Published: July 6, 2012
Parents should not block vocations
New Vatican guidelines
The following was published on the Catholic News Agency website June 25.
Parents should be careful not to block their son’s calling to the priesthood, new Vatican guidelines on promoting vocations say.
“Even though a sense of respect for the figure of the priest is cultivated in Christian families, it is still noticeable, especially in the West, that they have a certain difficulty in accepting that their child may have a vocation to the priesthood,” said the document launched by Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, head of the Congregation for Catholic Education, at the Vatican June 25.
However, “if families are animated by a spirit of faith, charity and piety they become, as it were, an ‘initial seminary’ and they continue to offer favorable conditions for the birth of vocations.”
The 29-page document, entitled “Pastoral Guidelines for Fostering Vocations to the Priestly Ministry,” is the culmination of four years of work by the Congregation for Catholic Education. It draws together the responses received to a questionnaire issued to the universal Church in 2008.
The guidelines call on parishes to help parents become more aware of their role as “educators in the faith so as to develop in the heart of the family the human and supernatural conditions that make possible the discovery of a priestly vocation.”
While the Church around the world is seeing an overall rise in seminarians in recent years – including in North America – Europe continues to show a slow but steady decline.
The new guidelines also identify other stumbling blocks to discerning a priestly vocation. It points to the spread of secularism, the marginalization of the priest in social life “with consequent loss of his relevance in the public square,” a lack of appreciation of priestly celibacy, including by some Catholics, the fallout from Church scandals, and the bad example of some priests who exist in a “whirlpool of exaggerated activism” that can “weaken the shine of priestly witness.”
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Posted Friday, July 06, 2012 2:55 AM By OSCAR
PARENTS need to be educated or re-educated in the fact that - CCC: " 2223 Parents have the first RESPONSIBILITY for the education of their children. They bear witness to this responsibility first by creating a home where tenderness, forgiveness, respect, fidelity, and disinterested service are the rule. The home is well suited for education in the virtues. This requires an apprenticeship in self-denial, sound judgment, and self-mastery - the preconditions of all true freedom. Parents should teach their children to subordinate the material and instinctual dimensions to interior and spiritual ones. Parents have a grave responsibility to give good example to their children. By knowing how to acknowledge their own failings to their children, parents will be better able to guide and correct them". It is a sin to neglect your children by not teaching them their prayers, taking them to Church, and giving them a Christian education. It is a sin to give them a bad example. It is a sin to neglect to watch over your children, to monitor their companions, the books they read, the movies and TV that they watch, and their use of the internet. - See Guide for a good Confession pg 2344, new MFT Daily Roman Missal. Remember that St. Padre Pio told a woman she was going to "HELL" because she was too lenient with her children. Also see CCC # 2226, 2252, and 2253 - before it is too late. Go to Confession, and don't be lazy.
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Posted Friday, July 06, 2012 3:17 AM By MAX
Again, this is a failing of US Bishops and their Priests to actively encourage the reading of the CCC. WHY are they so lax ? ? ? If we lived according to the CCC (which many have never read or even seen) which incorporates Holy Scripture, this World would be a different place. Children's vocations are covered in the CCC.
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Posted Friday, July 06, 2012 4:14 AM By AnnAsher
I pray these guidelines are given attention and heeded. I give an "amen!" to the comment on exaggerated social activism (fr pavone). I add that it has been my experience that too much enthusiasm can also make things more difficult for men who are called.
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Posted Friday, July 06, 2012 5:59 AM By Abeca Christian
This should test us and mean it when we say to Jesus "thy will be done"! Just think of all the protestants who have done wrong by blocking their sons into the fullness of the faith, their sufferings heading into the wrong path not ordained by our Lord. More shameful when it is coming from in house. One thing is not knowing out actions, a good parent will have that good sense sooner or later to know. I look to the heavens and ask God to forgive me for all the times I have done any wrong, blocking what the Lord has willed on anything He has commanded. For this good reason, we seek God's graces in order for us to know what His will is and to honor it! Praise be Jesus Christ! May nothing stop what God has willed in Jesus name we pray!
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Posted Friday, July 06, 2012 7:09 AM By JLS
The problem is the coddling of boys with the view of developing their vocations ... we see the results today in all the scandals. Priests should come from boys who develop normally and not with some pixie dust idea that they are different.
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Posted Friday, July 06, 2012 7:23 AM By Phil Malham Jr
I would agree, if the training was of the True Church.....If it's all this Vatican 2, I'm okay, you're okay Church, then they need to stay away.........
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Posted Friday, July 06, 2012 8:18 AM By MD
I think the first thing that has to be done to encourage vocations is setting up adoration in as many parishes as possible. If you listen to the vocation stories of many priests, a lot found their vocation in the prayerful reflection found while adoring the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. Vocations are the greatest fruit of adoration. God Love You.
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Posted Friday, July 06, 2012 9:58 AM By John F. Maguire
In reply to Phil Malham: The identification *Vatican II = false church* is the sorry call-sign of false traditionalism. It is an inversion of the position of the Vatican II Rupturists -- I mean, those who reject the Church of the Ages in the name of Vatican II. Need I say, both positions are false
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Posted Friday, July 06, 2012 10:58 AM By Bob One
Doesn't the call to the priesthood come from God? Why does he call so few? Are so few worthy of the vocation? How we build up a williness to accept the call is the job of the family, the parish and the diocese. In the last thirty years or so, few role models have been called and made it through seminary. Even good Christian men don't want to be associated with a group that is considered immoral by many- ie. the sex scandals, Also, the chruch is very counter-cultural. What is valued by society in general is very much the opposite of the teachings of the church. That is hard for an individual to overcome. I don't have an answer or an opinion on how to do this, but we have got to make being a priest an attractive vocation for men. Until we do we will continue to import priest from other countries.
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Posted Friday, July 06, 2012 12:33 PM By goodcause
Many parents have concluded that the priesthood is not a calling that they feel comfortable with, let alone their son. My mother thought there was a religious vocation in me but ran it off the road through years of harsh "motivation" and abusive behavior, all in God's name. The writer here that quoted Padre Pio telling a woman she was going to hell for being too lenient with her children is contributing to our very seriuos child abuse problem in Catholic families. They equate violence in the home with Christian courage, a sick and very dangerous way of thinking that has damaged many lives.
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Posted Friday, July 06, 2012 12:34 PM By Clinton
Another stumbling block in discerning priestly vocations is the Novus Ordo Mass. With altar girls, communion in the hand, the horde of "Eucharistic ministers" and the like, it is difficult to inculcate to a young man what it means to be a priest. Thankfully, traditional parishes are cultivating a love of God and the Church in the hearts and souls of young men. They are the future of the Catholic Church.
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Posted Friday, July 06, 2012 3:13 PM By Kenneth M. Fisher
2:55 AM By OSCAR,
While I have no doubt that Padre Pio would tell someone what you said he did. Please tell us where you got that statement from. I have read many of the books on St. Padre Pio, and I have known persons who were very close to him, but I have never heard that.
God bless, yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher
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Posted Friday, July 06, 2012 3:23 PM By Kenneth M. Fisher
I know of a young man that comes from a somewhat bad family situation that tells his grandmother that he wants to become a priest. I am certain that this comes from his grandmother's many prayers and sacrifices. Please pray this young man perseveres in his desires.
God bless, yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher
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Posted Friday, July 06, 2012 3:28 PM By Kenneth M. Fisher
12:33 PM By goodcause,
You write of which you know not. St. Padre Pio had the God given gift of discerning souls. He was not extreme in anything that I know of. If he told this woman that, he not you, knew what was good for her soul.
How do you define "good cause"?
By the way, St. Padre Pio only celebrated the Novus Ordo once; when he did, he returned to the Sacristy pale and immediately asked the Holy Father for an Indult which was immediately granted.
God bless, yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher
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Posted Friday, July 06, 2012 4:46 PM By JLS
"Why does he call so few?" by Bob One: I cannot fathom how Bob One can be in a parish leadership position and have virtually no knowledge of Catholicism. Jesus plainly says, "Many are called, but few chosen". These novus ordo leaders are living oxymorons to Catholicism.
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