Second, is it common for people who discerned they did not have a calling to priesthood or religious life to end up wandering away from the Church? If that’s the way things can end up, I’d rather not begin discerning, because I’m already fairly sure I won’t go the distance, and would rather be a faithful member of the ordinary laity than a super-spiritual heretic!
I too have seen what you describe, also among SOME lay people who join secular orders, charismatic movement etc.
I think this has more to do with a certain personality type than the discernment process per se, someone we might call a “seeker”. this is the person who is always looking for the next best thing, for whom every new interest (spiritual, relationship, or otherwise) becomes an all-consuming enthusiasm bordering on passion to the exclusion of all else.
This is the person who when they adopt you for a friend want your exclusive attention, spend all their time with you, do everything for you, then drop you cold when they find a new friend in need.
this is the person, and we see them all the time in RCIA, who tries on new religions like new fall fashions. From being a devout whatever in childhood, move rapidly in their teen and young adult years through hare krishna, mennonite, serving with Mother Teresa’s mission, pentecostal, episcopalian, Jews for Jesus, and their flirtation with the Catholic faith is just another stop on the trolley. When they were buddhist they wanted to be monks in Japan. When they were pentecostals they wanted their own deliverance minstry. When they were Catholics they were convinced they had a religious vocation, and so forth.
They are attracted, I have come to believe, by listening to their stories, by all that is superficial in various spiritualities, religious expressions, people, ways of life, and never come to any deeper realization of the need for surrender to Christ and are out of touch with their deepest selves. Possibly they are unable for psychological or other reasons, at least at this stage of life, to go any deeper.
Fr. Groeschel speaks of this type of personality in some of his writing, particulary those books that deal with the psychological aspects of the spiritual life.
They like the idea of living in a cloister, praying all the time, incense, wearing a habit and sandals, eating vegetarian, but are completely unable to embrace or even value the obedience and humility, work and service to others that is the hallmark of the monastic vocation. They like the drama of charismatic worship, the simple emotional songs, the dramatic manifestations like tongues and falling, hope to be healers and be recognized as such. They are completely unfamiliar with and resistant to Paul’s classic teaching on the charismatic gifts, and have no interest in building up the church being wholly consumed by their own “spirituality”.
this is the person who simply cannot pray in any way except the fad of the moment. If you are quietly praying your rosary, or if there is a group in church praying liturgy of the hours, they find it highly disturbing because “I am into contemplative prayer” (yes I have actually heard this) and everyone should clear out so they can have silence. If they come to the chapel where the sign asks for Silence, they MUST play their CD of spiritual music because they can’t pray without it. If they have discovered the liturgy of the hours, their breviary must be the best, and they are more concerned with the cover being real leather and saying the offices spot on time than with the content of the prayer itself. They hear the rhythm but never the words of the psalms.
Please pray for them truly I don’t know the answer.
