While some look back at the years and decades before the Council as a time of great faith, where churches were full, as proof things were good. But I am not sure that was the case. Sure, a lot of people went to Mass, and other practices like novenas. However, I question the depth of that faith. The problems we have today, did not spring up out of nothing. The weeds were planted many years before the Council.

Another point on vocations. They may have been high in the 40’s and 50’s but how many were true vocations. I have oftern thought what happened to the hundreds of priests who were planted into the church by the communist. As Archbishop Fulton Sheen was told by one of his communist converts, they were able to get hundreds of men into the priesthood who didn’t even believe in God. How much of the decline is because of these men. I am sure some became bishops, and teachers, professors at catholic universities, and seminaries, and they would have brought other men of no faith with them throughout the years.

Christ predicted all this would happen fromt time to time. He spoke about weeds being planted, and had a traitor amoungst his apostles as an example of was to come. He spoke about the harvest being great, but the few laborers. It is the way it was and the way it will always be. The cross.

Original sin was present in all eras. Perhaps the difference isn’t the depth of piety, but the ease with which the truly pious could practice their piety unnoticed. Now it is so counter-cultural to practice any sort of religious piety, even the beginners stick out like sore thumbs.

Yet even as I write this, it seems to me that sinfulness is always uncomfortable around true holiness. Perhaps no matter the era, the truly saintly were always challenged by their communities to be less so.

I’m presently reading a book on the Church’s Ecumenical Councils.  I’m seeing that the aftermath of Vatican II has followed similar patterns since Nicea in 325.  Every age has to pick up its cross and follow Christ.  To think if we can just get over this present hump then things will be smooth sailing just is not born out in history.  To persevere to the end is the admonition given to “all ages”—ours included.  Keep sloggin’

Take a look at Rodney Stark’s latest: “The Triumph of Christianity”- the section on the Middle Ages, which provides an analysis of religious practice is illuminating and if true, grants much needed perspective in regards to the so-called “decline” of religion in modernity and current fears about the quality (and quantity) of vocations to priesthood and religious life.

Thank you for the book list for 2012!  I also really like being able to putting things into proper historical perspective.

As to the current crisis, it is layered and complex: from a reaction to the recent crisis to the lack of prestige a religious vocation has as compared to almost any other job.  I know for my own daughter (consecrated), two family members made comment of how ‘pretty and smart’ she was and why would she ‘waste’ herself serving the Church!

I also know no one would deny the real impact that contraception has had.  This is a real impact on vocations as I have heard from several priests involved in vocation work who will tell of young men and women who are discouraged of pursuing their own vocations by their own parents.  These parents want grandkids or bragging rights about the son/daughter who achieved recognizable success in the world and when there is only 2-3 kids in the family….....

And finally, the parents set the tone of the home.  If they are not willing or able to create a home where the whisper of God can be heard calling their childrens’ names then any number of vocations are left unfilled.

But, there is hope we take part in monthly adoration for vocations in our parish and since its inception we have over 10 young adults pursue a vocation with several actually becoming ordained and/or professed religious and consecrated. 

We can turn the tide on this vocation crisis and it begins - as do so many solutions - at the home.

The reasoning:  with only a few children in the family (2-3 kids), the parents want to hope for grandkids or gain some

As I reread “The Canterbury Tales” this Fall, I thought about economics: The “clerical” state (as opposed to the knightly-military-landholding, merchant-guildsman and peasant states) was responsible for pretty much all the education, health care, art, architectural innovation, social work, geriatric care, psychological counseling, and even entertainment of medieval society. Today, a fully committed Christian lay person in one of those modern professions is called to evangelize the secular world from within.
The center of Christian gravity is shifting to the laity, with no less call and need for holiness. And the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience are no less powerful a beacon of inspiration and source of freedom.

I think there is some truth to the gist of this article, though I do believe that we exist in a time that is completely unique.  Though the “science disproves faith” tirade is truly ridiculous (though not in-effective), MANY people have much more of a base for doubt, I think, than ever before.  The doubt that they have, is nurtured not only by the mass media that we have at an unprecedented level, but we are also bombarded by the most TEMPTATION in history.  People are living ,practically in perpetuity, in a state of sin.  In this sense, according to classical Ignatian Discernment, they are going from “bad to worse”.  In this state, the things of God bring repulsion…they run and/or hide from God.  It is too easy to make one click of the mouse, and anonymously find yourself in a world that has never before been available to the masses.  While dwelling in sin, the things of God are not only unconvincing, but even ‘the enemy’.  In this state, a rational dialogue is not really possible.  It seems that we are living in a time like no other…and yet the darkness has not overcome the light.  Each time has it’s cross to bear, but I’m not so sure the world has ever been so blinded by sin and the dull grey blah of human existence as at this time.  Just take this issue of the abortifacient dimension of the vast majority of artificial contraception.  Most of those in the pews, who actually attend Mass, do not accept this unchangeable teaching and horrifying fact.  Even if people say they are against a million being slaughtered each year in our country through legal abortion, they still vote for pro-abortion candidates: talk about blindness!  How many ‘true believers’ do we have in the pews and wearing collars?  Its pretty scary to me.  I’d rather live in a time where the enemy was much clearer…I might lose my life, but I’d be less worried for my soul!

This was a fantastic post Jennifer, I’ve had similar inclinations in the past and it is good to have them affirmed somewhat by your personal study.

If anyone mentions a book in his/her response, please give the tile.  Thank you.

“title;” sorry, I’m old.

Read Tom Wood’s “Sacred Then Sacred Now” he has a chapter on a great reason for this.  Think of the change of the mass of the 60s & the #s of everything/everyone dropping after.  The % of people who believe in the Real Presence dropped like a rock, seminarians dropped, nuns dropped, priests dropped, etc etc.  Nowadays a layman can stand next to the priest & distribute communion (St Aquanias said only consecrated hands should touch Our Lord) so Mrs Jane Doe can stand next to Fr Smith & do exactly the same thing as the priest ....so why go through seminary, take holy orders, etc if I can do what the priest does on Sunday in distributing communion?  Alter girls are another thing.  Where did priests come from?  Alter boys (not servers…alter boys) became priests (since girls cannot be priests why do we allow them to act as priest helpers?!) End the alter girl modernist ‘stuff’ asap!  Get back to traditional ways!  It worked for centuries.  Check out the FSSP their seminary actually has to turn down people to join (Denton, NE seminary of Our Lady of Guadalupe).  We are in a crisis today.  Restore the Sacred

Thanks Jennifer
I think you have hit it point on, because this has been the way I have seen it.
“There are no more worldly pay offs for the faithful.”
the benefit, I find, being a young religious, is how many very genuine people I encounter in other religious congregations. It is really refreshing. It would not be quite as refreshing as hanging out with other aimless twentysomethings.
I am going to link this on my blog.

Can someone clarify something for me?  We say contraception has caused a decline in vocations.  However, aren’t there millions more children today than there were in the 50’s?  Someone mentioned a family with 2 to 3 kids does not want to let them go into a vocation?  I came from a large family and my mom still did not want me to go into religious life.  Personally I don’t think we can blame contraception for everything.

Kids used to go into the convent or seminary right out of high school.  Today we recgonize that this is not a good practice in general.  We would not send our teenage daughter to the convent.  There were many vocations that were not deep or true back then.  I don’t look back and think there were all these wonderful priests and nuns—some of them were awful, miserable people and the selection process hopefully has improved.

I don’t think the grass is alwayes greener when it comes to previous time periods.  I would not have wanted to exist in a marriage back then.  Women for so long did not have a voice.

The number of Catholics has risen, but it has not kept pace with the larger population. Of those who call themselves Catholics today, few accept Catholic dogma and doctrine or even attend Sunday Mass.

See Kenneth Jone’s “Index of Leading Catholic Indicators”—on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Index-Leading-Catholic-Indicators-Vatican/dp/0972868801/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325119306&sr=8-1

These are stats for the U.S.

Priests: from 1930 – 1965 the number of priests more than doubled to 58,000. Since then that number has fallen to 45,000. By 2020, there will be only 31,000 priests left, and more than half will be over age 70.

Ordinations. In 1965, 1,575 new priests were ordained in the United States. In 2002, the number was 450. In 1965, only 1% of parishes were without a priest. Today, there are 3,000 priestless parishes, 15% of all parishes.

Seminarians. Between 1965 and 2002, the number of seminarians dropped from 49,000 to 4,700, a decline of over 90%. 2/3 of the 600 seminaries that were operating in 1965 have now closed.

Sisters. In 1965, there were 180,000 Catholic nuns. By 2002, that had fallen to 75,000 and the average age of a Catholic nun is today 68. In 1965, there were 104,000 teaching nuns. Today, there are 8,200, a decline of 94 % since 1965.

Religious Orders. For religious orders in America, the end is in sight. In 1965, 3,559 young men were studying to become Jesuit priests. In 2000, the figure was 389. The Christian Brothers have shrunk by 2/3, with the number of seminarians falling 99%. In 1965, there were 912 seminarians in the Christian Brothers; in 2000, there were only seven.

The number of young men studying to become Franciscan and Redemptorist priests fell from 3,379 in 1965 to 84 in 2000.

Catholic schools. Almost half of all Catholic high schools have closed since 1965. The student population has fallen from 700,000 to 386,000. Parochial schools suffered an even greater decline. Some 4,000 have disappeared, and the number of pupils attending has fallen below 2 million—from 4.5 million.

Though the number of U.S. Catholics has risen by 20 million since 1965, the power of Catholic belief and devotion to the Faith are not nearly what they were.

Catholic Marriage. Catholic marriages have fallen in number by 1/3 since 1965, while the annual number of annulments has soared from 338 in 1968 to 50,000 in 2002.

Attendance at Mass. A 1958 Gallup Poll reported that 3 in 4 Catholics attended church on Sundays. A recent study by the University of Notre Dame found that only 1 in 4 now attend.

Only 10% of lay religious teachers now accept church teaching on contraception. 53% believe a Catholic can have an abortion and remain a good Catholic. 65% believe that Catholics may divorce and remarry. 77% believe one can be a good Catholic without going to Sunday Mass. By one New York Times poll, 70% of all Catholics ages 18 - 44 believe the Eucharist is merely a “symbolic reminder” of Jesus.

I enjoy the well-roundedness of this discussion and the original post.

I think it’s true that ‘back then’ more people went through the motions because it was the cultural thing to do - like attend Mass because you’d be seen as a bad person if you didn’t. Now people are more honest about not really caring.

That said, I agree with Fr Jack’s post that sin is much more rampant, and thus while you might not have cared about your faith back then, you at least weren’t living a scandalous lifestyle at the rates we see today. In fact, it’s a no-brainer that the less restrains there are by society, the more people will fall into sin, which is bad. In that sense, the ‘past generation’ was better.

As to the “Vocations Crisis,” I’ve been told by priests that there is not really a “crisis” at all, at least not the way people think. It turns out that most places that lack vocations simply have the seminarians leaving the diocese to go elsewhere, and since this makes the diocese look bad they’d rather claim a vocations crisis than say Mr Smith sought his vocation elsewhere. In reality, the more ‘traditional’ Religious orders are having to TURN AWAY candidates because there are so many applying that there is not enough space (e.g. Dominican Sisters of Nashville, FSSP). To tie into this, the more devout parishes also contribute a larger percentage of candidates, so if there are a large percentage of nominal parishes, then the fact is there will be less vocations.

But all this is changing - praise God - and we are now living in the age where the older generation is finally ‘retired’, leaving the new and upcoming devout Catholics to take their place and fix the mess.

Nick, I thought the older generation raised in the 40’s and 50’s was the generation that was devout?  Now you say this generation is holier?  The ones raised in the 40’s and 50’s were the ones having the large families.

As for the more traditional religious orders getting more vocations—does this include the Legionaire’s of Christ?  They were the fastest growing until they realized their founder was sociopathic pedophile.  “More traditional” to me does not always mean better.  I feel bad for all those men who were deceived and are likely going through great difficulty trying to live out their vocation—if indeed it was a true vocation.

Contraception is not the reason for the vocation crisis.  I know many families who use NFP and only have 1, 2 or 3 kids. The largest family I know uses contraception as they have 14 kids!!!  sooner or later you have to realize your level of holiness is not determined by the size of your family.

In my area there were at least a dozen Catholic churches all within a 5 mile radius.  Back in the day they Irish, French and Polish etc all wanted their own church.  Now we can not sustain that many buildings each with its own pastor.

Maybe we all should relax about this issue. After all-the “call” to vocation comes from above. And, is not discriminatory to exclude the laity. From the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “Love is the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being” (CCC 2392). There’s lots of folks with no ordained etc. vocation except love for others and a deep calling to express His love to anyone and everyone.

With respect, I think the point is not that God isn’t calling but that people aren’t hearing, and the question is: Do people hear less now than other times? Or do people deafen themselves with different things in different eras?

Jennifer, I think you are bang-on.

Fantastic comments here too from readers that really put more flesh on this topic.

All I will say is this: the fact that there are no longer economic or “worldly” reasons to become a priest or religious (at least in the Christian “West”) is providential in that it will “weed out” those who are not truly called or who truly desire it and thus the “quality” will increase if not the “quantity” (which hopefully will increase as well - it doesn’t matter how effectively the laity is doing its job, they do NOT compensate for the lack of religious and priests, and never will).

“Can someone clarify something for me?  We say contraception has caused a decline in vocations.  However, aren’t there millions more children today than there were in the 50’s?  Someone mentioned a family with 2 to 3 kids does not want to let them go into a vocation?”

I don’t see it so much as a numbers thing (having a few kids left over after “tithing” one or two into celibate vocations, but contraception destroys the complete and joyful openness to God’s will that fosters vocations and listening to God’s voice. Not that God can’t get through the storm sometimes, but from the big picture you see many more priests and religious and devout married couples coming from strong Catholic families than from the Birkenstocks.

“Kids used to go into the convent or seminary right out of high school.  Today we recgonize that this is not a good practice in general.”

In a previous era, adolescence lead into adulthood much more quickly than today, so it only seemed natural to do this. Children took up their parent’s secular vocation to earn a living out of necessity, so if you were going to seminary, you’d better be heading that way by high school. Whereas today our higher standard of living means there isn’t so much of a hurry, ergo it’s wiser for most to enter seminary later in life.

During the 1950’s I was one of thousands entering a preparitory seminary.(Highschool).I sincerely wanted to be a Priest. I spent 3 years of my highschool in a preparatory seminary. I observed hundreds of young men dismissed from the seminary. Vocations were plentiful ie. the seminaries were able to pick the cream of the crop.  By time I was 65 near the end of the 20th Century the shortage of Vocations was very apparant I was accepted to a Monastery and resided there for three years only to be told that I and one other Novice would not be allowed to take our vows and that we would be released. We were the youngest of all of the Monks in that Monastery.  I learned later that the new Abbot felt that he had too many old Monks and therefore released us because of our age.  My Novice Master was as broken hearted as I was.  I diden’t understand it in my younger days no more than I did in the later years.  I am resigned to believe that it was not God’s will.  I don’t believe there is a clear answer to your questions.  It’s a matter of Faith in God’s Will.

@Jennifer Fulweiler:  you asked if, during the Middle Ages, people entered the religious life because they were devote or for non-religious.  Two words: Peter Abelard.  While brilliant philosopher, Abelard is not known for his theology, and according to his own words, he entered into the religious life because he was unfit for anything else: he was fooling around with his student, Heloise, and her father had him castrated…ruling out marriage.

Jennifer:  you are right.  While reading Catholic publications from the 50’s, I was startled to find Pope Pius XII lamenting about the “vocations” crisis.  And the “crisis” was not global but local.  In the 20’s, you couldn’t attend Mass for 3 years in Mexico because of civil war.  Almost all priests in France were killed or eliminated during the Revolution but the French priestly vocations also dropped in half after 1905 when a whole lot of special privileges were dropped for seminarians - like not having to serve in the military.  4% of the men in England in the early 16th century were “clerics” (not all were priests but in one of the lesser clerical states) while a century later you could count the Catholic priests in some parts of English with the fingers of one hand.  From the research that I’m doing for my book:

First off: there are 46,772 *more* priests in the world in 2009 than in 1950 and 56,640 *more* seminarians than in 1950.  There are two parts to the equation (number of priests vs. number of Catholics) and we never seem to pay attention to the second one:  US!

Our problem: the Catholic population *quadrupled* in the 20th Century and grew 170% between 1950 and 2009 while the number of priests only grew 12.86% between 1950 and 2009. It’s a problem of success.  Babies don’t die by the millions before they are 1 and the average global life expectancy rose from about 30 in 1900 to 63 today.  Most people live and they live to be older adults.  And that’s a first in history altogether!  And the faith has spread dramatically in places like Africa.  So only 1/4 of Catholics live in Europe today while the majority lived in Europe in 1900.

Reality check: Even in 1950, the ordained, priests and bishops, constituted only 0.085% of the Body Catholic. That’s 8.5/100ths of 1%, folks. That means that in the “glory days” of the 50’s - before Vatican II was a gleam in Pope John XXIII’s eye - 99.915% of all Catholics were not ordained.

Why do we talk as though the sky is falling? Our perception of dramatic decline in the number of priests around the world is fueled by the fact that in 1950, North America and Europe were sitting by themselves at the ecclesial rich kids table.

In 1950, North America had one of the smallest priest/Catholic ratio in the world (619 Catholics per priests). We had a smaller priest/Catholic ratio than any part of Europe, 1/2 that of Africa and Asia, and less than 1/3 of that of Latin America.

Today: we are still sitting at the rich kids table cause our priest/Catholic ratio (1,321 Catholics per priest) is still 5th lowest in the world and lower than that of northwestern and eastern Europe. Our ratio is 1/4 of that of Central (6,780 Catholics/priest) and Latin America (7,081) and roughly 1/2 of that in the world overall.

Because of explosive population growth, the only place where there isn’t a “vocational” crisis today are places like North Africa where European Christians left in droves after their colonial empires collapsed and where native Christians are few and severely persecuted.

“Do you think the vocations crisis is the result of fewer men and women being open to God’s call to religious life, or the result of fewer worldly payoffs weeding out those who aren’t serious?”
    I think both reasons play a part in the decline. By the way, I also think there are still a certain percentage (10%?) of parishioners who belong to parishes not for religious reasons but for social reasons (kids have a better place to socialize and go to school, business contacts can be made, adults of a more mature level can be more easily met).

Another thought to consider is the explosion of the catholic conversions in the global south.  John Allen had an excellent article on this in the (sigh) National Catholic Reporter. 

The gist of it is that:
1. It is easier to baptize than to ordain
2. It is difficult to ordain in the home countries of some of these new vocations
3. The novices who come to the West for training have a tendency to stay because they like it here and the local bishop is desperate for priests.

Though the vocation shortage is “global” in a sense the reasons for it differ wildly depending on the location.

\\Another point on vocations. They may have been high in the 40’s and 50’s but how many were true vocations.\\

This is reflected in the big exit from rectories and convents shortly after V2.

With all due respect Jennifer I think that part of the problem is that many Vocation Directors (particulary those of the Traditional bent) are unwilling to consider men who come from broken homes. I myself have been turned away based soley on the fact that my father walked out on my mother when I was 12.

It is odd that you can have lead a dissolute life before your conversion (St Augastine, St Jerome, St Andrew Corsini), a worldly life (St Ignatius of Loyola, St Francis of Assisi or be a dead man walking (phllip gerard Johnson) and still be allowed to try your vocation, but GOD forbid that your parents are divorced, in that case from the moment your Father/Mother walked out the door your ceased to be a viable candidate for Holy Orders/religious professionn.

Thanks, everyone, for all your perspectives—I’ve learned a lot. I do think that because sexual sin is so rampant these days (after all, sex is practically pushed on our young people from all sides) and parents of young people (who themselves had probably had pre-marital sex and even lived with their spouse before marriage) are so badly catechized and their consciences are formed largely by secular values, they are not successful in instilling values that would enourage vocations in thier children. I think that many young people don’t recognize potential vocations in themselves until it’s too late.  I speak partly from experience; think that I might have been called to a vocation when I was young, but I was involved in sin and secular values and I deafened myself to the calling until it was too late.  I pray constantly for my own children—and for all our children—that they may remain pure for whatever vocation God is calling them too. 
  @LMG, my heart breaks for you that you were turned away because of your parents’ divorce.  I do think that perhaps not all vocations directors would turn you away for that reason, so if you feel that God is calling you to a vocation as a priest and/or consecrated religious, please continue to pursue that with prayer and persistance.  I’ll pray for you.  God bless you.

Jennifer, I can only refer back to when I entered the Catholic Church in 1949. The lines at Confession were often blocks long. Vocations were alive and well. I suspect because Life is Worth Living captivated TV, a great many vocations were due in part to the magnetic appeal of then Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. A Catholic that did not believe in the Real Presence was extremely rare. The Baltimore Catechism had no ambiguities. It seemed the (now seemingly lost) Golden Age of Catholicism to me. Abortion was an obomination.  Dissidents and violators of doctrine were disciplined.  Compare those times with conditions in the Church today.  May God forgive me, if I go to the grave wondering why we had to bring the Church into the corruption of the modern world instead of trying to overcome its corruption by bringing it into the Church.

The American culture, in general, is now gone.  American has, due to political correctness, become so sensitive to other cultures, we lost our own culture, several years ago.

When immigrants came to the US 50-100 years ago, most assimilated to our culture.  For many with European backgrounds, the mentality of many at that time was “what will the neighbors think” about diversions in family life that appeared less than stellar. So surface-wise, eveything had to look perfect.

That’s why so many secrets were kept. It was not that everything was so good.  Things were amiss, but rarely, if ever, did anyone speak of it. 

The same holds true for the Catholic Church.  Last year, I learned of a book St. Peter Damian wrote called, “The Book of Gomorrah”, that outlined what clergy life was like in his day, during the Middle Ages, and it’s similar to what was going on in church history of the 1950’s, up to today.

Peter Damian trying to get the pope to address the messes caused by too many priests and bishops.  But he failed.  Only now, with a literate populace, do we have access to this church history.  Only now, can we put the pieces of the puzzle together.  Only now, can a mother and father that cares about their child ask, “Do I really want my loved one to be a part of that system?” 

Until serious effort is given to ‘opening the windows’ on our church, as was John XXIII’s intent for Vatican II, thereby allowing the Holy Spirit to enter and guide, there will ALWAYS be a problem with vocations.

In a way, it’s not bad because good men will be entering a flawed system, one around since the days of St. Peter Damian.  It’s not likely to change on its own.

It’s better for our good men to be in the secular world, and have an influence over the church from the outside (with their dollars), and being good husbands and fathers, serving as the well-rounded role models for children that priests and bishops could never be.  Jesus is our Advocate to the Father, and it is written that He understands our problems because He lived our life.

To the poster indicating he was refused entrance to seminary, because of his father’ choice to abandon his family, it proves the priorities of seminaries has, for years, been skewed.  It proves that the qualifications for men in ministry were ignored, if you were rejected for that reason.

As long as appearances were looking good, all was okay for them.  But was it?  A godly and educated man from a broken home, such as yourself (who could have identified with abandoned wives and children, by the way, being compassionate) was rejected; yet, (actively) homosexual men from intact homes were accepted, and perhaps they have advanced to the role of bishop today.  It makes no sense.  I, too, appreciate history, and I liked this article.

Someone above writes that God is calling but people are not answering the call.

Is it possible that people are answering the call but are not being heard by seminaries or the church?

being called: Certainly not in the way one usually means this. Proposals usually require the bride to accept. A bridegroom worthy of union does not force himself.

I believe you are right. Most people are conformists, and don’t want to bother with social pressure, especially when they are not very sure it’s worth of it.
I know some people who were regular churchgoers when they lived in small town. Then they moved to big city and completely abondoned any religious practice. No, big city didn’t kill their faith. They simply have no any - they attended church in their small towns because everone did it, and not showing in the church was a minor scandal.

Great food for thought!! Jen, if you have anymore suggestions for reading please tell us.

Being a Christian today has no payoffs in this world.
My collegue put it nicely: “Why should I convert? Most good Christians I know are miserable - they have no health or/and career or/and family or/and children. Misteriosly, they are born with many talents in good families. The only logical conslusion is that their Christianity made them the filth of the world. So, converting would be a ticket to loserdom. Why should I risk everything I have for such a dubious promise?”

I think this is a great insight. The “vocation crisis” is used by people who want Catholicism to be a different religion. Church leaders should do what they think is right and this false crisis atmosphere does not lead to good decision making.

I doubt this. It is true that in culturally Catholic societies there are many spiritually immature people going along with the crowd. Going along with the crowd in many ways is helping them to live a moral life and actually helping their salvation. If you took them out of that environment they lack the spiritual maturity to persevere in the Faith, and they fall into all kinds of immorality too. But in that context they are in many cases being helped along toward faith’s goal, salvation. We are traveling toward salvation together, we are together in the Barque of Peter, we help one another.

Some may enter religious life with imperfect motives, yet (if the religious community itself is healthy) highly fortunate to have landed there where there is so much to help them on the journey. In Christian socieities there should be people committing themselves either to marriage or celibacy. Religious life SHOULD BE preferred for celibates because it is the most spiritually helpful (a “school of love”, analogous to the family) and it is also humane, compared with single life in the world where in the end you may wind up elderly and alone. If we care about consecrated people, we should want them to have a religious community life. Along the way there is a life of prayer, sacrifice, and service. It is sanctifying and it is a real contribution to the Church and the world. This can be true even when some religious have an imperfect understanding of what they are doing and why. When that is the case there is greater risk of people falling away or living inconsistent with their religious vows. But there is also the possibility of their growth, of their becoming saints.

Seminarians & priests having an imperfect understanding of what they are doing and why?

It may be my misinterpretation of the past few comments, so please correct me, if I’m wrong.  But we are talking about vocations to the ordained priesthood here, are we not?

Men with real vocations and callings from God would eventually be LEADERS of the church, the Body of Christ, otherwise known as the “Bride of Christ”, and our souls need constant care.

Men in seminaries, later ordained to the priesthood go on to become bishops, cardinals, popes, and as such, the teaching Magesterium of our collective Church.  As our leaders, potential seminarians must already be professed and seasoned BELIEVERS in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. 

They need to be sold out to the Gospel, good Role Models for the flock of Catholic-Christians entrusted into their care, and after ordination, be preaching & teaching the Gospel to them, in season & out of season…for life.

So a seminary candidate with the above qualifications would already have a great desire to teach & fulfill the Great Commmission, per instructions to all Christians, although these men would be ordained specifically for that role, commissioned on behalf of the institutional church to act in an official capacity.  When they teach US, then we are sent out to be salt and light to the world.

It is from THIS kind of qualified men that vocations must come.  Not from men that are confused if they believe in Christianity or not, or that look at being Christian (or a clergyman) as a way to avoid the suffering that comes from living in a fallen world (and yes, bad health, bad finances and bad relationships are part of living in a fallen world, per Genesis).  There WILL be trials, for a Christian.  Read the Bible - it tells us to EXPECT it.  The key is that trials pass - and we GROW from it, bringing God glory and equipped to help others.  Can we really have true compassion for a hungry person, if we always have food?  No.  We would not be able to identify with them.

We do not need men that go into the priesthood because jobs are hard to get in this economy, or because they are fascinated with Greek and Latin languages, and they want to be leaders of reverent liturgies, seeing themselves on the altar with opulent chasubles and gold vessels, or they want the clout that comes with being a bishop, or because they are homosexual and see the priesthood as an ideal venue to get accolades for agreeing to never marry a woman.

We need MEN, seasoned men that are sold out for Christ, and for His Great Commission, so lay Catholics will be educated in matters that have eternal value.

Everything will pass away: including ill health, poor finances and bad familial relationships.  But souls will last forever, as will God’s word.
We will all live somewhere, for eternity, the question is: Where?  Heaven or Hell.  The time to make the choice is here and now; we need educated clergymen to preach and teach us so we too, can grow in faith.

We need men that walk the walk, and do not just talk the talk (enough to fool the keepers of the gate at the seminary, allowing them entrance, and after they are ordained, they are wolves among sheep.)

Vocations come from knowing God.  Faith comes by Hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.  If seminarians or priests have “imperfect understanding of what he is doing and why” or he needs his lay sheep to lead him ... spare us from them, please!!! 

Magnificat: Christianity is responsible *only* for good, and it gives us a chance to be in the Family of a Holy God.  Our own SIN is responsible for the earth being cursed.  Bad things sometimes happen to good people, in a fallen world; but all things *work* for good for those that love God and who are called according to His purpose.

“.....but contraception destroys the complete and joyful openness to God’s will that fosters vocations and listening to God’s voice.”  Jason’s comment on 29 December 07:55 is spot-on.  To be a follower of Christ, you must be willing to accept the Glory of God in life, in deference to proclaiming your own glory from the mountaintops.  I believe that the Vocations Crisis is rooted in the quiet practice of illicit contraception in many, many Catholic families.  A thoroughly-bred defiance, growing like a cancer, is thus engendered, first against Church teaching, then against the Church itself, and then, ultimately against God Himself.  Who would have thought that “one little issue” could wreak so much damage?

A very good book to read is Michael Rose’s “Goodbye Good Men” It talks in great detail about how liberals brought corruption into the Church before but mostly during and after Vatican II. This book was published in 2002. But it is interesting that in some places there are no vocation crisis. I have been on You Tube and I see that as far as priestly and vocations as nuns and brothers, there is a slight but significant increase in young and even middle age people who want to serve the Church. If there is orthodoxy, then there are Vocations; in the last few decades these seminarians and nuns and brothers were persecuted and blackballed and driven out of the priesthood and religious orders.

There’s no vocations shortage: we all have one.

There’s no vocations crisis in Africa, Asia, or the southern Americas.

There’s too many young, rich men unwilling to surrender more.

There’s too many embittered, feminist nuns unwilling to surrender at all.

There’s too many couples unwilling to surrender to each other.

When I attended a Catholic all boys high school we were constantly told that a vocation to the priesthood was a “call from God.” As some of you have pointed out so well today we have seminary directors and bishops who think that they and only they are the arbiters of who has a vocation.  My prayer is, “that the church will accept and ordain all those who God calls to the priesthood.” If we do that there is no vocation shortage!

Uh ... those teaching at the seminary and vocations directors are, in fact, arbiters of the vocation. Not the only ones, of course, but necessary nonetheless. If they don’t agree, then it doesn’t matter what you think; just as if you didn’t agree, it doesn’t matter what they think.

@The Ubiquitous

So what happens if the Vocation Directors are narrow minded bigots who think that personwhose family background is less than perfect is automatically unfit to enter the seminary?

Maybe somebody has already commented: The vocations crisis is largely manufactured; certain applicants are filtered out for being too “rigid” etc. There has been ample recent testimony and documentation about this.

Our Bishops, Abbots, Father Superiors and Vocation Directors are so paranoid they discriminate because of age, any type of physical impariment, they want young, college educated and perfect physical condition men for their seminaries or their novitiates.

Blame who you want but our Church here in the United States wants perfect only by their standards.  Where would we be if Christ had picked only the perfect for His Apostles.  Ask your Bishop how many applicants for the Priesthood has he turned away because of age, education, physical defects ?  I suggest you will not get an answer.

@ LMG: Then everyone loses, of course, to some degree. However, you wouldn’t be culpable for that. In fact, your requirement would be to bear that cross and to turn the other cheek, and it could well be not only a fantastic witness but an even greater source of grace. (I say this because your comment belies some rage. Not just disappointment, but rage. Reminds me more of Fr. Corapi than Padre Pio. If this is an unjust comparison, consider it rescinded against you, but the point in the abstract will always stand.)

It’s worth remembering that in the middle ages, parents would often send children into monasteries if they could not take care of them.  During the reign of Louis XIV, families with many daughters would send the ugly ones into the convent, where the required dowries for the girls were much cheaper.  They would also send younger sons off to be priests, because the older son would take the lion’s share of the inheiritance, and would leave younger sons needing a source of income.

Clement Shea Jr-I hear you!  And I’m very sorry that you were asked to leave the monastery because of your age.

Back in the summer of 2004 I went to a ‘Vocations Prayer Service’ at a small rural parish in the southern part of my diocese.  I was with a friend from the parish I was in at the time, his wife, and a young man who was thinking of the priesthood or religious life.  Because we hemmed and hawed, we ended up missing the prayer service (everyone, including the Bishop we had at the time, was coming out of the church as we drove up), and stayed for the barbeque in the parish center.

After eating, there was a Q&A session with the Bishop and the-then Priests’ Vocation Director.  I was the first one to raise my hand and ask a three-fold question-I can only remember one of them right now: ‘What about us ‘older people’ regarding religious vocations?’ 

It just so happened that the Bishop’s secretary (a Polish-born priest I knew slightly) was sitting behind me, and he responded with, ‘What about the Dominican nuns on [he mentioned the street]?’  I turned around and retorted, ‘They’re ALL OLD WOMEN!’

In the end, the vocation director kept saying to me, ‘Let us help you, let us help you.’  When I and my companions were leaving at the end of the evening, he made it a point to seek me out and repeated, ‘Let us help you…’

I only saw him once more early in 2005, when after doing a lot of ‘email tag’, he and I met after he did a confirmation retreat at a former Vincentian mission house near my home.  In a few months, he was gone in the media witch hunt over a long-ago accusation of either negligence in supervising an altar boys’ picnic where one of them drowned (the boy’s mother brought the suit) or something having to do with a past accusation of sexual abuse. 

Since then, I emailed once the current diocesan vocation director after attending a soccer game featuring our younger priests and our seminarians.  I thanked him for putting on the game, then went into my usual ‘beef’ about older Catholics and vocations.  Never got an answer from him-he probably deleted it when he saw my age….phooey….

A generation ago many people entered religious life later because they were homosexual and “celebacy” was a socially acceptable way of hiding their lack of same sex attractions.

Our parish priest growing up was gay and it wasn’t exactly a secret to anyone who was paying attention. Nor was he the only one. Sadly, the disproportionate numbers of gay men in the priesthood was a large part behind the sex abuse crisis. (Most of the victims were older teenage boys, not children in general.) This also explains the trend of ultra-feminist, somewhat masculine nuns in the same era as well.

Now that it is socially acceptable to be openly gay and lesbian, these people no longer need to use religious life as a closet.

“The vocations crisis is largely manufactured; certain applicants are filtered out for being too “rigid” etc.”

There is a fine line between “Orthodox” and “Pharisee”. The Catholic Church certainly does not need Priests and religious who are the latter.

There have been many who have commented that the criteria for the priesthood is too stringent.  However, there must also be the recognition that in the past it wasn’t stringent enough, leading to the pediophile crises of the last decade.  In the end, we can’t compromise the quality of the priesthood for quantity because good priests grow vocations, while bad one’s turn people away, not only from the priesthood but from the church and ultimately from God.  If we focus on creating good and faithful priests now, many more will follow in the years to come..

I was in formation for 5 years in a religious order. I met some saints, but for the most part I was scandalized. I never felt so alone and isolated from others in my entire life. Was it my vocation? I don’t know. I think might have stayed if I saw and experienced more charity.

I am married now. That is my religious community now. We are the symbol of the Church, Christ and His Bride. Lots of love there!

I am married now. I cringe to think of the ones made it through.

Have you ever read Phatmas Vocation Station. There are many, many women who would enter religious life; however, convents and monasteries have endless “conditions” for entering. There are age requirements, health requirement, and there is pyschoogical testing ad infinitum. I have read that often convents and monasteries do not repsond to women seeking entrance. They do not respond to mail, e-mail or otherwise. Hospitals were once “hospitals for sinners”. Now, if one is not young, health and able to pass a battery of tests, one is not considered “suitable”. The vocation crisis, could be, in part, what I see as a lack of faith on the part of nuns in convents dying for lack of vocations. I say that they lack faith. I suspect St. Ignatius and Augustine would never have been allowed entrance…

This is article is simply wrong. 

Some eras of human history have been better than others.  St. Francis’ Rome was enormously better than today’s New York City.  It wouldn’t have been uncommon to have at least one neighbor who was unquestionably a saint.  We are lucky today if stroll across holiness and sanctity in our excursions across the vastness of the internet.

The vocation crisis, as I see it, is due to many problems which have already been mentioned but the biggest reason there is a lack of interest in the priesthood has got to be because most priests and bishops aren’t good examples.  If there were more priests and bishops willing to be bold and courageous for the faith, then more men would sign up. Real men like a challenge. Instead, our priests and bishops are fearful men worried about their tax exempt status and their business and political affiliates more than in the people of their church.  The show they put on may look good but most of the time the priest and bishops are only superficial in their faith.  Gov’t money and business grants have ruined the faith because the priests are called to be politicians and businessmen. When our priests and bishops decide to serve only God and not money, the seminaries will be full.