomes the system of control.[16] In disciplining societies, bureaucracy became one of the key technologies of control. With the development of computers and computation, self-regulating machines were seen a new technology of control. It is paradoxical that societies of control chain us through the exercise of our freedom.[17] It also means that these societies call us to deeper responsibility than before. One is made accessible all the time because of developments in computer technology and called to responsibility by one’s other. The chief consequence of these developments is the death of leisure or free time. Work/ one’s role in society and its demand has come to pervade all time and space. This means that the private space of the individual is also shrinking. Rather than a centralized panopticon with a single focal point that kept a watch in disciplining societies, surveillance in societies of control is dispersed and operates on diffused matrix of information gathering algorithms. All information gathered in this manner is stored, encoded and interpreted and put to use to further engineer behavioural outcomes in us that will serve the political as well as commercial interests. This means in a control society, the panopticon of disciplining society is replaced by banopticon[18] with multiple tentacles that by producing the atomospherics or conditions that are friendly to our interest or preference to socially engineer our behaviour to predictable outcomes that serve what may be called the interest of the elite. This means while we enjoy our choices that we make, we are manipulated into making them and we do not enjoy any other choice. This means societies of control make us enjoy our unfreedom. The one who falls outside this framework becomes negative. In order words one who truly enjoys freedom becomes the traitor or criminal in societies of control.
Power, Desire and Resistance and Formation
All the three societies that we have identified simultaneously exist in a formation house. They can be thought as regimes of power. Power relations that these different regimes develop, form, and shape the seminarians as well as produce resistance of different degree to priestly formation. Due to the relation of power with knowledge, often centres of power assume the authority of truth and have the power to make itself true. Therefore, one has to examine the complex relations between power, desire and practices of resistance in the context of formation.
Conformity as a Practice of Resistance
Power is not just repressive but also productive. It makes things happen. We cannot just think power in a linear and hierarchical manner. Power is immanent and operates everywhere. But it also sets up a desire to use power or escape its stranglehold. Hence, there is a strong bond between power, desire and practices of resistance. Things are complex because compliance and conformity might also become a practice of resistance.[19] This becomes clear particularly in institutions of priestly formation where conformity reigns to the point of ordination. Post-priestly ordination, the play of power, desire takes a different turn as power is experienced by the priest and desire to deploy it takes over and conformity steadily becomes a rare self practice but become a strong demand on one’s other as one begins to enjoy power therein. This is why the challenge of discernment of authentic response to a formative programme becomes difficult and complex. We cannot blindly interpret compliance and conformity as authentic response to formation as it can become a hiding place of resistance to formation. The schizoanalysis of Deleuze and Guattari might assist us to understand how one formation program can be split by individual seminarians to suit their own interest that may be not free form practices of resistance. On the other, hand we cannot put all eggs of conformity as schizolization/ splitting of the formators program into one basket. There are also genuine attempts to fall into conformity to form or conform to the image and likeness of Christ. This means discernment becomes crucial and the task of formation is not easy.
The Dissolving Divide between Exercise of Power and Practices of Resistance
Most of the time practices of resistance thrive as contestation of power relations. The play of desire can convert a practice of power into a practice of resistance. This can occur when a formator reacts and gets sucked into practices of resistance by fuelling the spiral of power with further repression. This exercise of power on the part of the formator can be a second order practice of resistance that reacts to the practices of resistance of the seminarians which are deemed as abuse and excesses by the said formator . This is the reason we cannot think exercise of power and practices of resistance are opposed to each other. They metamorphize into each other. This means exercise power and practices of resistance just don’t oppose they exchange roles. There are times when exercise of power becomes a practice of resistance and vice versa. Therefore, the role of desire has to be carefully examined. This is vital because power resistance are not mutually exclusive but exist in an entangled manner and readily exchange roles. This is why we may think of practices of resistance as exercise of reverse power. They somewhat employ the same technologies of power. While desire may put the sovereign, disciplinary or controlling power into its assemblage, concomitant practices of resistance (counter-power) will spring forth as responses depending on the type of assemblage that operates in a given situation in the context of formation.
Acts of Transgression as Acts of formation
We have already seen how transgression may mask as conformity. Following the rules may become a way of breaking the rules. What happens then when one breaks the rule? Does all transgression is to be evaluated as an unbecoming practice of resistance? There can be acts of transgressions that can be prophetic and can have profound formative value. This is why the role of desire becomes vital in the world of priestly formation. The subversive dimension can co-exist with compliance, exercise of power and practices of resistance. But subversive flow arises from our desire. Examination of desire in all the above contexts is of paramount importance.[20] Here we have to remember that practices of resistance are also practices of exercise of power triggered by desire. Hence, they can be both emancipating as well as enslaving. Therefore, maybe we cannot simply reduce acts of transgressions as pure acts of disobedience. There can be cases where breaking the rule may indeed be a case of serving the rule. All this manifests that desire plays a powerful role in the context of formation and has to be attentively studied. Just like mere conformity might hide/ mask/ disguise practices of resistance so also acts of transgression may become prophetic outcry and indeed be acts of formation. Thus, open resistance may be indeed prophetic in nature and become a genuine attempt to imitate the prophetic mission of Lord Jesus Christ.
Power-Desire-Assemblages and Formation
Operations of sovereign, disciplinary and controlling power have little or no formative effect. At the most these powers can spawn practices of resistance. Sovereign power can convert conformity into practices of resistances; disciplinary power can lead to self policing that waits for the opportunity to break the law when the power of gaze dies down. While controlling power is increasing the dividuum output in our society, it has opened ways of being simultaneously in different spaces and times in the power of the internet and mobile communicative technologies and has accentuated modes of practices of resistance.
Nested Assemblages and Dynamics of Power and Desire
Maunel DeLanda’s theory of Assemblage derived from the work of Deleuze and Guattari opens us to consider how human agency in interrelated and entangled with structures, programs networks and things flowing from dynamics of power and desire.[21] Our society has metamorphized into a society of control; institutions of formations have not yet fully immersed into it and are shifting from sovereign society, disciplinary society to control society. The desire for power nests assemblages. It can install sovereign power, disciplinary power or controlling power depending on persons who occupy positions of leadership as formators and the type of power regime triggers practices of resistance that derail the process of formation. The assemblage theory of DeLanda can assist us to understand several dynamics of power and desire as assemblages. The formators themselves can form their own assemblages to meet their needs for power, self-worth, desires to be wisdom figures, discipleship, commitments to the Christ and his Church. Thus, these assemblages formed on the formator’s side may be positive or negative. Given the kind of formation assemblages or programs being introduced by the formators the seminarians also form assemblages that will convert or transform the assemblages they encounter into processes that foster genuine formation or may become modes that produce practices of resistance. This insight that draws us to view seminary formation as chain of assemblages set into institutions of formation by dynamics of power and desire and its consequent resistance can open several blind spots that are operating in our noble and worthy process of priestly formation.
Panoptic Gaze as Assemblage of Power-Desire Dynamics
Foucault has shown how gaze becomes a disciplinary practice. He points out disciplinary practices operate in enclosed spaces like schools, factories, hospitals and prisons where individuals are kept under a watch. The sense of being under the watch of a gaze produces self policing which chooses to unlearn as soon as the gaze is moved from individual. We can trace the entry of these disciplining practices in our formation houses. Formations houses also become enclosed space where the individual is kept under the gaze of the formator, law, confidential report etc. The gaze seems to become a panopticon/all seeing apparatus as it has the power to dismiss or promote the seminarian. We can notice how the formative programme, laws, confidential reports form a network or an assemblage transforming the seminary, staff and seminarians into an assemblage producing a life of the seminarians as subjects under a gaze. These assemblages chiefly work on the minds of the formators and formees and the program of formation seem to become more an inward looking that nurtures the mind and the soul. These kinds of assemblages produce castration anxiety among the seminarian. Added to it there are often sub-cultures and interest groups among the staff and students that ally with specific programmes, laws, structures, desires anxieties and form a sub-assemblagse animated by what may be called oligopticon[22] or an elitist gaze that may or may not assist the formation process. This is why it is important to built convictions among the seminarians that they are first agents of formation. Otherwise, formation itself will become a program serving several interests except the interest of the Church in the formation of her priests converting the entire process into a delusion. This is why a attentive study of how power, desire and resistance operate has to be carefully undertaken to transform seminaries into authentic spaces and communities of formation.
Desire and Symbolic Castration in the Seminary
The gap between the real self and the self that is put up in a network of an assemblage leads to what psychoanalysts call symbolic castration. One enjoys one’s symbolic castration when it projects the person as larger than what one is. The process of self policing induced by the assemblage that we call panopticon produces castration anxiety that leads to an effort to render the real self invisible. The gaze produces a self that is produced by fear and masks itself lest it is caught and dismissed. Under these circumstances formation becomes what may be called symbolic castration that a person enjoys. One then begins to enjoy playing a wisdom figure as well as spiritual figure to the people while the real self may be far from wisdom and spiritual depth. This is why we have to review the atmosphere that we create in the seminary and check whether formative networks, programmes or assemblages foster and encourage the enjoyment of one’s symbolic castration. The enjoyment of one’s symbolic castration transform the entire formation period into a phase of Oedipalization motivated by the fear of what psychoanalyst call the law of the father.[23] Each one enjoys one’s symbolic castration differently. This means seminary runs the risk of producing dividuals out of the individuals like society of control. Under these conditions, seminary formation becomes a latency stage taught by Freud and wherein one waits for one’s ordination and looks upon it as a point of redemption from the forms and processes of formation. When one is ordained one then takes the courage to become an anti-Oedipus. Therefore, the seminary community, formation programme have to stay critically careful so as not to allow it to degenerate into a phase wherein one enjoys one’s symbolic castration.
Conclusion
We have studied how society has passed through three stages that are referred to as sovereign societies, disciplinary societies, and control societies. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri point out that we have entered the fourth stage that they call Empire.[24] We did not think it necessary to take up the study of the Empire here. In this study, we refrain from linear understanding of the dynamics of history and propose that the above three states are simultaneously present in the context of seminary formation and each of them may dominate at a particular time, though seminaries are largely instances of a disciplinary society. Within this mode of thinking, we do not think that power, desire and resistance are accidental to formation but our incidental and pervade all episodes and programmes of formation. This is why we have marked a distance from a standalone triumphant Cartesian self and taken up a self in relationships with the help of models of self rising in Actor-network and Assemblage theories. This approach open our eyes to the existence of surplus in the milieu of formation that enables a simultaneous multiple play of power, desire and resistance making everyone engaged in the processes and cultures of formation into a Schizo, splitting the programme to suit oneself. This awareness can enable us to reverse the enjoyment of one’s symbolic castration on the part for both formators and formees. This study also reveals that while we try to fight anomalies that have disruptive potential for formation, we end up with excessive organization that impose strictures to avoid them ending up into a further spiral of power, desire and resistance dynamics. This is why we have to come to terms with the fact that we can no longer understand nor convert our formation process into a closed system.[25] Exteriority sips into the interiority of our houses of formation influencing its inhabitant both for good or bad. Multiplicity of assemblages of the self with outside do occur and disciplining methods that are employed as formation tools are subverted as they become cover for candidate to produce exactly opposite effect. This is why we need new thinking about the modes that we think are moulding and shaping formation.
[1] The West exhibits monastic schools, Episcopal schools and university as sites that contributed to priestly formation in the past. It is said the St. Augustine brought in monastic practices into his Episcopal school.
[2] Malpanate was the original system of forming priests among the Syrian Christians. It manifested close affinity to Guru-Shisya system of that time among the upper caste. It also had to imitate the principles and structure of early Christian schools , such as Alexandria (AD 180), Antioch ( AD 290) and Edessa ( AD 363). Even along as two and half centuries after the council of Diaper Malpanates continued but steadily disappeared as seminaries began to replace them. Ordination to priesthood took place in two stages: Samsans ( diaconate) and cathenars ( presbyterate)
[3] Fr Diogo de Borba and Fr. Miguel Vaz started the confraternity of Santa Fe which built the college of Sao Paulo to train native priests of the East. The college was given to the care of St. Francis Xavier on his arrival to Goa.
[4] Portuguese missionaries had already established their colleges to train candidates for priesthood and hence for the first twenty years after the council of Trent, no provincial council discussed it. Although, the convocation of the provincial council itself was decreed by the council of Trent, the first two provincial councils did not draw any attention to the teachings of the Council of Trent as regards the training for priesthood. The third provincial council took up the decree on priestly formation for India. The fourth and the fifth provincial councils continued the deliberations. The provincial councils among other things barred lower castes and neophytes from being ordained. Because of these restrictions, priesthood become reserved for the upper castes and classes. We can also trace this discrimination even more strongly among the religious societies who did not think that the natives even of the higher castes were worthy to be their members in the initial stages of their work in our country. As time progressed, we can trace that Indians were admitted to membership among them. First a few mesticos and than the casticos seem to be the way the native found their entry into these religious orders. These restrictions continued although we can trace that natives found their way into the Dominicans and Augustinians orders right from the beginning. The next important milestone that we can trace in priestly formation in India is the Synod of Pondicherry which was convoked on 18th January 1844 and concluded on 13th February of the same year. Priestly formation was in doldrums in territories under the Propaganda territories and hence the synod focused on the same. The synod resolved to establish schools, minor seminaries and major seminaries for the formation of the native clergy. We can also trace seeds of the period of regency (special stage in priestly formation) in this synod. The synod envisioned a sort of interstice between philosophy and theology during which the seminarian was to stay with missionary, assisting him according to his direction. In 1845 the Congregation of the propagation of faith endorsed the synod of Pondicherry and its emphasis of the need of training an indigenous clergy for India. Although synod of Pondicherry tried to bring order into the chaos because of the rivalry between the Padroado and Propaganda , peace was hard to establish and hence, initiated an apostolic visitation to establish an hierarchy independent of Padroado for the formation of Indian clergy under the Indian Bishops. Finally, in 1886 the concordat of the Holy see with Portugal settled the conflict between the Padroado and Propaganda and cleared the way for the establishment of an Indian hierarchy and a Apostolic constitution, Humane Salutis Auctor was published. It established and Indian Hierarchy and raised all vicariates of India and Ceylon to the rank of a diocese. Shttps://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/90290/8/08_chapter%201.pdf accessed on 7/Feb. 2020.
[5] The Jesuits built a college of Salcete adjacent to the Holy Spirit Church to educate the native boys in 1574 which was transferred to Rachol in a permanent structure that was built for the same purpose in 1610. But with the suppression of the Jesuits, we may say that we entered some kind of dark ages in the formation to priesthood in the entire East as they were running most of the seminaries for the native clergy in important Christian territories. As a result as many as 48 seminaries had to close down in their provinces of South America and India. It is in this environment, the College of Salcete with a royal decree dated 4th April 17 61, Seminary of Good Shepherd or Rachol Seminary became a sanctuary of priestly formation for the native clergy with a subsidiary in the island of Chorao. These new seminaries were staffed by the Oratorians but their direction and management was reserved to two Portuguese Dominicans, Fr. Bechior Antonio Cabecas and Fr. Francis Xavier. They were appointed rector and vice rector respectively.
[6] Manuel Delanda, Assemblage Theory (Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, 2016)
[7] Michel Foucault speaks calls societies that existed before disciplinary societies as sovereign society. He does not see these societies as replaced but thinks a tensive triangle which will have three co-ordinates: sovereign societies, disciplinary society and Government societies will crystallize out of it . See Graham Bushel, Collins Gordon, Peter Miller, (Eds.). Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality with two Lectures by and Interview with Michel Foucault (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1991) 102. Deleuze calls Government societies as societies of control
[8] Michel Foucault , the History of Sexuality: An introduction , Vol. I ( New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 83-35.
[9] Deborah Johnston ‘Constructing the Periphery in Modern Global Politics’, in Craig N. Murphy and Roger Tooze (Eds.), The New International Political Economy ( Colorado: Lynne Rienner 1991), 149–169.
[10] Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison. (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1991), 146.
[11] Bio-power is a technology of power enforced by the government on the population as a whole but it operates on the mind and controls the bodies of people. See Joanne P. Sharp et al., Entanglements of Power : Geographies of Domination/ Resistance ( London: Rutledge, 2000) 17.
[12] Miriam Bozovic, Ed., Jeremy Bentham: the Panopticon Writing (London: Verso, 1995)
[13]David Lyon , Ed., Theorizing Surveillance: The Panopticon and Beyond ( Devon: William Publishing, 2016).
[14] We might remember Rousseau here, specially his word : ‘man is born free but is in chains everywhere’.
[15] In disciplinary societies one always begin again as one is hoping from one enclosed space to another (home, school, factory etc). But in societies of control one is never finished with anything. All enclosed spaces are opened as one is simultaneously present in them. Deleuze takes up control as a process and practice of governing in ‘control and Becoming’, ‘Post-script on Control Society’, AND ‘Having an India in Cinema’. See Raifund Guins, Edited Clean: Technology And Culture of Control ( Minneapolis: Minnesota university Press, 2009), 1.
[16] Deleuze teaches that we have entered a new society by continuous control and instant communication. See Ibid.
[17] https://www.themantle.com/philosophy/living-society-control accessed on 22/02/2020.
[18] See https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285867054_Detention_of_Foreigners_States_of_Exception_and_the_Social_Practices_of_Control_of_the_Banopticon accessed on 24th/Feb/ 2020.
[19] See https://repository.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2433/134691/1/41_1.pdf accessed on 24th/Feb/2020.
[20] To examine desire one may have to use psychoanalysis and schizoanalysis and ascertain the affective maturity of a seminarians and their formators. Today affective spectrum is considered even more foundational than intellectual formation. This is why the Church rightly teaches that human formation is basis of all formation. Affective majority has been argued as a cause of consensual incapacity in catholic marriages. See Boniface Anthony Furtada , Rotal Jurisprudence Affective Immaturity as a Cause of consensual Incapacity in accordance to 1095,*2, Thesis ad Doctoratum in Iure Canonico, 2019, Pontificia Universitas Urbaniana. If affective immaturity incapacitates consent in marriage, how it can admit candidates to priesthood? This is why assessment our formation programs in their ability to assist the seminarians to grow in affective maturity is an urgent need of the hour
[21] We can also use actor network theory (Bruno Latour) to understand agency in the context of seminary formation. But here we stick to assemblage theory. For more on Assemblage theory, see Manuel DeLanda, A new Theory of Society- Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity (London: Continuum, 2006).
[22] Oligopticon is a concept allied to panopticon. It is the gaze of a ruling oligarchy or power elite.
[23] See Gilles Deleuze and Felix Gauttari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983).
[24] Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire ( Massachusetts: Harvard university press, 2000).
[25] Sociologist Manuel Castells manifests that our society has transformed into a vibrant and dynamic, open network system. This means seminaries today are never enclosed systems. This fact has to be factored in and responded to. See Maunel Castells, The Rise of Network Society (West Sussex: Whiley BlackWell, 2010).
