Villanova University
David Gibson, Religion News Service 7-07-2014
“How many of you have ever studied a parish budget?” the Rev. David Couturier asked the 11 Catholic priests-in-training seated before him. After a few beats, just one hand went up, tentatively.
“That’s not unusual,” Couturier told them. “Just unfortunate.”
It’s also why these seminarians were in a classroom at Villanova University in the leafy Philadelphia suburbs, part of a first-of-its-kind program that aims to provide some real-world grounding to the theological studies that dominate their course work.
It’s a bit of “operative theology” to complement the “abstract theology,” as Couturier put it.