VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Respond to the crisis of vocations with intensified prayer, not despair or a lax admissions process, Pope Francis told women and men religious.
He said he is tempted to lose hope, too, asking God, “What is happening? Why is the womb of consecrated life sterile?”
But he warned against fast fixes, saying some religious “congregations experiment with ‘artificial insemination,'” in which they accept anybody, leading to a host of problems.
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The vocations process must be done “with seriousness, and one must discern well that this is a true vocation and help it grow,” he told members of religious orders, secular institutes and consecrated virgins Feb. 1 in the Vatican audience hall.
The pope met with some 5,000 men and women taking part in events in Rome to mark the close of the Year for Consecrated life, which began Nov. 30, 2014, and was to end Feb. 2, the feast of the Presentation of the Lord and the Jubilee of Consecrated Life.
Handing his written text over to Cardinal Joao Braz de Aviz, prefect of the Congregation for Consecrated Life and Institutes for Apostolic Life, Pope Francis said he preferred to speak from his heart “because it’s a bit boring to read” a prepared talk.
Both his prepared text and his impromptu talk highlighted the three most important “pillars” of consecrated life: being prophetic; being near all people; and having hope.
It is important to be obedient while being prophetic, which is always about following God and reflecting his divine love, he told his audience.
Obedience for a religious is not the same as “military obedience,” he said; it’s about giving one’s heart and seeking to discern what is being asked.
If the rules or requirements are not clear, then one must speak with one’s superior and always obey the final word, he said. “This is prophecy — against the seeds of anarchy, which are sown by the devil.”
Just doing whatever one feels like is “anarchy of the will,” which is “the child of the devil, not God.”
Jesus wasn’t an anarchist, the pope said; he didn’t round up his disciples to fight against his enemies. While he pleaded that God “take this cup from me,” he still requested his father’s will be done.
Likewise, the pope said, if members of a religious community are asked to obey something that doesn’t sit well, then — he gestured taking a big pill and gulping it down. “Since my Italian is so poor I have to speak sign language,” he smiled, adding that “one must stomach that obedience.”
Being prophetic is telling and showing the world that “there is something truer, more beautiful, greater and better that we are all called to,” he said.
Consecrated men and women are called “not to distance myself from the people and live in comfort,” but to be close to Christians and non-Christians in order to understand their problems and needs, he said.
However, when it comes to offering love and attention, the sisters and brothers who live in one’s community get priority, he said, especially elderly members who may be isolated in an infirmary.
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“I know that you never gossip in your communities. Never, ever!” the pope said smiling.
Backstabbing and gossip are a danger to religious life, he said.
“Whoever gossips is a terrorist,” he said, because they drop harmful words like bombs against others, leaving behind destruction while the attacker walks away unscathed.
“If you feel like saying something against a brother or sister,” he said, “bite your tongue. Hard. No terrorism in your communities.”
Resolve differences or problems face-to-face with the person in question, he said. But when it’s time for general chapters or other forums involving community life, then people need to be forthright in voicing concerns openly and frankly.
He said, “In public, you have to say everything you feel because there is the temptation to not say things during the chapter” meetings, which then leads to resentment afterward.
“During this Year of Mercy, if each one of you were able to never be a gossip-terrorist it would be a success for the church, a success of great holiness. Be brave!” he said.
The pope thanked religious men and women for their work, especially consecrated women. “What would the church be if there were no sisters?” he asked, recalling their presence in Catholic hospitals, schools, parishes and missions around the world.
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There is no vocation crisis. What the Holy Mother Church actually has is a marriage crisis. “But wait!”, you say. “Marriage is a vocation!”, and I agree with you, but this author and many others within the
Catholic Church forgot to talk about the vocation to marriage. Without Catholic marriages being created there is no place for our future priests or consecrated to be born.
The Church already has tons of things geared to creating
new priests, hundreds of formations programs, vocations fairs, meet and
greets, social media, numerous books and a petition for it at every
mass. It has gone to far that many youth groups, and Newman centers
forbid dating amongst their members lest they steal faithful Catholic men
away into marriage. Yet the shortage still exists and is getting worse.
Why? Because these are not where priests are made. Priests first and
foremost come from strong Catholic families, something the Church is failing to create.
The marriage crisis is the real cause of the shortage of priests. For the
first time in history adult singles now out number married adults. Don’t
think the Church is immune to this, in fact I believe the secular
marriage crisis is a reflection of the what is happening in the Church,
NOT the other way around. Back in the 90s 1/4 of adult Catholics were
unmarried, if the Bishops would have done something then, the world
wouldn’t be suffering with us now. God cannot give us more priests or consecrated if He doesn’t have enough families to send them too.
Meanwhile the Church is pouring nearly all it’s resources in the priesthood and the consecrated it has forgotten all about the single Catholics whom God intended to raise the next generation of priests. Marriage is just thought as something that will just happen on it’s own. It’s always been assumed that the youth would court, get engaged, get married and raise a family. But the Church fails to see that singles are drowning in a culture toxic to marriage.
They don’t have any outlets to meet other faithful Catholic singles and
aren’t allowed to date people they meet from things like FOCUS or
theology on tap. Singles keep getting advice like they should be dating and now we’ve actually
gone back to 1950s style dating which is way closer to hook-up culture
than we’d like to admit: http://time.com/aziz-ansari-mo… They don’t have their parents advice or wisdom because
many of their parents are still “playing the dating game” too!
If we put half as much effort into forming marriages from single Catholics,
as we did the priesthood we wouldn’t even have a priest shortage. When is the last time you ever heard the church praying for more marriages? The Church should consider the number of Catholic-Catholic marriages a parish has rather than the number of priests it creates as a metric for success.
Now that the Church has lost the battle against gay “marriage” maybe the Bishops will focus on the real crisis, but I doubt it.