Uptick seen as Vocations Team tweaks message

A funny thing happened when the Albany diocesan Vocations Team decided not just to promote vocations to priesthood or religious life, but also to tell young people that "every life choice is a vocation": Church vocations began to appear.

In 1998, when Sister Kitty Hanley, CSJ, and Revs. Thomas Konopka and James Walsh accepted positions as a Vocations Team for the Diocese, five seminarians were preparing for the priesthood. Now, there are 14, and the Diocese will ordain three new priests this year.

"I believe that by not saying, `This [priesthood or religious life] is the best thing,' but `the best thing is what God wants for you,' that message has gotten out," said Sister Kitty. "Vocation is following your baptismal call, not necessarily being a priest or a sister."

Challenge

The change in perspective hasn't come easily. Sister Kitty noted that there will always be a need for the priesthood, so promoting vocations in the traditional sense "is a challenge we can never stop talking about."

And though a layperson could do the work she does as a sister, there will always be women who feel called to live as she does -- in community with other sisters, obeying religious vows.

"God will continue to speak to men and women," she stated. But the Vocations Team is trying to honor single and married persons as having vocations of their own.

God's call

Sister Kitty recently spoke to ninth-graders in Queensbury about vocations, telling them, "You don't know what vocation God is calling you to. Maybe God will say, `Fall in love; get married.'

"I could see the adults in the room were thrilled that their choices were being honored. And then I said, `Maybe God is calling you to be a priest or a sister.'"

She believes that people are more willing to consider the spectrum of vocations available to them if they know that any choice they make could be their vocation.

Shift seen

The tactic hasn't resulted in mass change, she cautioned. "The number of men we are talking to [about priesthood] has been steadily increasing; of the women who came to our first discernment group, one just applied to a religious community."

But part of the reason change is slow is that people are taking more time to discern whether they have a vocation before entering religious life, she said. Many young people want to finish a degree, pay off loans, travel or "put the idea away" for a while before reconsidering it.

Sister Kitty added that so many men are interested in living in the newly opened St. Isaac Jogues "house of discernment" in Waterford (for men considering the priesthood) that the Vocations Team has joked about not having enough room for them all.

Upturn

Father Walsh, who lives at Jogues House and works with the men there, declared the vocation situation "the best it's been in five years in terms of the amount of interest."

He pointed out that a recent lunch with Bishop Howard J. Hubbard for men interested in becoming priests drew 15 people, whom he referred to as "top-notch guys." A monthly discernment group he meets with usually gathers 16 men.

Even though the Church is struggling with the problem of sexual abuse by clergy, and decreasing numbers of priests and religious worldwide, the priest added, young people see the bigger picture.

"Things don't turn around overnight," Father Walsh told The Evangelist. "When you're going to [speak at] middle schools or high schools, that's a 10-, 15-year process" until the teens who feel called to a vocation actually enter religious life.

Long process

Still, the team thinks their efforts will bear fruit in the long run. They've even been asked to speak in the Rochester Diocese about their new approach to vocations.

"In a way," Sister Kitty mused, through the vocations crisis, "God is saying to us as a Church, `Do I have your attention yet? What are the deepest values of your heart -- the ability to come together, not necessarily in this church or that church? the ability to pray together?'"

As the Church moves forward, she said, "we will get more creative as a Church -- and that's not necessarily a bad thing."

(Speaking engagements, discernment groups and telephone or email contacts have been vital parts of the Vocations Team's work, said Sister Kitty: "We've established ourselves as willing to go anywhere, talk to any group, be available to talk to anyone!" They can be reached at 453-6670 or [email protected].)

(1/15/04)