For many years the leadership of the Catholic Church in America (and perhaps elsewhere) have been talking about the crisis in vocations to the priesthood and religious life. In the conversation to address the issue of the crisis in the priesthood, there have been many suggestions made. Stepping up the campaign to recruit good men, allowing priests to marry, and allowing women to become priests have been popular ideas floating around. While there are people that have strong arguments on both sides of the married priest and female priest debate, I'm not going to address this debate now. If you want to know my views on women priests, you can read my post on why women can't be priests. There is one idea that I have heard that I feel needs more attention, and that is encouraging marriage.
When I first heard of the idea of promoting marriage as a way to increase celibate vocations, I didn't understand the connection between the two. I mean, how can a marriage encourage celibacy? It just didn't make sense to me. But I heard this idea from several sources. So I spent some time thinking about it, and it started to make sense. Marriage and holy orders are both vocations--they both are a commitment. They are both covenants: marriage a covenant between man, woman, and God and holy orders a covenant between man, the Church, and God.
Marriage is also in a crisis, like holy orders. Fewer and fewer people are choosing to get married. And for those of that do decide to marry, many of those marriages end in divorce. People are no longer making the commitment to married life. Many Catholics are no longer taking this sacrament seriously. However, people are still having children. And we have (and are continuing to) raise a culture of children that does not understand the commitment to a vocation because they don't see it modeled in their own lives.
If we, as a culture, aren't making a commitment to the vocation, the sacrament, of marriage, how can we expect our children to make that commitment as well? We need to model that committed behavior in our lives, in our relationship with our spouses. If we can address the marriage crisis by encouraging strong and committed marriages, our children will understand that vocations require commitment. And if we strive for holiness in our marriages then our children will see the importance of holiness, and hopefully strive for it themselves.
It is not celibacy or a male-only priesthood that is at the heart of our crisis in vocations to the priesthood. It is lack of commitment to vocation. If we don't model a commitment to our marriage vocation then our children won't be committed to their vocation--whether it be priesthood or marriage.
2 comments:
Fantastic post, you've hit it right on!!
Makes sense.
Most of the men I know who are currently in seminary or who are recently ordained come from — not surprisingly — homes where Mom and Dad are very happily married.
(I might add that just as often, it seems, the happy families they come from are, relatively speaking, "large" ones.)
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