Campus ministers, vocation team link to reach students

Campus ministers from area colleges and representatives from the Albany diocesan Office for Vocations met recently to discuss why young adults don't feel comfortable discussing religious vocations -- and what the two ministries could do to overcome that discomfort.

One possibility is for young adults to read more than promotional brochures, said SUNY-Oneonta campus minister Sue Nesbitt, referring to the small, tri-fold informational pamphlets that religious orders often give to prospective members.

According to Mrs. Nesbitt, when it comes to tasting the vocational buffet, most young adults are looking for a more substantial diet than a brochure can provide.

Seekers

It's not always easy for young adults to ask for these materials, however. Mrs. Nesbitt says that young people are often stymied by fear that expressing interest in the religious life might mean that they'll receive unwanted attention from campus ministers or feel pressured by recruiters from a particular religious order.

"They're scared to death that I'll give their name to someone," she said.

In addition, according to campus minister George Forshey from Union College in Schenectady, students locked into demanding majors sometimes adopt vocational tunnel vision. At costly or competitive schools like Union, forsaking a business or pre-medicine major for theology or ministry sometimes means casting aside years of planning and considerable financial investment.

Parents' role

A lack of parental involvement and encouragement can also be an impediment for some young adults, said Joan Horgan, campus minister at The College of Saint Rose in Albany.

Some parents of vocation-bound collegians "see themselves sending their children off to a lonely, painful existence," she said. They form such convictions after seeing solitary pastors living in huge rectories or wondering how their 25-year-old daughter would fit into a convent largely made up of elderly nuns.

Ms. Horgan also believes that the clergy sexual abuse crisis has created a "context of discomfort" for young people as religious orders and ministries are increasingly tied to scandalous headlines.

Missing persons

However, Mr. Forshey believes that college students are not interested simply because they "haven't heard priests talking about their ministry with enthusiasm," he said.

"They don't know the priest," he continued. "They think he's a wizard behind the curtain. It's not like the Fifties, when you had two curates in their 20s involved in the parish. Young people haven't made a connection to the priest. They don't see the ministry that's done. They see how their professor is impacting them, but not their priest."

Sister Kitty Hanley, CSJ, of the Vocations Office, recalls a recent diocese-wide youth conference regarding vocations. There, teenagers asked questions of, and spoke with priests, sisters, brothers, lay ministers and married couples.

"Those kids were on fire," she recalled. She said that similar programs on discipleship and discernment could be offered for college students.

Many vocations

Both the campus ministers and Vocation Office personnel agreed that one way to create a more accepting attitude towards religious vocations involves introducing youth to the wider concept of vocation as a response to a baptismal call to work for the Lord through their own life, rather than adopting a habit or putting on a Roman collar.

Mr. Forshey recommended that programs "stress a sense of being called as a Christian in a general way."

By approaching vocations through the context of Christian life -- not simply vowed religious life -- he believes that "eventually you will have people that move into pastoral ministry."

Big Vs

Margaret Leatham, a campus minister at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, agrees that campus ministers should continue to work on illustrating the difference between what she calls "big V and little V."

"If someone spends $150,000 to become a chemical engineer and they have this great job at Exxon and they're active in their parish church, does that mean that it's the wrong choice?" she asked. "Maybe that's exactly what God wants for them."

It's also important, said Rev. James Walsh of the Vocations Office, to stress to college students that campus ministers and diocesan representatives are not out to coerce them or control their decisions.

"We know it's hard to stick your head above cover and ask about vocations," he said. "We respect where young people feel called. We never mess with someone's life."

(3/20/03) [[In-content Ad]]