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PriestVocation
Guest
Is that right?
- Status
D
DihydrogenOxide
Guest
You are right. The baby boomer generation experienced a very low amount of accepted vocations. I say accepted, because the vocation may have been given, but ignored.
There is actually a rise in vocations in the US. The religious life is experiencing a rebound. If you want to see a place filled with those having religious vocations, look at the Franciscan University of Steubenville.
There is actually a rise in vocations in the US. The religious life is experiencing a rebound. If you want to see a place filled with those having religious vocations, look at the Franciscan University of Steubenville.
W
whm
Guest
They are expanding the seminary in St. Louis to accommodate all the new vocations! 
I believe this is happening in other strong diocese as well.
I believe this is happening in other strong diocese as well.
D
dachsiemom
Guest
Enrollment in the seminary of my diocese is highest in 10 years.
F
Franze
Guest
in Spain we are having more priests but I think that it´s for economic reasons, people know that in parishes, there is a lot of work and future respect other jobs with many competence, unemployment or you are a simple proletariate of Wall Mart.
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psalm139a
Guest
I’ve heard (probably on this forum, lol) that during the 1950s there were a lot more vocations than had been typical up to that point, so the decline in the following decades was even more pronounced. Things still aren’t good; lots of parishes (at least that I go to) have priests from India and African countries because there aren’t enough American priests to meet the demand. But I agree with the previous posters; things are starting to turn around. Even at the seminary in Boston, the diocese that was probably most hurt by the priest abuse scandals, is seeing an increase in vocations, and there are several orders of religious sisters that are doing VERY well (e.g. Dominicans in Ann Arbor & Nashville, and the Sisters of Life are three of the big ones). So I guess the answer is pretty much what’s already been said; there has been quite a shortage, but (at least for the orthodox orders and in some dioceses) things are improving. Especially, I might add, in places with Eucharistic Adoration. The church I currently attend has had almost 30 vocations in the last ten years or so since their priest started Eucharistic Adoration, and I’ve heard similar stories about other parishes.
J
JReducation
Guest
Actually, the vocation crisis in the USA is not as bad as we paint it. The 1950s were an exception to the rule.
The big problem today is that Catholics no longer live in migrant ghettos as they did once upon a time. We’re dispersed all over the city, suburbia and rural America. The great distances and the population explosion is greater than the supply of priests to meet those demands. Those realities were not there when Catholics lived in small enclaves.
As I have often said on these threads, American Catholics were spoiled by religious. Many religious orders gave up the religious life to serve the population in parishes. This did wonders for the parishes, but it decimated the religious orders of men. When we turned around and looked what we had left was diocesan priests dressing up as religious men, not religious.
Community prayer, meals, manual labor, silence, enclosure, liturgy of the hours, community mass, community recreation, community retreat, community meetings, community duties, separation from the laity and the secular world, poverty, obedience to a superior instead of a pastor, detachment from places, discipline, community schedules, the habit, equality within community between the ordained and the lay religious, were all sacrificed because someone said that we had to be there for the laity in the parish, at the hospital, catholic schools, colleges, universities, parish organizations and other diocesan functions.
When all of these things went out the window, because the Church thought that it was too important to take care of the laity in parishes, male religious life almost became extinct.
Today, there is a recovery of male religious life. Male religious do not want to be like their older brothers and suffer their fate. We want to be back in the habit, back in the enclosure, in silence, doing manual labor, studying, prarying rond the clock, observing a community schedule with prayers, recreation, meals, chores around the house. We want to go back to what our founders dreamed and set up, to communities that were true botherhoods where we all shared in the ministry of the order, not just the ordained. We want to go back to the original ministries of our orders, most of them were not parish ministries or with the middle class or higher. They were with the poor, on the streets. We want to go back to spending hours enjoying each others company as true brothers should be doing.
We want to go back to missionary work, street minsitry, soup kitchens, street counseling, working with immigrants and taking care of the sick in their homes.
To do this, we have to move out of the parishes. We have to ordain less men so that we are not caught up again lending our men to the diocese. We only need one or two priests to say mass for us. We don’t need tons of priests as we had in the 1950s.
We want to let the older religious men who were so attached to parishes finish off their lives there, because it would b cruel to pull them back into a religious existence that they lost a long time ago. But we are no planning on replacing too many of them, unless it’s a very poor parish that cannot afford to pay a diocesan priest a salary, since we do not work for salaries. Our income is from begging and from other forms of work.
There are vocatiosn out there. The Franciscans in the USA alone have split over and over again, because we are so large. Currently have have the four original communities and the other branches that have come from them and they are thriving.
The original four are:
Friars Minor
Friars Minor Capuchin
Friars Minor Conventuals
Secular Franciscans
Then there are the branches that are being born each day.
Brothers of Penance (TOR)
Francisan Brothers of Peace
Franciscan Brothers of Life
Franciscans of the Renewal
Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word
Franciscans of Charity
Franciscans of the Immaculate
Franciscan Brothers of the Eucharist
Little Brothers of St. Francis
Franciscan Brothers of Christ the King
Franciscan Friars of the Ancient Obeservance
Capuchins of the Primitive Observance
This has happend thanks to the John Paul II generation. These men have a vocation to live the religious life. But they will tell you, that they do not have a vocation to do what our older brothers did during the 1950s, to give up being religious to become diocesan priests in habits.
We will not be seeing this large group of priests in parishes again, unless the secular men step up to the plate and enter the secular seminaries. There are some regional seminaries that are attracting secular men to the secular priesthood.
But we have to do two things:
But to go back to the OP, there are vocations out there. They just look different. But they are good for the Church and equally holy.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
The big problem today is that Catholics no longer live in migrant ghettos as they did once upon a time. We’re dispersed all over the city, suburbia and rural America. The great distances and the population explosion is greater than the supply of priests to meet those demands. Those realities were not there when Catholics lived in small enclaves.
As I have often said on these threads, American Catholics were spoiled by religious. Many religious orders gave up the religious life to serve the population in parishes. This did wonders for the parishes, but it decimated the religious orders of men. When we turned around and looked what we had left was diocesan priests dressing up as religious men, not religious.
Community prayer, meals, manual labor, silence, enclosure, liturgy of the hours, community mass, community recreation, community retreat, community meetings, community duties, separation from the laity and the secular world, poverty, obedience to a superior instead of a pastor, detachment from places, discipline, community schedules, the habit, equality within community between the ordained and the lay religious, were all sacrificed because someone said that we had to be there for the laity in the parish, at the hospital, catholic schools, colleges, universities, parish organizations and other diocesan functions.
When all of these things went out the window, because the Church thought that it was too important to take care of the laity in parishes, male religious life almost became extinct.
Today, there is a recovery of male religious life. Male religious do not want to be like their older brothers and suffer their fate. We want to be back in the habit, back in the enclosure, in silence, doing manual labor, studying, prarying rond the clock, observing a community schedule with prayers, recreation, meals, chores around the house. We want to go back to what our founders dreamed and set up, to communities that were true botherhoods where we all shared in the ministry of the order, not just the ordained. We want to go back to the original ministries of our orders, most of them were not parish ministries or with the middle class or higher. They were with the poor, on the streets. We want to go back to spending hours enjoying each others company as true brothers should be doing.
We want to go back to missionary work, street minsitry, soup kitchens, street counseling, working with immigrants and taking care of the sick in their homes.
To do this, we have to move out of the parishes. We have to ordain less men so that we are not caught up again lending our men to the diocese. We only need one or two priests to say mass for us. We don’t need tons of priests as we had in the 1950s.
We want to let the older religious men who were so attached to parishes finish off their lives there, because it would b cruel to pull them back into a religious existence that they lost a long time ago. But we are no planning on replacing too many of them, unless it’s a very poor parish that cannot afford to pay a diocesan priest a salary, since we do not work for salaries. Our income is from begging and from other forms of work.
There are vocatiosn out there. The Franciscans in the USA alone have split over and over again, because we are so large. Currently have have the four original communities and the other branches that have come from them and they are thriving.
The original four are:
Friars Minor
Friars Minor Capuchin
Friars Minor Conventuals
Secular Franciscans
Then there are the branches that are being born each day.
Brothers of Penance (TOR)
Francisan Brothers of Peace
Franciscan Brothers of Life
Franciscans of the Renewal
Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word
Franciscans of Charity
Franciscans of the Immaculate
Franciscan Brothers of the Eucharist
Little Brothers of St. Francis
Franciscan Brothers of Christ the King
Franciscan Friars of the Ancient Obeservance
Capuchins of the Primitive Observance
This has happend thanks to the John Paul II generation. These men have a vocation to live the religious life. But they will tell you, that they do not have a vocation to do what our older brothers did during the 1950s, to give up being religious to become diocesan priests in habits.
We will not be seeing this large group of priests in parishes again, unless the secular men step up to the plate and enter the secular seminaries. There are some regional seminaries that are attracting secular men to the secular priesthood.
But we have to do two things:
- Promote vocations to the secular priesthood.
- Feel good about allowing religious men to go back to their way of life. Let go of the recentment and don’t take it as a betrayal or abandonment.
But to go back to the OP, there are vocations out there. They just look different. But they are good for the Church and equally holy.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
P
PriestVocation
Guest
Interesting…
J
JReducation
Guest
I believe that the future of the American parish is in the hands of seculars, not religious. We’re not going to see those large numbers of religious men running parishes. It’s not the will of God, the will of the Church, the will of the founders and the charism to which religious men are called. There are always going to be som religious men ordained priests. Some are going to be assigned to parishes. But these are going to be your poor parishes with an abundance of immigrants, single parents, crime, drugs, and other social ills that only the religious can address through their lives of prayer, silence, penance, detachment, and the spirituality of their founders.Interesting…
The average middle class parish or higher is going to be short of priests. These parishes will thrive as they promote diocesan vocations. Ultimately, they are the responsibility of the local diocese.
We need to put the religious men back where they belong: missions, streets, soup kitchens, universities, high schools, healthcare, monasteries, friaries, among the immigrants, the media, Respect Life, chaplaincies, preaching, silence and so forth.
Our greatest mistake was to blend the calls to the secular priesthood with the call to the consecrated religious life. When you take something out of context, it’s not going to work very long. It will debilitate, because it loses its identity.
I recently had a communique from someone in Australia who lives in a Carmelite parish. What makes that parish work is that the laity has become very Carmelite. The friars have not become secular priests. They retain their Carmelite spirituality, schedule, routines, customs, prayer life, community life and so forth. They even live in a Priory, not a rectory. They have a non-ordained Carmelite as superior, not a priest. The laity love and accept the role of the Prior (superior). The laity picks up when the friars are not available and they don’t complain. They are happy when they go to the office and are told that there are no friars around, because the friars are praying, having community recreation, doing manual labor in the priory.
I’m led to wonder, how many parishes would tolerate this without coplaints.
Many years ago I was assigned to a hospital. I’m not in healthcare. I was one of the chaplains. The only time that we had a priest come to the hospital was when someone needed confession or Annointing of the Sick. The friars did all of the spiritual counseling. We dealt with end-life decisions that faced families. We held the hands of the sick and the families. I remember being awakened in the middle of the night. There was a baby about to die without bpatism. I baptized that baby. The baby is now about 30.
My point is this, there are men willing to respond to the call from Christ. But they no longer look like they did during the 1950s or 60s. If we look carefully, there is a place for men who are called to be priests, religious or both. But they won’t look the same. Maybe we have to give up the old model, because it did not work. It almost destroyed the Church. Can you imagine the Church without religious men, just priests? The Church herself remind us that religious life is essential to her life.
**24. Religious, by their particular form of consecration, are necessarily and deeply committed to the mission of Christ. Like him, they are called for others: wholly turned in love to the Father and, by that very fact, entirely given to Christ’s saving service of their brothers and sisters. ** (John Paul II)
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
C
CatholicGuy22
Guest
I wonder if this is true.
J
JReducation
Guest
I’m confused. You wonder if what’s true my friend?I wonder if this is true.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
J
Joseph629
Guest
In Canada here, there are NOT enough priests (from our own country). Bishops have had to close churches because of it. In the cities, we have had to rely on ‘missionary’ priests from Africa and the far East.
However, as we are in the new ‘Springtime’ re: JP2, there is a slow (very slow) , but steady increase in ‘some’ seminaries. Actually there aren’t even that many seminaries compared to the past. I probably have personally known over 2 dozen young men enter in the past 10 years, and I am encouraged by that. I see a similar growth for ‘Religious’ as well.
But we need to pray. J.
However, as we are in the new ‘Springtime’ re: JP2, there is a slow (very slow) , but steady increase in ‘some’ seminaries. Actually there aren’t even that many seminaries compared to the past. I probably have personally known over 2 dozen young men enter in the past 10 years, and I am encouraged by that. I see a similar growth for ‘Religious’ as well.
But we need to pray. J.
P
PriestVocation
Guest
After a survey on this topic and on different articles I realized that in the US there is some increase of vocations but still there are present problems which still preocupies the American bishops and the Catholic community there such as the perspective of still not having enough priests.
I live in a country where is an excess of priests and religious vocations and most of the seminarians are “exported”.
I live in a country where is an excess of priests and religious vocations and most of the seminarians are “exported”.
J
JReducation
Guest
We have a number of obstacles in the USA, probably Canada and Europe too.
- The national populations are larger than they ever were before.
- The Catholics have spread. It was easier when Catholics lived in ghettos. You had one parish for several thousand people living in one square mile.
- Catholic families are much smaller. I believe that vocations are more common in larger families. It’s simply a larger pool of people.
- American Catholic parents are inconsistent. They want more priests, as long as it’s not their son or a loved one. I had a wonderful example in my own family. My wonderful Catholic aunts and uncles will talk to me about every subject, except the fact that I’m a Franciscan Brother. They are nasty when we this subject comes up. They don’t even like it when I come around in my habit, which is 24/7. They now tolerate the habit, because they realize that it’s not going away. But toleration and acceptance are not the same thing. Both of my parents are deceased, so there is no buffer between my uncles, aunts and me. It makes me very sad and I’m a pretty tough guy. Can you imagine a younger guy just out of college or in college?
Br. JR, OSF
C
cargau
Guest
Honestly, I think the Church brought back the Diaconate program in anticipation of this issue. I believe Deacons will have a much greater role both in ministry and administratively. I am in my first year of discernment/formation and we we’re just talking about this topic last week. There are eleven guys in my class.
Deacons are not lay people, they receive the graces of ordination. So, who else would you turn to other than Deacons as the Apostles did in the early Church…
Deacons are not lay people, they receive the graces of ordination. So, who else would you turn to other than Deacons as the Apostles did in the early Church…
J
JReducation
Guest
A community of our brothers run a parish with one ordained brother, six non-clerical brothers and five secular deacons. Those deacons are great. In fact, tonight I had the honor of teaching a bible class with one of them. While he’s not a theologian, it was great for the students to see two men in very different walks of life: a religious and a secular deacon. For them to see how we are different and yet compliment each other is a powerful witness, especially in today’s world. People often spend more time accentuating the differences between them, rather than complimenting their giftedness in the service of God.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
C
cargau
Guest
Hi Brother,A community of our brothers run a parish with one ordained brother, six non-clerical brothers and five secular deacons. Those deacons are great. In fact, tonight I had the honor of teaching a bible class with one of them. While he’s not a theologian, it was great for the students to see two men in very different walks of life: a religious and a secular deacon. For them to see how we are different and yet compliment each other is a powerful witness, especially in today’s world. People often spend more time accentuating the differences between them, rather than complimenting their giftedness in the service of God.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
We are all in the service of God’s people. Really a Deacon is called to the streets in service first and foremost. I know some great deacons who a truly holy men. I hope and pray to be like them someday. I also had a number of good brothers teach me in high school. They’re passion and caring were always a real anchor for me.
The common bond among all of those called by God is our love for the Trinity, love for the Church and love for God’s people. Those a pretty good common denominators, don’t you
think?
J
JReducation
Guest
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