Discerning dioceses and life!

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Beamer7892

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Hello!!

I have been discerning my vocation for a while now and I am open to whatever God asks of me. After a lot of prayer and inner reflection, I think I may have a vocation to the priesthood. Though I am open to serving God in that capacity, I have ran into a dilemma.

I grew up and came into my faith in the one diocese but I left to college and have spend three years in another diocese. I love both diocese and I can imagine being a priest for either one. Even to make matters more difficult, I still have not ruled out the religious life.

So I guess my question is, how do I discern these specifics of my vocation? My concern is contacting vocation offices is that I don’t want to express interest then leave.
 
Why don’t you explain to the vocation offices how you feel?

They may be able to advise & probably understand your situation better than you realise.
 
I would wager a large percentage of people at your stage of discernment are in a similar situation, grew up in one diocese and just recently left home and are somewhere else. As someone else said I bet it is a very familiar situation for vocations directors.
 
You are never going to be anything if you are too shy to talk to vocations directors. Get over it. It is their job. Time is wasting.
 
I knew many guys in college that went through exactly the same thing. Some chose to go back to their old home diocese (where they grew up). Some chose to stay in their new home diocese (where we went to school).

As the others have said, just keep praying about it. And there isn’t a need to put off calling the vocations director. Making a phone call isn’t making a hard-and-fast commitment to be a priest in that diocese. Just make the call. I’m sure that the vocations director for either diocese will have great advice for you as you continue praying about it.

God bless you in your discernment! 👍
 
I was in a similar situation where, having grown up in one diocese and begun my initial discernment there, I later found myself discerning a call to another diocese some, considerable distance away! I felt I needed a reason to chose one over the other and found that reason after spending some time listening to God in prayer. The vocations director in the second diocese was aware of my dilemma from the outset and was very supportive - he wanted to support me in my discernment regardless of what diocese I ultimately chose. this makes sense when you think about it given that we are, after all, a universal church!

If the two dioceses are close to each other that might make things easier becuase it may mean that you might be able to change later on - especially if they are in the same province (as in they are under the same Archdiocese - if you’re not sure check out the list here: catholic-hierarchy.org/diocese/qview1.html#us). Besides that, they may also send their seminarians to the same place to study - this is something which you would need to check with your vocations director. That aside, it is not impossible for a seminarian to change diocese during the course of his studies but that depends on a number of things and so, at the risk of stating the obvious, it’s better to make as firm a choice as possible from the outset.

Hope this helps
 
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