Traditionally (i.e. for the last 50 years) we have presented it as a time to talk about the need for more young (and not so young) men to think of going into a seminary and preparing for ordination as presbyters.

So it is the liturgical equivalent of an annual recruitment drive.

The message is simple: we need presbyters in the church; there is a shortage; so let's pray that more young men will

• think about this as a life choice, and
• set out to follow it up.

The rationale for having this theme on Sunday seems self-evident: there is a shortage of clergy, so let us combine prayer with some recruitment activity.

But maybe this logic is incomplete - or even missing the point.

As we prepare for the Synod on Synodality, asking some questions about why we are short of presbyters might be as valuable as having a recruitment campaign.

We live in communities

During the pandemic many people discovered - sometimes for the first time - that we live in communities: we need each other and we depend on others.

Some people made a basic moral discovery: we are responsible for one another. There are things that I do that can damage you, there are things that you do which may damage the others: every act, maybe as simple as keeping 2m apart when shopping, is part of a moral universe.

Morality is not about rules laid down by the church, but a matter of being responsible within the group in which I live.

Discovering this responsibility to the community is part of discovering our own humanity - and what each of us is called to do.

This is vocation in the deep sense. And a basic task of every pastor - those intended to help their sisters and brothers along the way - is to foster and affirm such a vocational discovery.

This basic human discovery takes on an explicitly religious dimension when each of us discovers a sense of belonging within a covenant as a community.

We are more than just a group with a sense of common values - we are a community, a people, the People of God.

Being part of this covenant, we are called to a moral lifestyle of acting with love for others with that love we have for ourselves (Mk 12:31), and that implies that we have to look out for one another.

Christianity is the opposite of ethical individualism.

A world up-side-down

Perhaps the greatest discovery about vocation is that capitalism's values cut right through the Christian view of life as vocation.

The sense of vocation is the belief that we are called to exercise our skills for the building up of the whole people. But it is easy to slip into a view of human values that is at odds with this sense of vocation.

It happens when we slip into the view that human importance is derived from earning potential.

The value we give to a job is a direct consequence of the amount of salary that it can attract.

In this view, the more I can generate income, the more I am worth in salary, and so the more I am worth in the economy, and so the more significant I am.

It seems so logical that we do not question it.

It is only when something goes seriously wrong that we realise that is not the whole human story.

At the height of the Covid-19 outbreak many realised that nurses - and nursing is often seen as a demeaning job because it involves service to others - can make the difference between life and death, then we saw that this is what is really valuable rather than the ability to generate cash. Have we forgotten this lesson already?

We also discovered that we need those who empty bins, drive delivery lorries, and do a hundred other humdrum jobs.

I am not a dreamer who imagines that this realisation will last deep down: capitalism has been too successful over centuries at bringing material progress (despite its costs) for it to be abandoned now!

Who is Numero Uno?

But neither am I a cynic: we can make deep discoveries about life and about vocation. And, when we discover what vocation means, we often see it involves an inversion in our values.

This turning the world up-side-down often mirrors the inversion of values that is part of the Jesus vision.

When this happens, then we not only read this account of an early Christian dispute, but actually hear it:

A dispute also arose among them as to which one of them was to be regarded as the greatest.

But he said to them, "The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors.

But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest and the leader like one who serves.

For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves (Lk 22:24).

Modelling service, modelling vocation

We could also take notice that for John the Evangelist, the main happening in his Last Supper narrative is about mutual service.

Jesus - the Lord and the teacher - takes on the task of the lowest female house slave and washes their feet.

This is an inversion of the world's values, gender roles, and social order.

Needless to say it was controversial - Peter wanted nothing to do with it - and it has remained so: it is the ritual most frequently dropped from the liturgy!

But it was not optional for Jesus and he did not intend it to be optional for any of us who call themselves disciples.

It was not a display of humility (‘big boss being nice to little people') as it is often caricatured in our liturgy, but a display of the world of Christian relationship.

A Symbol of Vocation? The basin on the floor is not a sacral image in Christianity - but John 13 sees washing each other's feet as basic to church relationships.

Moreover, Jesus did not tell those there to wash the followers' feet.

Rather, each person who wants to belong to Jesus, ‘to have a share in him,' should wash the feet of others. They were to become a community of service to one another.

Problem: a vision of mutual service does not really dovetail with a notion of hierarchy.

We wash each other's feet!

If we want to understand vocation - as a reality and not as a recruitment drive for clergy - we need to really hear this challenging vision of discipleship:

And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself.

Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.

He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, "Lord, are you going to wash my feet?" Jesus answered, "You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand."

Peter said to him, "You will never wash my feet."

Jesus answered, "Unless I wash you, you have no share with me."

Simon Peter said to him, "Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!"

Jesus said to him, "One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you."

For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, "Not all of you are clean."

After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, "Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord — and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them." (Jn 13:3-17).

If this mutual washing ever really took hold, we would have an image of a synodal church.

Vocations Sunday

The Fourth Sunday of Easter is referred to as Vocations Sunday because of the link between the shepherd / flock imagery from Jn 10 - this chapter supplies the gospel in all three years of the lectionary: Year A has 10:1-10; Year B has 10:11-18; and Year C (this year) has 10:27-30 - and the pastor image used by clergy.

But I believe that Vocations Sunday is a misnomer: it should be called ‘Recruitment Sunday.'

Calling it Vocations Sunday when the aim is to pray for more unmarried men to volunteer to be presbyters (in most places we never even think about nuns or religious brothers) has two effects.

First, we think that a vocation is equivalent to becoming a full-time religious person: someone who takes on all that is associated with the word ‘a priest.' How often have I heard a man say ‘I have no vocation' when what he meant was that he did not want to be a cleric.

Second, it forgets that every formal ministry - such as that of being a presbyter - is but a part of an individual Christian's vocation. Let's try to unravel this.

Every Christian has a vocation - it is wrapped up in the particularity of your life.

You see the need there in front of you, you know what can be done, and what you can do, and you respond: this is the essence of vocation.

It is constant in that we are always being called to build the kingdom in response to the Spirit's promptings and empowered for what is needed by the Spirit.

There is no vacation from vocation, but what it calls us to do is ever-changing.

As we move through the demands of our lives, we are called to use our gifts to build the kingdom of holiness, grace, justice, peace and love.

A skills audit

Then there are fixed ministries: skills we need as a church.

We need those who can read, interpret, and preach.

We need people who have the skill to gather a community around them. We need those who can lead people in prayer. We have to identify people who show these skills, and then help them to develop them and make them better in their tasks.

Instead of recruitment for a special corps of clergy, we should think of finding ministers more in terms of a job-search or skills audit in a community.

If we believe that the Spirit is moving in the community of the baptised, then a ‘vocations crisis' is nonsense. It is only a crisis of us failing to look, train, and empower. Or maybe - just as in so many other areas of life - we have got it all so confused that we cannot see the wood for the trees.

Our focus on Vocations Sunday should not be on clergy recruitment, but helping each Christian to see that she/he has a vocation as they respond to needs in their community.

This is a hard process of listening and then there is the challenge of doing.

Then later we might find that individuals also have skills in the communities' worship.

These people would be identified by a process of community discernment (can this person lead prayer, can this person interpret the demands of discipleship for us), rather than by a willingness to accept a priori criteria from a bygone age (e.g. male, celibate, full-time, and willing to belong within a clerical corps).

If we moved to that, then we could really call this Fourth Sunday of Easter: Vocations Sunday.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton, emeritus professor of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK) and director of the Centre of Applied Theology, UK. His latest award-winning book is Eating Together, Becoming One: Taking Up Pope Francis's Call to Theologians (Liturgical Press, 2019).
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

Pope Francis made the comments while participants in a meeting promoted by the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelisation on Friday.

He was following up on the comments he made at St Martin's Cathedral, Bratislava during his pastoral visit to Slovakia.

Urging catechists to face their task with the passion, drive and creativity of the Holy Spirit, he reminded them of Saints Cyril, Methodius and Boniface who beat new paths, invented new languages, new "alphabets", to transmit the Gospel, for the inculturation of the faith.

Francis said this "requires knowing how ... to listen to the peoples to whom one is proclaiming: listening to their culture, their history; ... to truly listen, and to compare those cultures, those languages, even and above all the unspoken, the unexpressed, with the Word of God, with Jesus Christ, the living Gospel."

The great European Christian tradition must not become a historical relic, Francis emphasised, recalling comments he made in Slovakia earlier in the week.

Urging catechists to be passionate and creative; with the impetus of the Holy Spirit, Francis said tradition is either alive or it is not and if it is not alive it is a relic.

In his view, evangelisation is the most urgent task of the Church among the peoples of Europe.

Francis said the catechist needs to free themselves allow themselves to embrace the reality they find, and then transmit the Gospel with great creativity.

If they don't do this, they are not catechists, he said.

"We must insist on indicating the heart of catechesis: the risen Jesus Christ loves you and never abandons you! We can never tire or feel we are being repetitive about this first proclamation in the various stages of the catechetical process," he said.

Francis says, in May, he instituted the new ministry of catechist hoping it would help "awaken this vocation" in people called to serve the Catholic Church as teachers of the faith.

At present the rite for the ‘creation' of catechists is being prepared by the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, he said.

Francis said Catechesis should not be understood as "an abstract communication of theoretical knowledge to be memorized as like mathematical or chemical formulas.

"It is rather the mystagogical experience of those who learn to encounter their brothers and sisters where they live and work, because they themselves have met Christ, who has called them to become missionary disciples".

Sources

• Holy See Press Office
• Catholic News Agency
• Image: Catholic Philly

Bishop Jean Kockerols said the vocations of Christian marriage and "celibacy for the kingdom" of God "deserve to be equally promoted by the church."

Kockerols said Christians are expected to pursue another vocation out of their baptismal vocation in a way that gives "flesh" or substance to the sacrament of baptism.

In the same way, he said, some people may hear a call to serve and be ministers of their communities.

This call comes to them whether they are married or not, he said.

"I am convinced that some young people," who, out of their baptismal vocation, answered a call to commit themselves to "the bonds of marriage would readily answer 'here I am' if the church were to call them to priestly ministry."

Focusing on a deeper understanding of the term "vocation," Kockerols said vocation begins with answering the call to life - choosing life and choosing to listen to and love the Lord.

"For the Christian, this call to life is an invitation to be and to become a disciple of Christ, 'Come and follow me.'"

He said the baptismal vocation is "the source and summit" of all other vocations and people's answer to each call prepares them for the important choices to be made in life.

The church must accompany young people so that they can become disciples of Christ "each at their own pace," he said.

If the church does not become better committed to this task, it "will continue to lose credibility."

Jesuit priest, Tommy Scholtes, spokesman for the Belgian bishops' conference, underlined the conference's support for Kockerols' views.

He also said allowing for the priestly ordination of married men could be one way to address dwindling vocations, but that it was not the only solution.

The problem with vocations "is also a question of the credibility of faith in the world today," he said.

He noted Orthodox churches and Protestant communities, which allow married men to become priests, are also seeing a lack of men wishing to pursue ministry.

Source

• Catholic News
• La Croix
• Image: Alchetron

Our bargaining tends to be a slightly different: "God, sorry, I've forgotten about you lately, but here I am and I'm praying we'll get a buyer for the house." (Or that the scan will be clear, or that I'll get the job - etcetera.)

There is nothing wrong with prayers of supplication. In faith we know a God of abundance who may not meet all our wants but will certainly meets our needs. Of that we can be certain.

Sometimes, though, I need to ask myself: How obedient am I when God is asking something of me? In other words, how do I answer God's call?

If we look at the gospels, we see that the apostles were not always clear in their motives for following Jesus. Some of them wanted power and positions of importance. They wanted miracles. They got upset when they discovered there were other people healing in Jesus name.

It's comforting for us that the apostles were so human. But there was someone in the gospels, who didn't argue or bargain, who didn't ask what's in it for me. That someone was the young girl Mary who really had no idea what the angel Gabriel was saying to her. She only knew it was God's call and her answer was yes, let it be done to me. Mary's response is the guiding star on our journey.

I used to think that "call" was about vocation or something equally important. That's so, but God's call comes often and in many sizes. Sometimes it is big and challenging, Jesus telling us to get out of the boat so he can help us walk on water. Sometimes it is small, a nudging of the heart reminding us we should make peace with an enemy.

How do we know it's God's call? It has all the usual qualities of love. What is asked of us is not judgmental. It requires kindness, compassion, understanding, prayerfulness, and these attributes are given with the call. They are graces that go beyond our limitations.

I confess, though, that I do not have Mary's instant response to God's call. I tend to test it to make sure it's not coming from my small self. And you know what I've discovered? The parable of the sower has a sentence missing. It doesn't tell us that the sower keeps on sowing. The hard ground will become soft with rain. The thistles decay to make compost for new growth.

God's call will come again and again, each time a little louder, until we are ready to receive it.

We listen with the ears of the heart and finally we come to Mary's yes. "Okay," we pray. "Let it be done to me."

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.

Sr Carmen Sammut, the president of the International Union of Superiors General (IUSG), also said sisters globally would be better equipped to carry out their work if they could become deacons.

"We are already doing so many things that resemble what a deacon would do, although it would help us to do a bit more service if we were ordained deacons," she said.

Last week, at an IUSG meeting at the Vatican, Pope Francis agreed to set up a commission to look at the women deacons issue.

The Vatican was quick to say that the Pope, in doing this, was not intending that women should be ordained as deacons or priests.

Sr Sammut, a Missionary Sister of Our Lady of Africa, said the commission should include both sexes and should have a global perspective.

"Sometimes decisions are made here in Rome and it's not only that they're only men — no women — but also the other cultures are not very much included," Sr Sammut said.

The IUSG, the Maltese sister said, also aims to have more say in decision-making in the Catholic Church.

This includes challenging the way leadership is tied to being a cleric and therefore excluding women.

"It's not just a question of feminism, it's a question of our being baptised, that gives us the duty and the right to be part of the decision-making processes," said Sr Sammut.

Women religious have felt empowered under the papacy of Francis, she added.

This has allowed them to "walk with more courage" in what can often be a dangerous vocation in some parts of the world.

Sources

• Religion News Service
• Women's Ordination Conference
• Image: Women's Ordination Conference

Theology. Philosophy.

I know you think I'm kidding.

Who does that? Can you even get a job doing that?

Good questions. Here's your answers: Not enough women. And, yes, though I can't promise you'll make millions.

Who needs all those big ideas anyway?

You do. Those nearest and dearest to you. Those you have yet to meet. Those in your parish. Your friends. Your country. Your politicians. Everybody needs something of these big ideas.

From a distance, theology and philosophy sound like the sort of thing for fat, pipe-smoking, balding, old white guys. Hardly.

From Action to Contemplation

Frankly, as someone who started out managing stockpiles of fuel, car parts, medicines and nutrition supplies in the desert of South Sudan and the jungle of Congo, I have found my way from that bustly, hustly, grunty, daily work to another kind of work. An intellectual work.

I am captured, arrested, by what I have found.

And I need to tell you, if you are a young woman contemplating your path into the future and you were thinking of studying anything in the realm of social sciences, politics, economics, languages, humanities, literature, history or you simply are attracted to turning over ideas and teasing out their implications for real life…do yourself a favour, consider theology and philosophy.

Not just any theology or philosophy, but a Catholic education. And even if you have some doubts about your academic ability, take a leap of faith, you might surprise yourself.

Trust me, you won't regret it. Continue reading

• Lucy O'Donoghue comes from Auckland and lives in Bangkok, Thailand with her ‘lads' - an Irish American husband, a baby boy, and a rambunctious dog.

Jane Maisey spent her twenties exploring, both physically and spiritually, looking at different religions and ways of being.

But it wasn't until the Christchurch earthquakes that she came back to the faith she had grown up in.

"I looked at our Catholic faith with new eyes and a new spirituality, and it's home for me, it's in my heart and how I want to live."

The earthquakes, she says, were a time in her life that provoked dramatic changes very quickly, leading her to consider one greater still: becoming a nun.

"To be honest, it was a really hard time in my life, and a lot of us experienced a lot of grief and trauma. Through that, though, it opened my eyes.

"I felt really strongly called to live a life of service - that, you know what, I would be really suited to that. Something in my heart sort of changed. Something within me realised - wow, this is for me."

Jane, now 35, had returned to New Zealand after working as a snowboarding instructor in Colorado and Scotland to start her own company as a designer before beginning her journey into religious life.

"For the past few years, I'd been running a graphic design business, working as a freelance graphic designer and illustrator - very corporate, very fast-paced, things were always changing, so I loved that."

Growing up in a rural New Zealand farming town, Jane had a Catholic upbringing - her mother is Maltese - but, though she was taught by nuns at school, as a child or adolescent, religious life didn't seem like an obvious or viable path. Continue reading

Source and Image:

• The Wireless, from an article written by Natasha Frost, an Auckland-based journalist who's spent most of the last five years living in Oxford and Paris.

"I was a go-between between the underwriters and the customers," said Sister Virginia Joy, a former high school soccer star from South Carolina now wearing a habit of white and navy blue.

She was fighting Midtown Manhattan traffic, late for a lunch with some other nuns. "I was overwhelmed by the Lord's generosity in my life, and I wasn't fulfilled in this job," she said.

In 2009, at age 28 and then known as Virginia Cotter, she joined the Sisters of Life.

Young women joining religious orders have become increasingly rare over the years. The number of "women religious" in the United States is about 50,000, less than a third of that in 1966.

According to a Georgetown University study, "there are more Catholic sisters in the United States over age 90 than under age 60."

The younger nuns can be a surprising bunch. While many in the older generation moved to the left after the 1960s, in theology and politics — a trend that led in part to Pope Benedict XVI's investigation of American nuns in 2012 — younger nuns tend to be more conservative.

They want to wear the habit. While they work outside their communities, they have a strong focus on contemplative life, making time for hours of daily communal prayer. And they tend to have a strong sense of a particular mission.

Take, for example, the Sisters of Life, the religious order of Sister Virginia Joy.

Many of the nuns are in their 20s or 30s and have a commitment that can be divisive even in the Roman Catholic Church: "promoting life," which in practice includes an emphasis on discouraging abortions.

The members may hold to traditional teachings, but as they see it, there is nothing more countercultural in 2015 than a young woman's becoming a nun — eschewing careerism, material possessions, sex.

Two other traditionalist orders — a Dominican order in Nashville, and one in Ann Arbor, Mich., which has expanded to Austin, Tex. — have attracted national attention; in 2010, the Ann Arbor nuns even made it on "Oprah." Continue reading

Sources

• The New York Times
• Image: Tom Perna

A group of young adults joined with Cardinal John Dew, Diocesan and Marist priests, seminarians, Sisters of Compassion, Marist Brothers, married couples and their families and consecrated singles from around the archdiocese of Wellington at the Home of Compassion, Island Bay.

The event was facilitated by Young Church Ministries as part of the Young Church's Month of Vocation in August.

Isabella McCafferty from the Young Church Ministries says the purpose of SEEK was two-fold:

• To celebrate an intergenerational church, sharing wisdom and stories with each other.
• to promote a post Vatican II model of Vocation, ultimately our universal call to holiness and to then explore the how this is lived out in our lives.

"Pope Francis in his latest encyclical, Laudato Si, speaks of communities where people feel 'held within a network of solidarity and belonging'," she said.

"This was the hope for SEEK; that each person would feel comfortable to share and that people would be held within this network of solidarity."

The first half of the afternoon allowed for people to literally walk alongside each other to the top of the hill overlooking the Home of Compassion, asking honest and open questions of each other in relation to their vocation.

The second half of the afternoon included a reflection led by Sr. Sue Cosgrove which asked the group to consider what makes them feel joyfully alive.

Sr Sue concluded with a quote from Suzanne Aubert in response to the time shared together saying, "Gratitude is the most beautiful ornament of the human heart."

SEEK finished with Mass celebrated by Cardinal John Dew.

During his homily, Cardinal John reflected on the gift that the time together at SEEK had been and called the group to reflect on the gifts God had given them and to remember those words of Suzanne Aubert.

Source

• Suppled
• Image: Supplied

Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate noted that this year's tally of 3,694 graduate theology students represents a 16 percent increase since 1995 and a 10 percent jump since 2005.

Religion News Service reported that seminary directors cite more encouragement from bishops and parishes, the draw of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and the social-justice-minded Pope Francis, and a growing sense that the church is past the corrosive impact of the sexual abuse crisis that exploded in 2002.

"I always had an inkling that I might want to be a priest and my parish priest told me he thought I might be called," the report quoted student Kevin Fox.

Fox said the secular path "wasn't filling my soul with joy."

Rev. Mark Latcovich, president and rector of St. Mary Seminary, said current seminarians and priests are "our best recruiters."

"If they are happy and witnessing their faith and opening their hearts, that enthusiasm and joy is contagious," he said.

Source

Religion News Service

Image: Patheos

"Your vocation is a fundamental charism for the Church's journey and it isn't possible that a consecrated woman or man might 'feel' themselves not to be with the Church," he told around 800 members of the International Union of Superiors General.

"It is an absurd dichotomy to think of living with Jesus but without the Church, of following Jesus outside of the Church, of loving Jesus without loving the Church," he said.

Pope Francis did not specifically refer to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in the United States, which was last year required to undergo reform. But one of the Vatican's concerns about the LCWR was a convention speaker who said that some women's religious orders were "moving beyond the Church, even beyond Jesus".

The Pope rejected the idea that religious obedience does not necessarily require deference to the hierarchy. He said: "Obedience is listening to God's will, in the interior motion of the Holy Spirit authenticated by the Church, accepting that obedience also passes through human mediations."

He also spoke about the vows of poverty and chastity, saying: "Theoretical poverty doesn't do anything. Poverty is learned by touching the flesh of the poor Christ in the humble, the poor, the sick, and in children."

On chastity, the Pope urged women religious to practise "a 'fertile' chastity, which generates spiritual children in the Church. The consecrated are mothers: they must be mothers and not 'spinsters'!"

He added: "What would the Church be without you? It would be missing maternity, affection, tenderness and a mother's intuition."

Pope Francis also cautioned the religious superiors against ecclesiastical careerism.

He said: "The men and women of the Church who are careerists and social climbers, who 'use' people, the Church, their brothers and sisters — whom they should be serving — as a springboard for their own personal interests and ambitions … are doing great harm to the Church."

Sources:

Vatican Information Service

Catholic News Agency

Catholic News Service

Image: National Catholic Reporter

After all, a man who decides to become a priest is choosing a profession at a time when its public reputation has never been lower.

Fifty years ago, Catholic priests were pillars of the community: trusted, holy men of integrity. Today, they're widely seen as a group of odd, lonely, and sexually-repressed men who abuse children at an alarmingly high rate.

In 2002, a Wall-Street Journal-NBC News poll showed that 64 percent of people thought priests "frequently" abuse children. Clearly, that's a number inflated by anger over the abuse scandal, but still, various studies and reports have shown that somewhere between 4 percent and 10 percent of American priests between 1950 and 2003 were accused of sexually assaulting children.

The Catholic Church has taken many measures to stop the abuse, including instituting stricter screenings and immediately reporting allegations to the police, but the fact remains that most people still don't trust priests like they used to.

The Church is well aware of its public-relations problem. As Father Chris O'Connor, the vice-rector at St. John's Seminary, is fond of saying: "Priests are like airplanes. Most of them take off and land, take off and land, and everything's fine. You only hear about the ones who crash." Continue reading

It's clear that such young people have not heard her wonderful laugh, nor seen the remarkable work she does with the elderly and dying, nor the kind of effort she makes to help restore the chapel and convent at Wynnum.

Sister Sesilia has been involved in vocations promotion at Sydney's WYD in 2008, and more recently at the Ignite Conference in Brisbane.

Young people ask such questions as: 'What makes you become a nun?' 'What do you do all day?' 'Are you allowed to marry?' 'Do you get holidays?'

It was when she was 18 that Sr Sesilia began to discern whether or not she had a vocation. It meant detaching herself from her close-knit family of six sisters and four brothers, and from her many other relations.

"My decision was very hard for Dad. He really didn't want me to enter religious life - I was his favourite daughter so we had a very close bond. My decision took him a while to accept. Also, unlike my mother, he was not a Catholic to begin with," Sister Sesilia said.

She began thinking about the possibility of being a nun first of all because of a teacher who inspired her.

"I was taught by the Missionary Sisters of the Society of Mary, an order with French connections, in Apia. A particular Sister, our music teacher, impressed me. She was very bubbly and outgoing and I began to wish I could be like her," she said.

On the advice of Fr Patrick Kennedy, her spiritual director, she decided to join the Sisters of Nazareth and went to Christchurch at the age of 19. Read more

Sources

• The Catholic Leader
• The Samoa Observer
• Image: Nazareth Care Wynnum

Being an evangeliser, said Archbishop Rino Fisichella, is a vocation "born on the very day of our baptism and it is a vocation to every believer in Christ to make of himself or herself a credible bearer of the good news encapsulated in his teaching".

"The proclamation of the Gospel cannot be delegated to others; rather, it requires the awareness specific to the believer that he or she is to be a bearer of Christ wherever they go," he said.

Archbishop Fisichella was addressing a three-day conference on the new evangelisation organized by Catholic Mission Australia and the Catholic Enquiry Centre.

He said the new evangelisation called for by Pope John Paul II requires a new dedication by all Catholics, not just a reform of structures. "To think that the new evangelization can be brought about through a mere renewal of past forms is an illusion not to be cultivated."

He said the Church had not embarked on a new evangelisation because of pressure from secularism. Rather, it was "because she wishes to be obedient and faithful to the word of the Lord Jesus, who commanded her to go into the whole world and to bring his Gospel to every creature".

Point to a close link between evangelisation and liturgy, Archbishop Fisichella said baptisms, funerals and weddings bring many people into Catholic churches.

These occasions, he said, provide a pastoral opportunity for communicating the message of the Good News to people who might be "indifferent" to religion but are searching for a genuine spirituality.

Archbishop Fisichella also emphasised the need for Catholics to have a strong sense of identity.

Without this, he said, it is not possible to understand what belonging to the Christian community requires, or to be aware of the mission to which a Catholic is called.

Sources:

Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney

Vatican Radio

Vatican Radio

Image: Australian Catholic Bishops Conference

Their work is not only high-risk, it is often emotionally demanding and spiritually draining. If they are very lucky, they work in a supportive environment under a supervisor who is stable, competent and compassionate.

Unlike males who seek the priesthood, the institutional church does not support their education or their profession — even though they, too, spend their lives studying and serving the church.

Unlike women religious, they do not experience some of the securities that come with religious life. They have to find employment on their own, pay their rent, maintain a household on their own and, in some cases, provide their own medical insurance. If they lose their jobs, there is no safety net to carry them through until they find work again.

Perhaps most challenging of all, these young women do not enjoy the sustenance that comes with a life of prayer, contemplation and community. Young women are as in need of this support as any of the sisters engaged in similar work.

The number of young adult Catholic women who find themselves in this predicament is not small. And, I believe, they are most certainly called by God in a way very similar to women religious.

The difference is that these young women grew up in a culture that, in some significant ways, is radically different from society in which the majority of sisters in the United States were raised.

The bulk of the sisters ministering in the United States today entered their communities during or before the 1960s. They were raised in a social climate that did not discuss sexuality openly and in a church that demanded they bury their sexual feelings. Thankfully, most women religious in the past few decades have moved beyond these repressed beginnings. Nowadays, sisters are among our culture's strongest advocates for sexual and gender justice. Read more

• Source: Jamie L Manson's blog in National Catholic Reporter
• Image: Catholic News Service

Jamie L. Manson received her Master of Divinity degree from Yale Divinity School where she studied Catholic theology and sexual ethics. Her columns for the National Catholic Reporter earned her a first prize Catholic Press Association award for Best Column/Regular Commentary in 2010.

Fr Paddy Rushe's new "Vocations" app is billed as the first of its kind in the world and is available to download free from the Apple iPhone app store.

Developed by Magic Time Apps in Dublin, it is described as "an original approach to assist current and future generations seeking to investigate and find information on vocations to the diocesan priesthood in Ireland".

Highlights of the app include connections to Twitter and Facebook, and contact details and statistics on the 26 Catholic dioceses of Ireland. It also includes answers to frequently asked questions to assist in discerning a vocation, a news feed from the national vocations' website, as well as novel and cursory "tests" to enable the user reflect on vocation potential.

As to those "novel and cursory" tests, Fr Rushe told The Irish Times these explored lifestyle issues and were intended to help a candidate assess his overall aptitude for the priesthood. Among other things, the candidate is rated on a scale when it came to thinking of others, a desire to provide a service, and his abilities in relating to the marginalised.

A second test concerns celibacy and involves questions on discipline in a candidate's life, what he believed about relationships, as well as balance where alcohol and food were concerned.

Answers to frequently asked questions concerning entering a seminary included what points were required to get into the seminary, specialist subjects taught there, training, and costs involved.

Future updates planned for the app will include a "prayer counter" to allow people pledge prayer for vocations, and a picture gallery which will include images from the life of a seminarian.

Confessing that he is "a bit of a techie" who is on Twitter and Facebook, Fr Rushe said the church needed "to be there, accessible to all". The launch of his app by Bishop Donal McKeown, auxiliary bishop of Down and Connor and chairman of the vocations commission of the Irish Bishops' Conference, takes place in Naas, Co Kildare, today.

The event will also mark the handover from Fr Rushe as the church's national co-ordinator for diocesan vocations to Fr Willie Purcell and to his team. Fr Rushe had been in the role for five years.

• Source: Patsy McGarry, The Irish Times
• Image: ucanews.com
• Other articles: Irish Church launches app for would-be priests

Vocations app to encourage priesthood