Do I Encourage Vocations?

In the parish where I work we are very fortunate to have three full-time priests, so we have no explicit reason to claim that we are suffering from the shortage of clergy. It makes itself felt, however, in subtle ways. One of those ways is in the culture of Mass intentions, which are filled up here about six months in advance. As the years have gone by and the number of regular Masses has decreased (though we still celebrate eighteen a week here, plus an average of two funerals and half a wedding) and the reform of the liturgy has ended the "side altar" Mass, the demand for Mass intentions has not decreased at the same rate. So many times I have rescued one of the poor kids who answers our phone and door in the evening from someone who is irate that they can't have a Mass said for their deceased loved one anytime soon.

But how many of these irate souls have ever encouraged their own sons or other young men in their life to consider the call to the priesthood? Not many, I would guess. That's where the clergy shortage ends up in its most unpleasant illogic: you can't expect the ministry of priests on demand while not encouraging priestly vocations.

But am I a hypocrite in this criticism I have just made? Yes, at least to some degree. Seeing a young man, an outstanding altar server or a thoughtful religion student perhaps, do I try to plant the seed of a vocation? Like a lot of my brother priests, and even among those who are happy, I think I am also hesitant. Why? I've thought a lot about this, because my hesitancy surprised me at first. If I am grateful for my own vocation and find a lot of joy and redemption in it, why would I not recommend it to another, even on just the human level?

I remember when I was a senior in college and I was first thinking about a vocation to religious life. There was an ex-seminarian, a philosophy major like myself, who heard about it and said, "Best of luck with your vocation." I hardly knew him, but it was a big moment for me to have someone simply say those words, "your vocation," and make it real for me. So why am I hesitant to do that for someone else?

I hesitate to recommend the secular priesthood to anyone for two reasons. First, because I don't feel like I really know anything about it. I don't know what it's like to go to a diocesan seminary or grow up attached to a specific local church. Second, the morale of the secular clergy--at least where I live--seems pretty low. For example, without something to fall back upon like a religious community perhaps, they are one accusation away from being on the street without a home, a salary, or a pension.

But what about religious life and/or priesthood within a religious community? Since this is my own vocation, for which I am exceedingly grateful to God and for those who have encouraged and helped me along the way, why am I also hesitant here? I think that it's because, though this is a beautiful life full of fine challenges and wide opportunity, it is a very hazardous life on the spiritual level. I have no doubt that if there is anyone in hell at all, there is a good proportion of religious and clergy. This life is a beautiful and well-beaten path of Christian discipleship, and it has been proven in its power to make saints, but religious life can also make you worse. In some cases, I think people end up worse for their religious life than they would have been if they had stayed in the world. This is because, at least in the mainstream, North American religious life that I know, you don't have some of the spiritual safeguards that secular people enjoy. For instance, in secular life you don't have the option of deciding you don't want to work for a living, but in religious life this sometimes happens, and a priest or lay religious becomes miserable in their idleness and infects the rest of the community with the rotten luxury of their laziness. Other religious, lacking the give and take of close relationships, which keeps a lot of ordinary people from becoming entirely self-centered, start to believe all the praise they receive and become the sort of narcissistic little kings that make people think there is something the matter with religion. Others simply get comfortable and complacent, performing religious functions while they pursue bourgeois values and middle class goals.

Now I'm not saying that this happens to everyone, or that there aren't genuine saints that you meet frequently in the course of religious life. But I do think that the reason I am hesitant to recommend this life to potential vocations is that the spiritual hazards of this life are real, intense, and in your face all the time. Worse, it has been my experience of religious life and ministry that we as religious or priests do not know how to challenge each other to avoid or work ourselves out of these pitfalls. So I don't know what I would do if I encouraged someone to join up and I saw his soul ruined by it. But doesn't that make me the man who buried his talent?

Privy Counselling

Recently I've been taking another look at the Book of Privy Counselling, in A.C. Spearing's translation. It's obviously by the same author as The Cloud of Unknowing, and is often bundled with it in editions of The Cloud. Privy Counselling is shorter and more practically direct than The Cloud, and I've enjoyed noticing what I underlined at my last reading, guessing at what must have been on my mind at the time. Sometimes I also think that the close association of The Cloud with Centering Prayer has led us to read it through that lens, sometimes to the detriment of the text.

Some of my favorite parts:

When you come to be by yourself...put aside good thoughts as much as evil ones..and see that nothing remains in your active consciousness but a naked purpose reaching out to God.

And so descend to the lowest level of your understanding (which some, on the basis of actual experience, hold to be the highest)

You are your own cross. This one reminds me of my favorite quote from St. Augustine, Factus eram ipse mihi magna questio, from Confessions 4.4.9, which I like to translate, "I became my own big problem."

The household of the spirit is marvelous, because its Master is not only the doorkeeper himself, he is also the door. He is the doorkeeper through his Godhead, and the door by his Manhood.

Franciscan Blogroll

Check out Fr. Herald as he blogs on mission in Sudan. He is a brother of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, who are originally a daughter community of my own.

Holy Communion And The Vote

The South Carolina pastor who gave this post-election exhortation has made plenty of noise, and his diocese has rightly rebuked him publicly. But what makes things difficult is that Fr. Newman's claim is actually correct:

Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exits constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil, and those Catholics who do so place themselves outside of the full communion of Christ’s Church and under the judgment of divine law. Persons in this condition should not receive Holy Communion until and unless they are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of Penance, lest they eat and drink their own condemnation.

But the assumption behind the statement is faulty. There was no "plausible pro-life alternative." Yes, there was an anti-abortion candidate, but just being anti-abortion doesn't make you pro-life. Being pro-life means holding up the life as the original value against everything that threatens it in the culture of death: abortion, capital punishment, pre-emptive war, structures of poverty, and disregard for the health of the creation. My implication, of course, is that neither of the two major candidates for president in this recent election lived up to these values enough to earn the label "pro-life." In fact, the only candidate I know of that seems to get it is Joe Schriner, a good Catholic by the way. I learned of him through a kind reader of this blog, and I have actually corresponded with him since. Give him your support in whatever he decides to do next with his campaigning.

We must pray for our president-elect's party that it might come to value the life of the unborn. We must all do our part to repent of all of our culture's sins against the sanctity of life, abortion especially. But we can't pretend that what secular politics calls "pro-life" is what is really implied by the term at its deepest Christian level, and we certainly can't let these compartmentalizations and oversimplifications into the Body of Christ.

The Optimistic Investor

In this Sunday's Gospel, Jesus likens the Kingdom of God to a man who entrusts his servants with a huge amount of money, and expects a return on his investment. My homily for this weekend is posted here.

Best. Prayer. Ever.

On Saturday the local funeral home sponsored their annual memorial Mass for all the families they had served over the past year. It's a beautiful event. There were about 150 people. The undertakers give them all lunch too.

At the conclusion of Mass we the ministers were standing in the vestibule greeting the people, and the cross bearer was standing next to me. A little girl, maybe five or six years old, came through the doors, turned, and just stood there looking at the crucifix. Eventually she just said, "Wow," and continued to stand there looking up at the Lord until she was called away.

Then one of the friars said, "That's the best prayer I've heard in a long time." Another exclaimed, "I have my Good Friday homily done for next year!"

I thought of Jesus' words to Nicodemus, "Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so tha teveryone who believes in him may have eternal life." (John 3:14-15) When the Israelites gazed upon the serpent they were healed, and so it is when we turn our spiritual eyes to the crucified Lord.

We Are God's Building

This weekend we celebrate the anniversary of the dedication of the cathedral church of Western Christianity, the basilica of St. John Lateran. My homily for this weekend is posted here.