Vocations

Can be found here.

The Rome seminary considered the West Point for U.S. priests has its largest incoming class in 40 years.

The Pontifical North American College is welcoming 61 seminarians in its fall classes beginning in mid-October, according to Catholic News Service.

The school, on a hill overlooking the Vatican, opened in 1954 with room for more than 200 students, but has not been full in recent years.

Monsignor Robert Gruss, vice rector for student life, told CNS that the college, which is sponsored by the U.S. bishops, will have 208 seminarians total this year.

A nice story on Archbishop Burke and the Kenrick-Glennon Seminary.

"The walks," as the seminarians call them, are opportunities for young men to have heart-to-hearts with a man who regularly meets with the pope, a heady prospect for a young priest-in-training. The conversations are usually casual, and the seminarians get to see a more personal, human side of Burke – like when he gets a little skittish around off-leash dogs.

Kenrick officials organize the walks using time sheets. When the sheets are posted, there’s a rush to sign on.

"It’s like when you throw pellets at the Japanese fish at the Botanical Gardens," said seminarian Edward Nemeth, 26. "Guys falling over each other to get their names on the list."

On Saturday, Nemeth and eight of his colleagues at Kenrick will be ordained as priests in the St. Louis Archdiocese – the largest St. Louis ordination class in 25 years and one of the largest in the U.S. It’s also the same number of ordinations in St. Louis as the last three years combined.

Since the 1980s, declining interest in the priesthood has been a growing crisis for the Roman Catholic church in the U.S., a situation that was compounded by the clergy sex-abuse scandal earlier this decade. One church study suggested that 80 percent of parents whose sons are considering the priesthood try to dissuade them, fearing their child is entering a life of loneliness and unhappiness.

Burke is credited for helping to address such concerns at Kenrick. He is active in recruiting priests and knows the seminarians, their names, their life stories, their joys and their fears. He’s also a frequent visitor to the seminary, sometimes dropping by unannounced for lunch with the students.

"He’s the center and the core of this whole thing," said the Rev. Michael Butler, the vocations director for the archdiocese.

The student body at Kenrick-Glennon, which includes the undergraduate Cardinal Glennon College and graduate-level Kenrick Theological Seminary, is 112 students, the largest enrollment in two decades and a 50 percent increase over last year.

We all know the story of when Moses returned to his people in Egypt to lead them to the promised land. The Pharaoh being annoyed at Moses’ request decides that the Jewish people have it too easy and so decides that they must gather their own straw in addition to cranking out the same number of bricks as per the normal quota . We all see the unfairness of this of requesting the same amount with smaller resources.

But do we see this unfairness when it comes to vocations to the priestly and religious life? We have smaller families and have no more children than is average among the secular culture and yet we wonder why the number of priest and religious are reduced. We demand that we have the same percentage of vocations to the priestly and religious life as when Catholics showed much more generosity when it came to having children.

Now I realize this criticism is an oversimplification and that there are many factors involved when it comes to men and women answering their vocations, but surely this is a factor. Just looking at history we see so many that answered the call to their vocations were often not the first or second born. Now I am not just talking about the rare cases like St. Catherine of Sienna who was the 23rd out of 25 children, but as a generality. Surely the contraceptive culture and the culture of death has had a toll on vocations? Though of course we can’t limit God in what he will do in answer to our own selfishness when it comes to vocations.

There is also just the psychological aspect where parents of smaller families are going to be much less likely to encourage a priestly or religious vocation since they might be more focused on grandchildren or their children having a career. This does not mean that to be a good Catholic you must have a dozen children or so since their is valid discernment in spacing children using legitimate means based on serious reasons to do so.

So while much of the so-called vocation crisis is people with vocations to other than the married or single life not answering the call, is this not a factor? God does not give us statistics (a perfect being would have nothing to do with statistics) on this or anything else so we can never know for sure what the effect is since God is very generous even when we are not.

If Vince Fiore had any doubts that he was being called to the priesthood, they ended when he saw Pope John Paul at World Youth Day in 2002.

The Sault Ste. Marie man attended a papal mass at Downsview Park, in Toronto’s north end. An estimated 800,000 people were there, but the St. Mary’s College graduate felt the Holy Father directed his homily straight at his heart.

“Do not be afraid to follow Christ on the royal road of the cross,” he said.

That’s all Fiore needed to hear.

“I thought, ‘All right, no more hesitating. I’m going to go for it,’” he said.

“Now here I am.”

Jean-Louis Plouffe, bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sault Ste. Marie, will ordain Fiore on Friday at St. Gregory’s Catholic church.

Fiore, 35, is the first Sault man to be ordained in more than a decade.

“It is my way of saying, ‘I love you, Jesus. I am totally yours,’” said Fiore.

“Becoming a priest is an expression of my love for the one who spared nothing by laying down his own life for love of me.”

You can read the rest here. There have also been several stories of men contacting seminaries and diocese in the wake of Pope Benedict’s visit here.

Here is an excellent article Why I became a nun, by former tennis star Andrea Jaeger

Moniales OP has a good post Thinking of becoming a nun? Check the website

Here is a beautiful conversion story of Brother Martin Ervin who went from being a singer in a punk rock bank and the drug lifestyle to joining the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal.

Bob Ervin calls his brother’s conversion and vocation to the religious life a “miracle.”

” I’m really proud of him,” he said, adding that he believes the struggles his brother experienced were necessary for him to be the kind of person he is today. “He’s very charismatic. It’s just an absolute miracle.”

One day in the office, Brother Martin overheard his brother talking about vocations to the priesthood and religious life, and he said he felt something stir within him.

” As I was standing there, all of the sudden this little fire kind of burst in my heart and I felt myself say inside my heart, ‘You’re going to do that someday,'” he said.

Bob Ervin credits the Holy Spirit with inspiring his brother.

“I don’t think I was on a mission to change him at all. It was the Holy Spirit. That’s the thing about living the Catholic faith – if you actually live it, you can’t really predict what’s going to happen with it,” he said.

“I do remember one talk we had when he told me he was thinking about his vocation. We talked for like four hours about how awesome it is to live with Christ.”

As they say “read the whole thing.” This also reminds of something that I heard Father Groeschel say once about about seeing a punk rocker with one of those notable haircuts, that you just never know and that they could be the next Saint Paul.

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