The Vatican has issued new guidelines for the recruitment of seminarians with the aim of increasing vocations to the priesthood. I thought the reasons for the decline in vocations was worth noting:
- having parents who have different hopes for their child’s future;
- living in a society that marginalizes priests and considers them irrelevant;
- misunderstanding the gift of celibacy;
- being disillusioned by the scandal of priests who abused minors;
- and seeing priests who are too overwhelmed by their pastoral duties to the detriment of their spiritual life
The solution as every one knows lies within the family. Children need to be taught to pray and to see the priesthood as a gift. Obviously, too, involvement in good, solid, orthodox activities for boys are important – altar serving, good Catholic schooling, solid CCD, charity work, introduction to good priests and religious men and women.
For more information, see the Catholic News Service.
I agree with you regarding the reasons you listed.
Parents today think too much of worldly so-called ‘success’ for their kids (if they don’t contracept or abort them). Or else, if the kid does survive to be born, they’ll ask him, ‘When are you going to give me grandchildren?’
We need more parents like St. Therese’s, Blesseds Louis and Zelie Martin, who thought and lived with their eyes fixed on heaven. They wanted all their children to be serve God, and weren’t obsessed with the paltry things of this world. Parents aren’t as generous in giving their kids to the service of God in the priesthood or religious life.