Marketing vocations
The Catholic Church worldwide is facing difficulties in attracting sufficient candidates for the priesthood and the religious life.
As we observe the World Day of Prayer for Vocations on May 15, Pope Benedict urges that “every member of the Church needs consciously to feel responsibility for promoting vocations”.
The pope’s concern resides especially with cultures where the call to the consecrated life “seems to be drowned out by ‘other voices’ and [God’s] invitation to follow him by the gift of one’s own life may seem too difficult”.
He clearly refers to a western culture which offers greater lifestyle choices than were available in the past—and this is true as much in urban South Africa as it is in Europe or the Americas. It is also a culture in which entering the priesthood or the religious life is decidedly unfashionable, even countercultural.
For many reasons, some of the Church’s own doing, the priesthood and religious life are no longer positions of prestige or even social privilege—undeniably qualities that in the past helped attract vocations.
The arguments that blame the reforms of the Second Vatican Council for the vocation shortage are misplaced. Vatican II coincided with huge social shifts in western life.
Rapid secularisation and declining birth rates in western society have diminished the numbers of potential candidates. Once families might have had six or more children from whom one or two would enter the consecrated life, sometimes prodded by parents or bound by lack of other opportunities. Now families have two or three children who tend to have a wide range of lifestyle options, and usually they are not encouraged to pursue a religious vocation.
Much improved education systems have created a vast field of career opportunities that stand in competition with the consecrated life. For many who in the past might have opted for the priesthood, the promise of material comfort and family are more compelling.
In short, the religious vocation is a tough sell. Today, it requires great courage and immense sacrifice to follow God’s call.
Pope Benedict in his message for Vocations Sunday this year offers concrete advice.
Proposing vocations on the local level, he writes, means “having the courage, through an attentive and suitable concern for vocations, to point out this challenging way of following Christ which, because it is so rich in meaning, is capable of engaging the whole of one’s life”.
Young people must be led to develop an intimate relationship with Christ and be made to “understand that entering into God’s will does not crush or destroy a person, but instead leads to the discovery of the deepest truth about ourselves”.
Pope Benedict urges every diocese to staff its vocations offices, “that valuable means for the promotion and organisation of the pastoral care of vocations and the prayer which sustains it and guarantees its effectiveness”, with competent and suitably qualified people.
One may add that dioceses and religious congregations should be urged to become more effective in marketing vocations as a life option. In that, they might need the pro bono help of the faithful: from experts in advertising and marketing, and from those who have the means to finance viable endeavours and strategies.
The pope also urges the faithful to pray for vocations, as Jesus did before he assembled his group of disciples (Lk 6:12).
Indeed, vocations are the business of all the People of God. So we will be wise to take to heart the pope’s observation:
“Every moment in the life of the Church community—catechesis, formation meetings, liturgical prayer, pilgrimages—can be a precious opportunity for awakening in the People of God, and in particular in children and young people, a sense of belonging to the Church and of responsibility for answering the call to priesthood and to religious life by a free and informed decision.”
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