Vocations questions are still being asked

"What I know of religious life today is `Sister Act' and `Nunsense,'" she added. "Is there anything else I should look at?"

"Check out `Dead Man Walking,'" Sister Kitty replied wryly, naming a movie that depicts a sister's real-life work with prisoners on death row.

Perceptions

Sister Kitty likes to tell people that everyone has a vocation. "Each person is called by God to do something wonderful with her or his life, so `vocation' is that desire of God," she explained.

Vocations "can be realized in marriage, single life, career, religious life. The Church has always taught that, but we got sidelined a while back where the notion of `vocation' [came to mean] `priest or religious.'"

Finding one's vocation, the director added, means finding something that makes you realize, "I couldn't be any other way and still be me."

Statistics

"We know historically that the big bulge of the 1960s was an anomaly," she stated. "We saw it as the beginning of a trend, but we now know it was a demographic fluke." She called today's number of vocations "low-normal."

A common misconception is that people aren't considering religious life any more, Sister Kitty noted. "There are men and women out there thinking about these questions," she said. "I've met dozens of them."

Jesus's example

"If eight came, I'd be delighted," she said. "This is not a high-yield area; but if I have helped a woman consider her life choices reflectively, I've done my job."

She joked that "Jesus, with all His zeal, only attracted 12 in His lifetime -- one of which did not pan out -- and that was enough to change the world."

However, she added, it's become almost countercultural to pursue a religious vocation.

"Our culture says, `Why would you put your energy into it, because [without a high salary] you're not going to be able to do the good things that money will bring?'" she said. "Our culture emphasizes living out your sexuality in a physical way, and that runs counter to a promise to be celibate."

Example needed

In addition, she said that people who try to promote religious life have to "watch their language": Terms like "seminarian" (someone in the process of becoming a priest) may not be understood by the average person.

Students in religious education classes are routinely taught what Sister Kitty called "The Unit" on lifestyle choices: marriage, single life, religious life. But even teachers may be at a loss for what to tell students about priests or women religious. Part of Sister Kitty's work is to visit religious ed programs to teach both the teachers and the students about religious life.

The director meets two kinds of young people searching for answers about a possible religious vocation: those who know women religious and want to emulate them, and those who just feel called to "do something more with my life" and don't know much about religious life.

Low turn-out

"That's the hard part," Sister Kitty said. "It's the people of God, and are they being well served and lovingly served? They're not being well served when they don't have access to the sacraments. I think this is one of several issues, and the Church has to look at those issues."

Still, she said, while a drop in vocations "lends an urgency to the question" of whether someone will pursue a call to religious life, "we don't see it as, `We're desperate, so we have to pick you.'" Sister Kitty believes it simply points to a "deep realization" that the Church must change.

Working as one

Even parishes have begun to encourage those with a vocation in interesting ways, she said, from writing to seminarians to holding receptions for those entering religious life.

"It is a ministry that does allow you to watch God working," Sister Kitty said of her work. "No matter how bad the situation might get, Jesus will not ever not be with the Church."

(Contact the diocesan Vocations Office at 453-6670 or email [email protected].)

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