Juan Aguilar Jimenez. — Vice-Rector for Pastoral Care
American Pontifical Catholic University
It happened to me in 2019. I was teaching Introduction to Moral Theology in our faculty, third year of theology. Twenty-three seminarians, all approved in doctrine, average 17. I asked them to write: “Why do you want to be ordained?”
Eighteen copied the same phrase from the Catechism: “To serve the People of God and cooperate in the mission of salvation.” Three left the page blank. Two wrote something personal. One —only one— confessed he had entered the seminary because his mother was dying and he had promised her “to become good.” He added: “Now I don’t know if I believe in God, but I cannot disappoint her.”
That seminarian, let’s call him Pedro, had the worst grades in the course. He arrived late, didn’t participate in prayer, almost failed. But he was the only one who subjectivized: he knew what was good according to him, not according to the curriculum.
I kept the papers that night. I thought of my own seminary years. Of the professors who taught me to recite, and of the two or three who taught me to ask myself why. Of how the Church measures everything —attendance, grades, ordination— except the quality of the encounter where real formation happens: the moment when someone who knows something puts themselves at the service of someone who needs to know it for their life.
That moment has a name in Dasbien Theory. It is called ZIE: Zone of Balanced Interaction. And in most of our seminary classrooms, it is in red.
The diagnosis: seminary without subjectivization
Catholic education has optimized processes. We have spiritual direction, formation plans, metrics of vocational perseverance. But we have stopped asking ourselves what happens in the relationship formator-seminarian.
Current instruments evaluate outputs: grades, ordination, assignments. Or measure satisfaction: surveys where the seminarian rates the professor. But none evaluate whether pastoral care —the knowledge transmitted— is received as good according to who receives it.
Pope Francis, in Evangelii Gaudium, already warned: “The Church is not a tollhouse,” and “the Eucharist, although it is the fullness of sacramental life, is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.” Yet in our seminaries, we often act as tollhouses: checking doctrinal credentials instead of accompanying the heart.
In my seminary of that time, we assumed. We assumed that the seminarian wanted to be a good priest. That he believed what we taught. That his silence in class meant assent. Rarely did we ask: “And you, what do you need from this formation for your specific journey with God?”
Henri Nouwen, in The Wounded Healer, wrote that “the minister is called to recognize the sufferings of his time in his own heart and make that recognition the starting point of his service.” But we were training ministers who could not recognize their own wounds, let alone those of others.
The case of Pedro: from crisis to ZIE pastoral
Let’s return to Pedro. After that class, I invited him to speak. Not as a vice-rector who reprimands, but as one who subjectivizes: “What do you need from this formation? Not to be ordained, for your life with God.”
He told me of his mother, of the promise made at a hospital bedside, of how theology classes seemed “about people who don’t exist” while he was fighting with a God he wasn’t sure was listening. He had stopped praying because “praying felt like lying.”
I proposed a deal: he would do his coursework, but adapted. Instead of analyzing abstract moral cases, he would write letters to his mother (who had since died) explaining what he was learning and asking her intercession. Instead of leading community prayer, he would keep a journal of his “arguments with God” that we would review together.
He accepted. He didn’t improve his liturgical punctuality. But he started asking questions that others didn’t dare. At the end of the semester, his grade was 14 —not brilliant— but he had produced a thirty-page journal that his spiritual director said was “the most honest vocational discernment he had read in years.”
That is pastoral ZIE: a relationship where the formator subjectivizes (finds out what the seminarian needs), intends (designs adjusted strategy), and feeds back (verifies that formation arrives as care). Pedro didn’t need more doctrine. He needed the doctrine to connect with his wound.
The seminary as a network of invisible encounters
The problem is not that there is no ZIE in our seminaries. It’s that it is fragmented, invisible, not institutionalized.
In that same faculty, I later discovered: a Scripture professor who adapted exegesis to the life stories of his students. A liturgist who allowed a seminarian to sit in the back of chapel when “standing up front felt like pretending.” A group of seminarians who met at night not to study, but to “tell each other the truth.” Cares that worked, but isolated. Without institutional feedback, without possibility of replication.
The seminary, in Dasbienian terms, had punctual subjectivization, individual intentionality, null feedback. Each formator who cared did so despite the system, not thanks to it.
This contrasts with what Catholic tradition itself proposes: the cura personalis of Ignatius, the accompaniment of Francis de Sales, the dialogue of Benedict XVI with seekers. These are not techniques but spiritualities of encounter that the Church has always known, but which our institutions have bureaucratized into invisibility.
Proposal: three changes for formation
I do not propose abandoning doctrinal assessment. I propose complementing it with assessment of the formative relationship as a dimension autonomously spiritual.
First: the vocational interview of subjectivization
At the beginning of each semester, the formator dedicates a session to asking, individually: “Where is God in your life right now? Not in abstract, in concrete terms.”
It is not spiritual direction. It is pastoral diagnosis. The formator needs to know whether they are forming a future parish priest, a contemplative, a theologian, a man still searching. Each profile requires different spiritual accompaniment.
Pope Francis insists: “We need a Church capable of walking at people’s side, of doing more than simply listening to them.” This walking begins with knowing where the person is, not where we assume they should be.
Second: the intentionality adjusted to the journey
The formation plan should not be rigid. It should have zones of flexibility where the formator, having subjectivized, adjusts. Concrete examples:
This generates risks: more time for the formator, more uncertainty, less control. But it generates ZIE: the seminarian receives care adjusted to his journey, not generic. As Jean Vanier, founder of L’Arche, wrote: “To love someone is not to cure them or to change them, but to reveal to them the beauty they already possess.”
Third: the spiritual feedback
At mid-semester, the formator asks explicitly: “Is this formation helping you encounter God? How? What would you need to be different?”
And adjusts. Not always, not in everything, but in something. The seminarian sees that his spiritual perception matters, that the relationship is negotiable in God’s service, that care is verified, not assumed.
Current vocational assessments arrive late (at the end of the year) and are unidirectional. Spiritual feedback is early and dialogical: it allows correcting the journey, not just evaluating it. St. Ignatius Loyola, in the Spiritual Exercises, taught that the director should “let the Creator deal directly with the creature,” intervening only to help the person hear what God is already saying.
Honest limits
Not everything is ZIE. There is doctrine the seminarian does not know he needs and the Church must propose: the Creed, the sacraments, moral norms. Subjectivization does not mean accepting any spiritual state, but understanding it in order to guide it.
Neither is feedback relativism. The Church has a deposit of faith that the seminarian does not have. ZIE is not “doing what the seminarian wants.” It is negotiating spiritual wellbeing, where both learn to adjust expectations in obedience to God’s call.
There are seminarians, like Pedro at the beginning, who do not know where God is. Subjectivization with them requires patience, open questions, time. It is not efficient. But it is effective in God’s time: the vocation that finds meaning perseveres, the one that does not leaves or stays hollow.
To apply today: checklist ZIE-formator
| Moment | Question Dasbien | Concrete Action |
| Beginning of semester | Did you subjectivize? | Vocational interview about concrete experience of God |
| Design of formation | Did you adjust intention? | At least 30% of content connected to seminarian’s specific spiritual journey |
| Mid-semester | Did you feedback? | Explicit question about perceived spiritual usefulness and course correction |
| End | Did you verify wellbeing? | Assessment not only of doctrine learned, but of transformation perceived |
References
Figueroa Cárdenas, A. K. (2010). Das Bien. Fondo Editorial UNMSM.
Figueroa Cárdenas, A. K. (2025). Theory of Dasbien Life. Editorial Tecnologías Dasbien.
Francis. (2013). Evangelii Gaudium. Vatican Press.
Nouwen, H. (1979). The Wounded Healer. Doubleday.
Vanier, J. (1998). Becoming Human. Anansi Press.
Ignatius Loyola. (1548). Spiritual Exercises. Manresa.
John Paul II. (1992). Pastores Dabo Vobis. Vatican Press.
Congregation for Catholic Education. (2016). Ratio Fundamentalis Institutionis Sacerdotalis. Vatican Press.
Author biography
Fr. Miguel Ángel Herrera is Vice-Rector for Pastoral Care at American Pontifical Catholic University. He has worked in seminary formation and vocational accompaniment for fifteen years. He is a member of the Peruvian Episcopal Commission for Seminaries and Universities.
