Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Thoughts for the Week - Fr. R. Taouk 
14th July 2019

A Look at Religious Vocations in the Present Crisis
by Rev. Fr. Patrick Troadec S.S.P.X.

Is there a certain type of family at the origin of vocations?  The seminarians come from families of six children on average. Three-quarters of the French have been trained in fully Catholic schools and the vast majority have their mothers at home. The Church has always favoured large families, encouraged stay-at-home mothers, and insistently urged that children be trained in completely Catholic schools. An analysis of the origins of the candidates for the Priesthood and the religious life confirms the soundness of these prescriptions. 

Have you seen any differences between the young men in recent years and those you trained 20 years ago?  Most of the seminarians have received exceptional graces during their childhood and adolescence, which has allowed them to harmoniously develop the grace of their Baptism. They have often been protected from the world. Nevertheless, they are young men of their time and the world left an imprint on some of them. When I was a seminarian, Archbishop Lefebvre said that we were touched by the prevailing liberalism. Likewise today, our contemporaries' way of life spills over in part on our world. Arriving in Flavigny, I spoke of a "fast-food mentality" that affected some seminarians, i.e., a difficulty with grasping difficult subjects. It was already necessary to express ideas in a simple way so as to make them understandable. Eight years later, I have observed what could be called a "zapping trend", that is, the desire not to stay long on the same subject, linked to a recurrent desire for change, and for about eight years, some of our young men have been affected by what I call the "click era", i.e., the desire to have an answer for everything immediately. The peasants knew that there is a time between sowing and harvesting, but today those familiar with Google forget this fundamental fact of nature.

How can you explain the difficulty of fostering vocations?  There are several parameters that explain this stagnation. The most important factor without a doubt is access to the Internet which distracts the souls from the essentials by enclosing them in the secondary, the superficial, the ephemeral, the accidental, the event, the immediate, etc. The digital invasion produces disaster among our contemporaries. It prevents the development of the interior life. To this is added, alas!, the major problem of impurity that defiles so many teenagers and even children with improper and even provocative images in so many films and advertising. The more we concede to the life of the flesh, the more we cut off the life of the spirit. St. Paul says that "the sensual man perceives not these things that are of the Spirit of God" (1 Cor. 2). Another major obstacle to the emergence of vocations is criticism. The French are very critical. But criticism of Priests removes in an adolescent the desire to give himself to God. The child believes and obeys; the adolescent admires and chooses. But criticism of Priests kills admiration among young people. The internal difficulties that the Society has experienced has certainly contributed to slowing the impetus of young men toward the Seminary. Although this is not quantifiable, it is undeniable. The demon is the great divider; it is up to us not to play his game. It seems to me that the two essential points for favouring vocations are summed up in the spirit of piety and sacrifice.