Guidelines for promoting vocation to priesthood unveiled
June 26, 2012: The Congregation for Catholic Education on Monday presented "Guidelines
for the pastoral promotion of vocations to the priesthood", at a Press conference
in Vatican. Four years in the making, the 27-page document has three main parts that
tackle the state of vocations in today’s world, the vocation and identity of priesthood
and suggestions for the promotion of vocations to priestly life.
While vocation
to the priesthood is a gift from God, the future of the priesthood also depends on
the present coherence of Christian life in families, parishes, communities and priests
themselves, who must help create a space that encourages young men to consider priestly
life in an often discouraging world, the document noted.
The document is the
result of a questionnaire sent out across the universal Church following the 2008
plenary assembly of the Congregation and was drawn up in collaboration with Congregations
for the Evangelization of Peoples, for the Oriental Churches, for Institutes of Consecrated
Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, and for the Clergy.
Describing the current
situation of priestly vocations as “good and bad”, the document begins by focusing
on traditionally Christian countries in the West. It points out how unbridled consumerism,
falling birth-rates and a fall in religious practice have led to a decline in vocations
and an increasingly elderly pool of priests to serve the Church.
The document
points out a series of reasons that leads to young men ignoring a vocation to priestly
ministry. Firstly, the spreading of a secularized mentality that discourages the response
of young people to follow the Lord Jesus more radically and more generously, secondly,
parents, who “reserve little space to the possibility of a call to a special vocation”,
thirdly, the gradual marginalization of the priest in social life, with the consequent
loss of his relevance in the public sphere. These elements include "a tendency
towards the progressive transformation of the priesthood into a profession". This
can be associated with "the danger of exaggerated activism, an increasing individualism
which not infrequently closes priests in a perverse and depressing solitude, and the
confusion of roles in the Church which comes about when we lose the sense of distinction
between roles and responsibilities, and not everyone comes together to collaborate
in the one mission entrusted to the People of God".
“Furthermore, in many places
the choice of celibacy is questioned. Not only a secularized mentality, but also erroneous
opinions within the Church bring about a lack of appreciation for the charism and
the choice of celibacy”. It states that “however much the pastoral ministry for
vocations in Europe and in the Americas is organized and creative, the results obtained
do not correspond to the efforts made”. Instead it says that “where clear and challenging
proposals of Christian life are offered”, particularly through new evangelisation
initiatives that are carried out in cooperation with the domestic Church, there are
signs of recovery. The document constantly returns to the early Christian life
and community – the family, parish and movement or association. It states young people
are more open to God’s call when they are presented with a strong example of Christian
life in the home, or wider community. Moreover, they feel encouraged to consider a
vocation as a result of the “joyful witness of the priests” they have encountered
in their lives.