The Final Tirocinium
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June 12, 2023We were ordained priests the summer before we completed our academic studies. It was referred to as “the young father” year. After that year, the “young fathers” went to the “Rock” Church in St. Louis to transition from academic studies to put into practice what they had learned.
The experience was called TIROCINIUM. In the late 1960s the practice began to fade away, and some members of the class of 1970 brought Tirocinium to its conclusion.
Completing our studies at Esopus as “young fathers,” we spent the summer of 1971 in the Detroit area under the direction Fr. John McPhee establishing what Pope Paul VI called “The Neighborhood Church” in parishes in Detroit and the surrounding areas.
On Labor Day weekend we drove to the Redemptorist parish in Seattle to spend the autumn writing mission sermons under the direction of the aged Redemptorist missionary of the West, Fr. Howard “Beata Gens” Jennings.
The article (above) explains the mission and the purpose and the characters of that final “Tirocinium.”
