The summer before Will Morauer began his first year at Saint John Paul II Seminary, he tried to prepare himself for what he knew would be a challenge: surrendering his smartphone for a year.

The recent high-school graduate, like many of his peers, was in the habit of checking his phone whenever it buzzed and filling idle moments with games and streaming videos.

“I definitely used it a lot and was on the screen a lot in general before I came to seminary,” Morauer, now age 19, told the Register. 

“So I tried to ease myself into it by dumbing down my phone a little bit before I started.” 

Even after eliminating distracting apps and features on the phone, he wasn’t prepared for how difficult it would be to give up his phone. When the time came to turn it in, he experienced symptoms of withdrawal and even questioned whether his decision to go into seminary was a good idea.

“I just gave it all to the Lord when that happened,” he said.

Looking back on the experience, he is grateful for having been forced to give up his phone. 

“Oh, man, it was the best year of my life,” Morauer said. “I was able to just give myself totally over to the program instead of every free moment sticking my head in my phone.”

Saint John Paul II Seminary in Washington, D.C., and several other seminaries around the country, have put the restrictions on technology use in place for the first year — or propaedeutic year — of formation. In 2022, the Vatican approved a plan from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to set aside the first year of seminary as a propaedeutic year, to focus on the seminarians’ human and spiritual development before they begin their academic studies. 

Liberating Phone Fast

Morauer’s feelings of gratitude were echoed by other seminarians interviewed by the Register who said that going without their phones radically changed their lives for the better. The smartphone fast, they agreed, was a liberation that opened them up to friendships, a deeper prayer life, and sense of joy from living life rather than watching pixels on a screen.

Father Brendan Glasgow, dean of men and the propaedeutic coordinator at Saint John Paul II Seminary, told the Register that as they were planning to welcome their first class of propaedeutic seminarians in 2023, they decided to have the men surrender their smartphones for the academic year. 

“We talked about it; we discerned it; we prayed about it. We also just did the research and were convicted that this level of attachment is actually not conducive for human growth, just on a human level, let alone spiritual growth,” Father Glasgow said. 

Father Glasgow stressed that first-year seminarians aren’t meant to be cut off from the outside world; they can still communicate with their friends and family via email, Zoom or apps on their computers.

“The really important thing is that it’s not a phone, and it’s not something that they’re constantly connected to,” Father Glasgow said.

Dopamine and Smartphones 

The Blessed Stanley Rother House at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary outside Emmitsburg, Maryland, in the Catoctin Mountains, opened its doors to its first class of propaedeutic seminarians in 2023.

Father Daniel Hanley, the program’s coordinator, told the Register that a technology “detox” is an essential part of the men’s formation.

“We’re trying to give the guys the space from the constant bombarding through the screen of stimulus and of what that does to them,” he said.

To that end, the program has partnered with The Catholic University of America’s Busch School of Business program of ecclesiastical administration and management to teach first-year seminarians about the science behind technology dependence. 

“We first get the guys to understand what technology has done to them physiologically, what dopamine is, and the neuroscience of what’s happened to them so that as they are going through withdrawal they know why,” Father Hanley said.

Brandon Chernosky, 20, who is entering his third year at Saint John Paul II Seminary, told the Register that “withdrawal” from smartphones is very real.

During his first year at seminary, some guys, he said, experienced “phantom buzzing” where they would reach for their phone because they imagined they felt a notification. 

Learning about the neuroscience involved in smartphone use, Chernosky said, helped him understand that the way smartphones deliver frequent bursts of dosages of dopamine makes them so hard to put down.

“It’s so much easier just to go to ‘zombie land’” on your smartphone than to seek pleasure from “ordinary life” activities like playing sports or spending time with friends, he said. 

After going without his smartphone for a while, he said he was amazed at the difference. When he wasn’t craving that feeling of excitement and entertainment, he could spend more time in prayer, for one thing.

“Your brain wants to go and chase all these distractions in your head. And it was just amazing to see, as the time went on, that just slowly dissipated, and you slowly realized that you can sit in silence more and more.” 

Being Present for Others 

The seminarians interviewed agreed that doing without a smartphone helped them immeasurably in terms of growing in friendship with others.

“The phone really pulls you out of the moment. So not having it enabled me to enter more fully into seminary formation, into relationships with my brothers, instead of every free moment sticking my head in my phone to distract myself,” Morauer said.

During his year at the Rother House at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary, Andrew Schmitz had a similar experience.

“If you don’t have your phone … you’re much more likely to engage in conversation with others, maybe with people you wouldn’t immediately talk to,” he said. 

Seminarian Chernosky theorized that engaging with your phone feels “somehow safer than human interaction.” 

Without their phones, the seminarians, he said, were compelled out of lack of anything else to do to leave their rooms and hang out to just “talk about random things.” 

“I think the reason we as a class are so well-bonded is because we spent so much time together, which is what people have done for hundreds of years when their boredom couldn’t be ‘cured by a phone.’”

Before seminarian Schmitz, now 28, entered his year of formation at the Rother House, he worked as a management consultant, living in Washington, D.C. 

He was constantly on his phone, keeping up with the latest political news, checking Twitter and his group chats about politics with his friends. Giving up his phone helped him realize how much “head space” he had given up to the news.

Not having a phone with him at all times made him less inwardly focused, he told the Register.

“It contributed to a more embodied life, where you’re more directly encountering what’s in front of you in a way that you aren’t when your digital device is occupying part of your attention,” he said. 

Space for Exploration

At Saint Paul Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, during their propaedeutic year, seminarians go without their phones all week and then get them back on Saturdays between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m.

Mark Mosser, a 23-year-old seminarian there, said that while going without his phone was a little “weird” at first, from the very start he felt that he was free of a burden. 

While studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before he entered seminary, he was simultaneously battalion commander for ROTC, captain of the track team, and president of the Catholic community. While Mosser enjoyed all these activities, he was constantly on his phone, responding to emails and texts.

“By the end of college, my chaplain helped me realize it was a little bit too much, and I needed some better boundaries so I could be more reflective and recollected and live more how God wanted me to live at a slower pace,” he said.

“It was really nice, actually, just off the bat to be like, I don’t have to be constantly checking my phone,” Mosser said. “It was more free.”

With no phone to constantly attend to, he said he’s spent a lot more time reading, praying and hanging out with friends. He’s also begun teaching himself how to play guitar and has gotten into baking. 

At Rother House, seminarians spend their down time enjoying the outdoors, playing board games, cards and cribbage, and ping pong. Others create art, do carpentry, and play music together.

“A lot of guys are reading for the first time in a long time,” Father Hanley said. 

He recalled being pleasantly surprised to see one seminarian with a master’s degree in mechanical engineering happily absorbed in Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather.

“He’s a very bright guy, but he probably hasn’t read a novel since high school,” the priest said.

Managing Phone Use

The purpose of a smartphone-free year isn’t to get the men to give them up forever, it’s to learn how to have a healthy relationship with technology, the propaedeutic year coordinators say.

After a summer in which he is supposed to use a “simple phone” that allows just calling, texting and maps, Morauer is free to do whatever he wants with his phone. He may put a camera, calendar and banking app back on, but he said he has no plans to add social media, games or media streaming apps. 

“I think I’m in a much better place after going without it and able to have some of those apps and certain things that are more to be used as tools in my life,” he said.

Mosser told the Register he loved his propaedeutic year and wants to try to replicate it as much as possible. To keep his phone use at a minimum he’s considering choosing two times during the day to check his phone.

At the Rother House, looking ahead to their next year in seminary, the formators work with the men to come up with a personalized plan for their smartphone use. 

“There might be some guys where that’s not in the cards for them. It’s got too much of a grip on them, and they can come to that realization, too,” Father Hanley explained.

“So all the guys can come to an idea of what they can have that’s compatible with their identity as disciples of Jesus,” he said. 

Schmitz, since his smartphone fast, said that he has no desire to reengage with social media, and he’s comfortable being away from his phone for a couple hours at a time. 

As a diocesan priest, he said, he’ll need a smartphone, just as anyone living and working in the world does. 

Having an awareness of the dangers of smartphone use is not an anti-technology thing, he explained. 

“It’s a reorientation to using technology as a tool for better living our vocations.”