Catholic Formation for the Whole Person: Inside St. John Vianney’s Lay Division

Hybrid courses starting September 8 in Scripture, Catechism and Catholic spirituality aim to form the mind and the heart.

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By Daniel Campbell Director of the St. John Vianney Seminary Lay Division

As the Director of the Lay Division at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary for the Archdiocese of Denver, I have the blessing of overseeing unique programs of study. Unique because, unlike most seminaries, St. John Vianney is not only concerned with forming future clerics, but also has a division dedicated to forming the laity.

Our mission at the Lay Division is to provide hybrid world-class Catholic formation for everyday Catholics so their faith can come alive and transform every part of their lives. We help you trust God with your life through formation that leads to the heart of the Father.

We do this through various offerings that study God’s call to each and every person to have a personal relationship with him in the Church that he established with the Precious Blood of Jesus. Our two flagship programs are the Denver Catholic Biblical School, a four-year study of the Sacred Scriptures, and the Denver Catholic Catechetical School, a two-year study of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. We also offer other programs of study: year-long “enrichment courses” in different topics of the faith, short courses, lecture series throughout the liturgical seasons, day-long workshops and conferences, and free lectures throughout the year. Wherever you’re at in your faith, we have something for everybody!

The first step towards being a disciple of Christ is to know the faith. This is because we cannot love what we don’t first know. Or, as we may otherwise say, we cannot choose something that we don’t know is there to be chosen. How could we ever think of loving Christ, no less with all of our heart, soul and mind, as he declares we must, without first knowing him? So, the first element of fulfilling our mission lies in bringing people the knowledge of Jesus, without which we cannot love him.

But of course, it doesn’t end there. Because, as St. Paul writes, the greatest of all virtues is charity. So, while knowledge comes first logically because we cannot love what we don’t first know, the supernatural, infused love of God and neighbor comes first morally or spiritually; without it, our knowledge bears no fruit for the kingdom of God. As such, we think of our teaching at the Lay Division as not so much academic as formative. I don’t mean that our teaching is not intellectually robust — far from it, for I think our programs challenge the mind in ways it has never been. I’m confident you won’t find anything out there for laypeople as intellectually robust as what we offer. I mean formative, then, in the sense that our teaching is meant to transform not just the mind but also the heart. As the Scriptures tell us, we must be doers of the Word, not hearers only. What good is our teaching of the faith if it doesn’t actually transform lives? If it doesn’t lead people to desire relationship with Christ? To commit themselves to the interior life, the one thing necessary? To be more faithful to the fulfillment of the duties of their state in life as husbands, wives, fathers, mothers? Our programs are intellectually robust and always rooted in the teaching of Holy Mother Church, as expressed most clearly in the Fathers and Doctors of the Church. It’s just that we’re more than that, for our teaching draws not just the mind, but also the heart, deeper into relationship with Christ.

To round this out, we can take it a step further: not only can we not love what we don’t first know, but we also won’t share what we don’t first love. This is the culmination of our formation: to bring the student not just deeper into a relationship with Christ, but to foster the desire and confidence to testify to him, whether by word of mouth or the simple witness to a silent life transformed in Christ.

We cannot love what we don’t first know, and we won’t share what we don’t first love. And that is our mission: to bring the lay faithful to know, love and share in the life of Christ, just as the apostles did. God willing, our students may one day say, as we read of St. Paul in Galatians 2:20, that “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me”.

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To learn more about the St. John Vianney Lay Division and its course offerings, schedule and locations this year, visit sjylaydivision.org. Classes for the upcoming year begin on Monday, September 8.