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Guest
Statements by one religious who may have had some sort of vocation director position in her religious order surely cannot condemn a whole generation in a sweeping generalization.
These are two qualities (chastity and mental stability) that are almost a ‘goes without saying’ re qualities necesssary in an application for religious life. An applicant with a recent history of promiscuity is one matter, an applicant with promiscuity in his or her past and has now lived some years in Chastity is another matter entirely. Mental stability is different as years of mental stability after an episode or epsiodes of mental illness does entail a risk the instability will re-occur with the difficulties of religious life. This is risk only, it is not necessarily a fact.
Interestingly, a Carmelite prioress said to me that she thought a few of her long standing religious probably suffered Bipolar although unaware and undiagnosed. She felt that at the time of entering the illness was latent, but triggered to life in the course of religious life. Such a statement by one prioress cannot say anything assured about all religious nor religious orders. Mental illness may not be present at the time of applying - something in the course of religious life might trigger it into life and not necessarily prior to final profession. I know personally one religious who had been a religious for 25 years when mental illness onset and really seriously so. She was abandoned by her religious order and asked to leave (she sought dispensation and this was granted) and now lives a very lonely life - but still a faithful and practising Catholic. She is still a very mentally disturbed and now aged woman living alone. This cannot be the basis of any sort of sweeping statement about religious and their lives.
I also know a Catholic priest who was very ill indeed on a psychiatric ward and never visited once by his brother priests. No reason whatsoever to condemn our whole priesthood.
If this is a problem in the modern world preventing the spread of The Gospel, then it needs to be addressed by The Church. And it really is as simple as that. In the course of our history in the world as The Church, many social problems have arisen blocking the spread of The Gospel - the task is to address the problem or problems. We are situated as The Catholic Church and The Mystical Body of Christ militant on earth for the sake of the world embracisng it - including all its problems. Although at this point in time and it has been for some time, The Church presents alarming problems to the world in the recent and even ongoing scandals being revealed and sourced amongs some of the priesthood of The Catholic Church.
Daily prayer for Pope Francis.
What I also wonder with the fall of in vocations to religious life and the priesthood, is that is it a problem of lost vocations, or of never having them in the first place. This is not a statement, but a logical question to ask, I think.
We were warned:
Matthew 18:6
But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea.
If one understands the Doctrine of The Mystical Body, then one understands why the sin of one member becomes the heavy problem and the great burden of all in The Church and without exemption as does the consequences of that sin or sins. We are all members of the one Body of Christ. Pope Benedict stated that the only things we have to fear is the sin of our own membership of The Church: catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1104798.htm
