General interest

Steubenville Vocations

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Terry Mattingly, author of the syndicated “On Religion” column for the Scripps Howard News Service, posted an interesting piece last week entitled, “Future nuns, priests face big questions.”

By “big questions,” Mattingly is really talking about the perennial questions surrounding the discernment of one’s vocation, but with the added complications of today’s landscape, including the dramatic decline (and graying) of religious vocations in America in recent decades.

The primary focus of the piece, however, concerns the response to these “big questions” by students at Franciscan University of Steubenville, where vocations have been flourishing. For example, Mattingly points out that the Priestly Formation Program on campus has produced 400 priests (with many more still in formation) over the past 25 years.

He also mentions that “many of America’s 244 Catholic colleges and universities offer similar programs.” Of course, if there were 244 Steubenvilles, we wouldn’t be wondering about tomorrow’s vocations (except maybe about where to put them all!). As it is, very few colleges have fostered vocations the way Franciscan University has.

Mattingly gives several reasons why Franciscan University enjoys such success. Clearly the vibrancy, or what the school at times calls its “dynamic orthodoxy,” is very attractive.

Yet, I think Fr. Richard Davis, T.O.R., whom Mattingly quotes in the article, does well to stress the fact that there are three male and four female religious orders that maintain houses near the campus. Fr. Davis also pointed out that many other orders regularly send younger members to visit the campus or study there.

“Our students are very sensitive to this,” said Davis. “New styles of habits and robes keep appearing here all the time. The students see that and it makes them curious. . . . This campus produces a large number of priests, but I believe even more of our young women become sisters and nuns.”

Click here for more information on this summer’s youth conferences sponsored by Franciscan University of Steubenville.

General interest

Funding Vocations

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A few days ago I received in the mail the newsletter of the Mater Ecclesiae Fund for Vocations (MEFV). I remember when Corey and Katherine Huber were going public with the MEFV about five years ago. It seemed like a very good idea then; it seems like a great idea now.

What the MEFV does is help those pursuing priestly or religious vocations by eliminating financial obstacles. Many prospective seminarians or religious aspirants have outstanding student loans that must be paid before they can enter the religious institute. The MEFV takes over the regular student loan payments of its grant recipients once they begin their formation.

For more on how the MEFV grant program works, click here.

What really grabbed my attention, though, was the news that the MEFV awarded 18 new vocation-enabling grants in 2011! The total amount of the grants was $450,000.

It should be noted, too, that the MEFV has a carefully constructed list of approved seminaries as well as criteria for approving religious institutes. We’re proud that affiliation with the Institute on Religious Life is one of the criteria the MEFV uses in determining whether a given institute is faithful to the Magisterium.

Two other features of the MEFV site I really like are of course the numerous vocation stories and the Grant Recipient Milestones page, which provides continual updates regarding entrance into novitiate, first vows, final profession, ordination, and other such important moments in the life of a priest or religious. Those pages mean a lot to those of us who contribute to the MEFV, and they remind us of the great spiritual benefit of all the prayers and Masses that are offered for MEFV benefactors.

That of course brings me to the “Donate to the MEFV” page. For those of you who would like to financially support vocations, I highly recommend the MEFV as a “holy mutual fund” that supports an impressive “portfolio” of seminarians and religious, and which already is clearly paying spiritual “dividends.”

General interest

An Undivided Heart: The Book

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The online store at the Institute on Religious Life has a wonderful selection of vocation-related resources.

One such resource is An Undivided Heart: Pope John Paul II on the Deeper Realities of the Consecrated Life, by Sr. Evelyn A. Schumacher, O.S.F. An Undivided Heart illuminates Pope John Paul II’s teaching on the mystery of the consecrated life by weaving together his many exhortations, treating all the essential elements in a way that not only instructs the mind, but also inspires the heart and elevates the soul.

This 94-page book serves well as an introduction to the consecrated life for novices and those in discernment, but could also benefit religious who are seeking personal renewal. An Undivided Heart has questions for study and reflection for each of the eight chapters and a bibliography.

Cardinal Francis George of Chicago calls it, “A much-needed book in this moment of the Church’s life.”

This is just one of several such gems available through the Institute on Religious Life. Check out our online catalog today!

Cloistered life

Allentown Carmelite Monastery

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Today I visited the website of the Carmelite Nuns of the Ancient Observance, Monastery of St. Therese, in Coopersburg, PA, near Allentown. This Carmelite community is an affiliate of the Institute on Religious Life, but I hadn’t read much about them. What a beautiful cloistered community! Click here for their horarium, or daily schedule.

What really struck me, however, was the online biography of the community’s foundress, Mother Therese of Jesus, O. Carm. (1877-1939).

The occasion for writing the biography came when, during an expansion of the monastery’s mausoleum, Mother Therese’s remains were exhumed and were found to be incorrupt, despite the passage of 63 years!

The Coopersburg Carmelites follow strict papal enclosure. The essence of their daily life is living in the presence of God, in imitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the prophet Elijah. They pray especially for priests, religious, and for all missionaries, and they pray and do penance for the whole world.

The Coopersburg Carmelites maintain their own orchards, bake altar breads, and do other labors in cloister to maintain their monastery.

General interest

It’s Not About Us

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For Archbishop Onesimo C. Gordoncillo, the Church’s outreach to young people and families is a top priority. He has been the shepherd of the Archdiocese of Capiz on the island of Panay for 25 years now.

This island lies in the Western Visayas Sea and belongs to the Philippines. The seat of the archdiocese and capital of the province of Capiz is Roxas City, with around 150,000 inhabitants. It is known as the “seafood capital of the Philippines.” The locals live either from fishing or from agriculture. Continue reading It’s Not About Us →

General interest

Open to Life, Open to Vocations

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Check out Terry Mattingly’s post from last Thursday entitled “Fewer children? Then fewer nuns . . .” This post is a commentary on an earlier Religion News Service article on that topic, based on the CARA Report on the newly professed religious issued a couple months ago. He asserts that the shrinking of American families has contributed to parents’ unwillingness to have their children enter religious life.

Mattlingly points out that while there is a “season of demographic decline” among women’s religious communities, there are some religious communities are booming. He makes the connection that there must be a doctrinal component in all this and says that’s the Vatican’s take on it, too.

From my own experience as the father of a young religious sister, I can surely affirm it’s a doctrinal matter—both for those entering religious life as well as for the parents, whose faith and lifestyle have a huge influence on their children.

As I noted in my comment at the end of the post, what really struck me was the closing comment about promoting vocations in a “culture nervous about large families.” Large families have alway been considered a sign of hope and divine blessing. Ours is largely a “culture of death” lacking in supernatural hope. And so we’re nervous.

More simply put, if the family is without a living faith and doesn’t esteem religious life (or priesthood or even having more kids), then it’s not fertile soil for vocations. That’s why we need a “new evangelization.”

General interest

Evangelizing the New Generations

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Let’s once again unite our prayers this month with those of Pope Benedict XVI. Here are the Holy Father’s intentions for April 2011, as published by the Apostleship of Prayer:

  • Evangelizing the New Generations.  That through its compelling preaching of the Gospel, the Church may give young people new reasons for life and hope.
  • Missionary Expansion.  That by proclamation of the Gospel and the witness of their lives, missionaries may bring Christ to those who do not yet know Him.

All of us have a role to play in the evangelistic, missionary activity of the Church, and a great way to start is by praying for these intentions each day.

Also, It just so happens that the national meeting of the Institute on Religious Life at the end of the month is focusing on the theme of using the new media for the new evangelization, as proclaiming Christ to a new generation is the perennial mission of the Church.

I hope you can join us for this fantastic conference. I’m especially interested in hearing the presentation by Tom Peterson, the founder of Catholics Come Home, one of the most dynamic “new evangelization” programs in the Church today.

News

Pope’s Way of the Cross

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This Lenten season has witnessed a renaissance of the Stations of the Cross devotion in the Suprenant household. We invite a family to share soup (asking them to bring a vegetable to add to the soup) and bread for dinner, followed by a “way of the Cross” that leads through our home, complete with meditations by St. Alphonsus Liguori and of course the traditional “At the Cross her station keeping . . .”

For that reason, I was especially delighted to come across the following news item, courtesy of ZENIT:

VATICAN CITY, MARCH 28, 2011 (Zenit.org). An Augustinian woman religious will write the meditations for the Way of the Cross led by Benedict XVI on Good Friday in the Colosseum.

The Pope has given the task to Mother Maria Rita Piccione, a contemplative who is president of the Federation of Augustinian Nuns, the Vatican press office reported Friday.

The illustrations that will accompany each station in the booklet have been created by Sister Elena Manganelli, another Augustinian religious.

This is not the first time that a woman writes the Good Friday meditations. In 1993, Pope John Paul II entrusted the task to Benedictine Mother Anna Maria Canopi; and two years later, Sister Minke de Vries, from a Protestant convent in Switzerland, wrote them.

In 2002, five laywomen collaborated with 11 men — journalists accredited to the Holy See — in writing the meditations.

The tradition of praying the Stations of the Cross in the Colosseum was reinitiated by Pope Paul VI in 1964; the tradition goes back to the Holy Year of 1750.

Pope John Paul II decided in 1985 to ask contemporaries to prepare the meditations; previously they had been drawn from writings of the saints.

News

Vocations in Japan

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Last week, the Holy See’s Press Office announced the appointment of two new bishops in Japan:

–Appointed Fr. Paul Sueo Hamaguchi, pastor of the cathedral church of Takamatsu, Japan, as bishop of Oita (area 14,071, population 2,376,414, Catholics 6,288, priests 50, religious 228), Japan. The bishop-elect was born in Higashi Shutsu, Japan in 1948 and ordained a priest in 1975.

–Appointed John Eijro Suwa of the clergy of Osaka, Japan, moderator and pastor of the pastoral zone of Kochi Takamatsu, as bishop of Takamatsu (area 18,903, population 4,031,481, Catholics 5,100, priests 46, religious 84), Japan. The bishop-elect was born in Kobe, Japan in 1947 and ordained a priest in 1976. He succeeds Bishop Francis Xavier Osamu Mizobe, S.D.B., whose resignation from the pastoral care of the same diocese the Holy Father accepted, upon having reached the age limit.

My first thought on reading about these appointments was to pray for the new bishops as they begin their episcopal ministry amidst the immediate aftermath of the horrific happenings in their native country.

My second thought was wonderment at the universality of the Church.

But then I took a closer look at the numbers. Here in the United States we have approximately 68 million Catholics, well over 20% of our country’s population. However, we have only about 46,000 priests and 60,000 or so religious. Both of those figures are less than 0.1% of the total number of Catholics.

As you can readily see in the above information published by the Vatican, the two Japanese dioceses that received new bishops have miniscule Catholic communities in comparison to the total population of the diocese. However, nearly one percent of the Catholics in those dioceses are priests, and more than one percent are consecrated religious.

Is that significant? Well, several parishes here in Kansas City have 5,000 or more Catholics. If we had priests in the same proportion as Japan, we’d have 50 priests per parish, with over 130 consecrated religious. Not too shabby! 

As we continue to pray for the people of Japan and contribute to relief efforts, let us also continue to pray that the Church in Japan, originally evangelized by the great Jesuit missionary, St. Francis Xavier, will see a new springtime of faith and holiness.

General interest

Priests on Facebook?

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Today I thought I would give a plug to an excellent, new Catholic website called Catholic Lane. There are already several interesting items archived at the vocations page, including a series of testimonies entitled, “The JPII Generation Tells Its Story” and a thought-provoking four-part series entitled, “Reflections on Latin and the Catholic Church’s Memory and Identity.”

The article that really caught my attention, though, is the one entitled, “What Do You Think: Is Facebook a Place for Priests?”–a topic that I’ve often wondered about myself.

The author, Thomas A. Flynn, a seminarian with the Legionaries for Christ, is not on Facebook himself, but even-handedly sets forth both the pros and cons–some of which I think would apply to religious and laity as well. Check it out here.

While on the subject of the use of new technology by priests and religious, I encourage readers to consider attending this year’s national meeting of the Institute on Religious Life, April 30-May 1 in Mundelein, Illinois. The theme is “Go Make Disciples,” and the conference will focus on how best to utilize the new media in the new evangelization. For more information or to register now for the event, click here.