Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor – News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

In the 82-year his­to­ry of The Sem­i­nary of St John Vian­ney and The Mar­tyrs of Ugan­da, there have on­ly ever been two women who have held the po­si­tion of Dean of Stud­ies. It is per­haps the most im­por­tant role at the Sem­i­nary, guid­ing and form­ing lay­men in­to priests as well as ladies in­to re­li­gious life. It is a role long held by Catholic priests, and it wasn’t un­til the 1980s that Do­mini­can Sis­ter Di­ane Jagdeo served as Dean of Stud­ies for the first five years of that decade.

To­day, Dr Adan­na James heads that role. She has been serv­ing as Dean of Stud­ies since Sep­tem­ber 2022 at the Sem­i­nary that sits atop Mount St Bene­dict. Pri­or to that, in 2021, James was the As­sis­tant Dean of Stud­ies.

Per­haps it is a fit­ting role for some­one who once con­tem­plat­ed re­li­gious life, or per­haps it was sur­pris­ing for this UWI stu­dent who start­ed pur­su­ing Car­ni­val Stud­ies be­fore switch­ing to The­ol­o­gy at the same Sem­i­nary she now heads. She would go on to study for her mas­ter’s and PhD in High­er Ed­u­ca­tion at the Catholic Uni­ver­si­ty of Lou­vain in Bel­gium.

It is not a role James ap­plied for. In­stead, Ro­man Catholic Arch­bish­op, Ja­son Gor­don, asked James to take up the chal­lenge in 2022 as he thought she was the best per­son for the job.

This past week, the Sun­day Guardian’s Women’s Em­pow­er­ment (WE) mag­a­zine sat down with Dr James to talk about her crit­i­cal role at the Sem­i­nary, charged with chart­ing the lives of most­ly young men work­ing to­wards be­com­ing Catholic priests.

When asked about be­ing a woman, and a lay­woman at that, in a role that re­quires deal­ing with deeply dis­cern­ing men who will prac­tise celiba­cy for the rest of their lives, James said, “The fact that I am not cler­gy (a group or­dained to per­form pas­toral func­tions) re­al­ly opens up a whole dif­fer­ent world for you. You see the world dif­fer­ent­ly. The world is ex­pe­ri­enced dif­fer­ent­ly. Some­times, one can get the im­pres­sion that with­in the cler­gy that can be some­what of a pro­tec­tive space. It kind of means what it is like liv­ing in the world,” she said of con­nect­ing her job with the world out­side of the Sem­i­nary.

In our con­ver­sa­tion, James al­so dis­played a lev­el of fear­less­ness. She was nei­ther re­served nor cau­tious but in­stead spoke freely of what she thinks she brings to a role that some might con­sid­er sen­si­tive.

She backed this up by say­ing, “There is that lev­el of open­ness, I would say, to be­ing able to ac­cept oth­ers and bring oth­ers in­to the space, to chal­lenge where I think things could be seen dif­fer­ent­ly. So it’s like I re­main an out­sider al­though I’m on the in­side.”

For a job that brings James peace, it is not with­out its chal­lenges.

Priest­ly vo­ca­tions ap­pear to be on the de­cline. Few­er and few­er Caribbean men are en­ter­ing the Sem­i­nary to be­come priests, and while sev­er­al sem­i­nar­i­ans are from Africa, it is of­ten a cul­ture shock to them that James, a woman, is Dean of Stud­ies.

She ex­plained, “For per­sons who are in the re­gion, I think re­la­tion­ships with women are very dif­fer­ent from per­sons who come from more pa­tri­ar­chal so­ci­eties and we have sev­er­al sem­i­nar­i­ans here who are com­ing from dif­fer­ent African coun­tries and I think it must be a cul­ture shock to them to have to have to ex­pe­ri­ence women in so many dif­fer­ent facets of po­si­tions of au­thor­i­ty with­in the church.”

In such cas­es, James said she tends to take a slow ap­proach in in­te­grat­ing them in­to the Sem­i­nary and church life in T&T. Nev­er­the­less, it is a job James thor­ough­ly en­joys and gives her heart to. It could be said the Sem­i­nary is in her heart.

“The Sem­i­nary is very close to my heart be­cause this is where my own vo­ca­tion was born. It’s a space where I like to think there is a fo­cus more on re­la­tion­ships than just sim­ply; what am I go­ing to get out of this? The friends I make here at the Sem­i­nary are friends for life.”

She added, “This is one of my great­est joys.”

One of the more im­me­di­ate chal­lenges James faces is a Catholic Church that is bad­ly in need of in­spir­ing vo­ca­tions to the priest­hood.

Fa­ther Ken­wyn Sylvester, who is the Catholic Church’s Di­rec­tor of Vo­ca­tions, has been work­ing tire­less­ly to help young men and women dis­cern a fu­ture in the priest­hood and re­li­gious life. James doesn’t see the low num­bers as an is­sue.

She told WE mag­a­zine, “I am one of those per­sons who does not see the present sit­u­a­tion as a cri­sis. I see it as an op­por­tu­ni­ty. It is a fun­da­men­tal part of the church, I am not say­ing it isn’t. What I hope to see is much more at­ten­tion would be placed in see­ing the church as the body of Christ–un­der­stand­ing that we do have the priest­hood, but we do have the laity, and re­al­ly and tru­ly, what Christ came to do was em­pow­er a laity, out of which some of them went on to be­come priests.”

Be­yond the num­bers, James wants to mould the best pos­si­ble priests she can at the Sem­i­nary. She fur­ther ex­plained, “I do hope for larg­er num­bers but more than that, what I re­al­ly hope for is more mean­ing­ful priests.”

Part of her goal in the for­ma­tion of priests at the Sem­i­nary is to make the young men in­to ded­i­cat­ed, com­mit­ted and lov­ing stew­ards of the Church, “more than hav­ing an over­flow­ing Sem­i­nary”.

For the 15 sem­i­nar­i­ans she now over­sees, James wants them to stay away from cler­i­cal­ism and not pur­sue lead­er­ship po­si­tions.

As the Catholic Church’s search for priest­ly vo­ca­tions ex­pands glob­al­ly, we asked James about the role of women in the Church and if she would like to see women be giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be­come dea­cons and priests as well.

She is a big be­liev­er in the work Pope Fran­cis is do­ing to ex­pand the con­ver­sa­tion on the di­rec­tion the Catholic Church should go.

James said, “What I like about where the church is now is that we are open to di­a­logue and we are open to dis­cus­sion. If noth­ing more comes out of it oth­er than dis­cus­sion, I would be very hap­py even though I am not say­ing that that should be the end of it–in oth­er words a talk shop. I think what has not hap­pened in the past is open dis­cus­sion, di­a­logue and hear­ing and al­low­ing oth­ers to in­flu­ence our thoughts and ac­tions.”

Through the on­go­ing syn­od ini­ti­at­ed by Pope Fran­cis, James wants the con­ver­sa­tion to con­tin­ue, and she has faith that the Church will go in the di­rec­tion it needs to.

In the mean­time, she will keep do­ing what she loves at the place where she loves–prov­ing that women can play a cru­cial role too in nur­tur­ing and form­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of Catholic priests for Caribbean church­es.