Vocations: The Work of the Whole Church

The following Homily was preached yesterday, April 22, 2018. Many people requested the text, which is placed below.

Today you all may notice that the Intercessions of the Mass deal almost exclusively with the issue of Vocations, because today, ‘Good Shepherd Sunday’, is the same Sunday we celebrate as the beginning Vocations Awareness Week.

The issue of Vocations, especially in the West and North of the world, is one at which many good people scratch their heads and seem unable to account for the visible decline all around us. We look in the empty Seminaries of Western Europe and the Americas, and fail to see the overflow from Africa and Asia. Yet even within our country and abroad, there are places where vocations are flourishing. I would like to suggest that the issues that have lead to the decline in Vocations, and in Catholicity in general, can be largely explained in three parts:

Demography is Destiny.
The pernicious effects of secular education and the collapse of the Catholic educational imperative.
The clericalization of the laity, and the laicization of the clergy.

The empty cradle and the empty Church

The discussion of the decline of Catholicism and other traditional religions in the West has been overwhelmingly dominated by the socioeconomic and the spiritual. Yet I would like to argue that before we even touch these subjects, the first questions we ought to ask are demographic. In demography, a country is considered to have a replacement birth rate if it hovers at 2.1 children per couple, which means that the population of a country will at least remain stable from one generation to another.

Most Catholics have followed the majority of the country in falling below the replacement rate. In some studies, the average Catholic couple in the United States is producing 1.8 children. Granted this, can we be surprised that our traditional, educational institutions should struggle, at the very least because there simply are no kids? We can’t speak of vocations to begin with if there aren’t enough kids to even receive them.

We also ought to consider that even as Vocations to the Priesthood and Religious Life are emerging increasingly from only child households (myself included), there is a pivotal question no one is asking: on a very natural level, if a couple lacks ‘spare tires’ to pass on the family name, will that couple and extended family be willing to support a child when he senses the call of Christ? I remember my Father, for example, asking me, even when I was years into formation to become a Priest, “How’s Allison doing?” (Allison was my High School Senior Prom Date.) Even though my parents knew I was happy doing what I was doing, there was always the slight edge that somehow to not procreate or marry constituted a personal and familial betrayal. Yet as Christ said, “He who loves Father or Mother more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:37). I for one took those words of Christ very seriously. Some young men however may not readily possess such fortitude.

Secular education: the solvent of religious faith and formation

After a discussion of children as a basic unit of the Church and society, we also ought to examine the role of their upbringing. The vast majority of you here present are products of Catholic Education. Many of you would say, and I have heard you say, that you are who you are today because of your Catholic Education. I hear constantly among older Catholics fond and loving stories of their Priests and Nuns; and even if they recall them with trepidation, like the stereotypical mean Sister with the ruler, everyone sees them as formative influences.

Consider that, for example, in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, by the time of the death of Cardinal O’Hara in 1960, over 90% of Catholics were educated from K-12 in Catholic Institutions. O’Hara was well on the path of making that trend continue through college for Catholic Youth. Similar examples can be recalled across the country.

What happens when you send your child to a school? You consent, in a large degree, to have your child reared by adults, with whom they spend more hours of their waking, conscious youth than with you in your home. Teachers and coaches in a school become surrogate parents. They exercise authority over your children. Also, the other children as peers are formative to your children. Whether they behave as civilized children or animals matters.

Now if you consider, as you all already know, that most government schools are either irreligious or anti-religious, that children in some places spend more time learning about sexually transmitted diseases than English grammar, or where violence and bullying is routinely tolerated en masse, we have to ask seriously if a Catholic parent today is grievously abandoning their sacred duty to raise their child according to the Catholic Faith.

I would like to remark, moreover, that the solution to this problem is not, and will never be, PREP, CCD, or whatever name they call it today. Let me be completely clear, because I have taught PREP for Four Years: if you are sending your child to PREP and aren’t even going to Mass, you are wasting my time and your money. I cannot sprinkle Holy Water on a lifetime of religious and moral ignorance. Especially if PREP is the only religious formation they receive, it is already a clear signal to them that Christ and his Church are at best subordinate to sports and other worldly pursuits, and at best it is a hobby, a pastime or therapeutic device, devoid of any real meaning or power. I do not deny the good will and love with which many teachers have dedicated themselves to the religious education of children who attend government schools, but I also personally hear their unending complaints and worries about the children. They console themselves with thoughts such as “Well maybe some of it will stick.” Or, “we are planting seeds.” Yet Our Lord sternly warned us about throwing our pearls to swine. And as for the seeds analogy, it borders on the absurd when we are planting seeds in salted earth. This is another manifestation of the words of C.S. Lewis, where we demand the function, and remove the organ. We expect faith, but do not impart knowledge. We teach virtue, but hand our children to the wolves. It’s like teaching children once a week that the world is round, only to have them hear that it’s flat the rest of the week. That’s not how education works. Do not give your children to Caesar, if you don’t expect them to come back to you as Romans.

On the other hand, when it comes to our Catholic schools that do exist, we have had a systemic failure, both Priests and Lay Faithful: where there is a greater temptation to view them as Elite Preparatory Schools, rather than the seed bed of the Church’s mission. Parents fail to demand that their Catholic schools be Catholic, and Priests continue to be withdrawn by short-sighted leadership from the schools, where they could do incalculable good, only in order to “service” dying parishes. In this, the vitality of young Priests especially is wasted on a long twilight. Why do we focus so much on parish youth groups, when we forget we have an established potential youth group in every single Catholic school that exists?

Catholic Education is the mission of the whole Church. It can be academically excellent, morally upright, and financially affordable. There are still Dioceses in this country where Catholic Education is free! But this requires leadership and ingenuity, and the engagement of all Catholics. I hear with sympathy the complaints by some that Catholic Education is too expensive. I have two questions: first, to what do you compare the expense of Catholic Education? Second, have you made enough of an uproar yourself, so that affordable Catholic Education becomes a priority, as it ought to be?

Laity in the Sanctuary, Clergy in the Narthex

For my last point, I would like to recall a story a Priest of 40 years once told me. As a young Priest in the 70s, he was handing out bulletins in the Narthex of the Church, generally being social with the people. The head usher looked at him and said, “Father, this is wrong: you should be in there, and my wife should be here with me.” The man gestured to the altar, where his wife was distributing Holy Communion, while the Priest was handing out bulletins. This is a powerful story.

When a person wants to become more “religious”, why do we immediately have the urge to make them a Lector, or a singer, or an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion? (I do not deny that these things are good, but they aren’t the only things) Why isn’t our instinct, as Priests and people, instead to deploy our precious manpower on things like door-to-door Evangelization or other events which reach out to the local community? I find it problematic that precisely as the laity were entering the Sanctuary in the past 50 years, Priests were exiting in droves as social workers and political activists. This is a serious derangement. The Apostles in the Acts of the Apostles, which we read all throughout the Easter season, decried the serious problem of being taken from the work of teaching and sanctification to “wait at tables”. Why, then, is it considered more “pastoral” for a Priest to direct Bingo and make small talk than to distribute Holy Communion at every Mass? Why is a Priest in some places is considered more “real” if he wears lay clothes? Moreover, why do some laity indirectly or directly expect these things, and then express surprise when the Priest lacks purpose, sometimes even dangerously flirting with abandoning his sacred vocation?

What do these attitudes and practices say to young people? Firstly, what is the Eucharist, if the Priests themselves neglect to protect it and feed their people with their own consecrated hands? Why should a young man give himself to a life of celibacy, of prayer and of self-denial, if he can be easily replaced by the hairdresser or the football coach? Secondly, what is the Priesthood, if we simply view him as a nice guy, or a glorified social worker?

Dear people, I want to be clear: a great deal of this derangement is due not to the lay faithful, but to the negligence and apathy of the clergy. I do not wish to cast blame, but rather to raise a clear call: what are we doing now, here and now, to assure that more people are becoming disciples of Jesus Christ? I assure you, and I believe this with all my soul, that we do not get the Priests we need. We get the Priests we deserve. Because it is only if we first form good Catholics, that we will get good Priests. Only if we make Catholics, will we even have a pool from which to draw Priests. Our entire apparatus must shift to the full-throated proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, before which all other considerations are secondary.

What can I do?

I never like to make any sort of criticisms without proposing possible solutions. Here are a few I’d like to mention:

First: have babies! I see how difficult and expensive raising a child can be today, but you make no greater gift to the world and to the Church than to raise a child with love and Christian Faith.

Second, call your local Catholic school and ask what you can do to help. Even if, and especially if, you don’t have children there, it is still everyone’s duty to support the Catholic school. When you go to buy groceries, purchase SCRIP at your parish or school office in order to subsidize someone’s tuition. If you are a parent, please consider what I said today about Catholic Education, and consider sending your kids to our schools. You parents who already send your kids to Catholic school, we need you. Attend our fundraisers, promote the great things your kids are doing to other neighborhood parents. Be proud of your school, and help support our mission by your willing collaboration. Above all, practice the Catholic faith and demand that it be revered, taught and practiced in your school.

Third, consider new and interesting ways where you as a Catholic lay person can spread the faith in the world. I always marvel at how in Public Schools, Jewish Holy Days, where only a minuscule percentage of the children are Jewish, are observed as days off. Now imagine if every Catholic parent of a Catholic child made a stink about things like Catholic Holy Days of Obligation, or Sunday Mass attendance, let alone the moral teachings of the Church! What if Catholic parents appealed to their local Congressman to get tax credits for Catholic Schools?

Fourth, promote the Priesthood as something exalted and worthwhile. For too long, in the name of dismantling the “Cultic Priesthood”, or of somehow discouraging clericalism, we suppressed any pride in the glory of the Catholic Priesthood, which is the single living institution in the world which has contributed as much countless human and divine advances as it has. We have a lot to be proud of.

Finally, I want to make a note about the “abuse scandal”. I have seen many Priests and lay faithful wring their hands and lament the Priest scandal as the reason why young men aren’t considering Priesthood. I have seen them enervated because they are afraid of being hated or mocked for being proud of the Priesthood, even in spite of the failures of some. Let me be clear: I have never heard any man forsaking the Priesthood because of Priests who committed crimes, any more than I have ever heard of a man deeply in love with his fiancée call off their wedding because his next door neighbor beats his wife. The Abuse Scandal is a whipping boy, an excuse for us to absolve us of responsibility for demanding and encouraging young men who are vital, upright and zealous from pursuing the Priesthood. I remember a neighbor once asking me as a teenager why I would enter the Priesthood when it was “full of pedophiles and perverts.” I simply replied, “because I’m not.” We can no longer afford to fail to support good vocations because of some bad apples.

Today is a day during Vocations Awareness Week to start to ask ourselves as a Church what is working for us and what isn’t working for us. Why, or why not? Scripture tells us that we will reap what we sow. If we sow bountifully for the future by investing in children and in their integral Catholic upbringing, we will merit to have borne sons capable of hearing and responding to God’s call. It is useless to ignore the means, and curse the ends. Starting today, let’s change the narrative.