I am frequently amazed when people are able to put into succinct form what would take me pages of rambling to even begin to approach saying.  Fr. Powell, OP really gives a great explanation of why modernism is so poisonous to religious life and in turn why its spread has done such great damage to that life in the current day and age.  In just a few short paragraphs he condenses much of his background and, if I might wax without a shred of humility, shows just how dangerous a well-formed Dominican can be to heresy.  Normally I hate quoting the summary statement, but in this case he’s done such an excellent job of segmenting the issue that it’s all I can do:

What we must do at every level is re-establish the notion that intellect, will, reason, emotion, etc. are all divine gifts oriented toward our divinization though Christ.  Nothing can stand above faith as the source and summit of our life in Christ, but every gift we have received as well-loved creatures can stand along side faith in order to clarify, enlighten, and distinguish.

It’s an old saying in baseball – “hit it where it’s pitched”.  It means that a batter shouldn’t try to force things based on what he wants to do but should take the pitch that comes and do what’s best for the team.  Oakland A’s prospect Grant Desme is taking that adage and applying it not just at the plate but in life:

Regardless, today is the day: As first reported by FOXSports.com, the 23-year-old star prospect has informed the A’s that he will retire and become a priest.

“I’m doing well in baseball,” Desme told reporters on Friday, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. “But I had to get down to the bottom of things, to what was good in my life, what I wanted to do with my life. Baseball is a good thing, but that felt selfish of me when I felt that God was calling me more. It took awhile to trust that and open up to it and aim full steam toward him. I love the game, but I’m going to aspire to higher things.”

Now we all know that the road to the priesthood is a long one, and not everyone who goes to seminary comes out as a priest, but to come this far and turn away from a potential career in Major League Baseball to answer God’s call says much.  From the rest of the article this young man already is truly living his faith, and that in a career that all to often lends itself to terrible moral challenges.  As with anyone willing to pursue the priesthood, my prayers go with him.

For once, not mine.  Recently we had the second collection for the Religious Retirement Fund.  Around these parts that also translates to someone, usually a Sister or a Nun, make a plea in the stead of the homily.  But, surprise, surprise I’m not going to grouse about the violation of Canon Law and the rubrics of the Mass.  Well, not more than I just did.

For whatever reason after who knows how many of these appeals it struck me that not once have I heard more than a cursory mention of the need for, and beauty of, new vocations to the religious life.  This last one probably spent more time on the topic than any other and even that was in the vague area of only a minute.  Now I know the purpose of this appeal is for money for a particular fund but the severe need for these funds is directly related to the fact that many orders now have more retired members than active ones – get more people doing the work that paid these orders’ bills for so many years and just maybe the need won’t be quite so drastic.

Maybe it’s the American in me, but I also think that some people have an aversion to donating money to a cause, even a good one, that shows no sign of improving.  It’s a terrible thing to say, but I do wonder if that issue doesn’t run through peoples’ minds, particularly in this country of the Rugged Individual.

So, here’s my thought.  If you’re going to be given the ten minutes of homily time anyway, instead of spending nine minutes on facts and figures and one or less on vocations, spend five minutes on facts and figures and five on vocations.  I know this is a thing incredibly easier to say than do, but if someone stands up and shows that they are on fire with love for their vocation and their order, shows a genuine joy, they will draw people like a magnet.  And if you can convince people to dedicate their lives to the religious life you can bet you can convince others to open their wallets even wider.  The two are intricately related, and in the great both/and tradition of Catholicism if you treat both of them fully the whole will be far greater than the sum of its parts.

…sometimes there’s a reason for it.  I place the blame for this post firmly on Adoro and Fr. V – and life in general, but that doesn’t have a blog.

For some time now I’ve been contemplating – and avoiding contemplating – the issue of my vocation.  That contemplation has largely been simultaneously at the root of and caused by my absence from this blog.  I’ve been able to keep myself sufficiently occupied that the only energy I have for large thinking lands squarely on this issue while somehow also making sure I don’t expend enough energy to actually get anywhere in dealing with it.  It has been, one might say, a study in the art of procrastination.

But Adoro’s post on her issues in discernment jolted me.  Thick-headed as I am, even that was insufficient to kick my complacency firmly out of the way.  It took another, and for my reading pattern, almost simultaneous post by Fr. V on largely the same issue to dislodge my perpetual paralysis enough to even contemplate writing about it.  That I’m starting this post at after 11:00 PM is another sign of how intransigent my procrastination has become.

As a quick rewind, there was a time before I entered the Church and for some time after when I was quite sure I would some day become a priest.  It was quite simply a fait accompli, only awaiting the Bishop’s invitation and confirmation.  I was not dissuaded from this perception by anyone for any reason and was quite thoroughly comfortable with the idea of never belonging to myself again.  Until that plan crashed in brilliant flames in the office of the Diocesan Vocations Director.  I still have but a muddled memory of that meeting and subsequent drive home.  How it all happened, how it all worked I’m still not entirely sure, but by the time that day was over I knew I would never be a priest.  Not being one to dwell immediately on the past I put that to rest and set out to find to what new life God had called me.

Since then life has been full of the things that make the average life.  There have been plenty of ups and a good number of downs, times when I could sense God right next to me and times when I had to fight to keep the mere concept of Him alive in my head.  Through it all there has been this underlying current of a whisper I once heard in a dream, “I have something better for you.”  That statement has so many layers of meaning my mind quivers at the thought.

I spent time as an, if you will, “average” Catholic just attending Mass and raising my family and not getting any more involved than that.  It was a good life, a very good life, but it was a fight within myself to not do something more.  Never having been one to do anything halfway I took it as a personal challenge to keep in that middle one way or another.  I’d offered my very existence and was told that wasn’t what was desired of me; any pretensions to the contrary were to me only an effect of an ego still not quite sure of itself.  Yet there was that gnawing need to do something more; not something “different” as a replacement of what I had been doing, but a more that added to it.

Then my son began school and the impropriety of my standing on the sidelines wondering about the state of the Church he was about to discover but never involving myself in any effort to make it better sprang on me in a way that was utterly unexpected.  At my wife’s behest I did an end-run around my complacency and signed up to work with the RCIA team at our parish.  Still being unable to do anything halfway I have spent the time ever since devouring books that I might begin to have a clue sufficient to teach those souls for whom I now held some responsibility at least something of use.

And yet, after some time even that was not satiating the do-more beast.  The battle was waged within me once more.  More than once I yelled to myself, “this is it, all that I have, there’s nothing more to give!”  I didn’t even convince myself but I was willing to have the argument none the less.

Two things happened in short succession that have started that whole gristmill churning again.  First, I happened across a copy of St. Dominic and the Rosary, a hagiography on St. Dominic targeted largely for children.  Strange though it may seem, it was like a giant battery was attached to my vocational battery.  Reading how St. Dominic confronted the heresy of his day and reconverted so many fallen-away Catholics was like an invitation written in time and placed directly in front of me.  Here was a man, simple of means, who set an example from which I simply could not tear myself.  The Dominican Order is, without a doubt, entirely intriguing to me; I do not consider it a coincidence that St. Catherine of Siena is the patron saint of my parish.

Then one day, in so many words and at least to me completely out of the blue, my wife asked me if I’d ever considered becoming a Deacon.  All these pretensions about living a simple average life were being smashed to kindling at a rapid pace.  My mind raced to find excuses – “I’m too young, they’d never accept me”; “maybe when the kids are out of school”; “I’d just never be any good at any of it” – yes, the usual suspects.  If my wife, who knows me better than anyone in this world, thinks I might have that calling …  My head continues to spin.

I have never, ever, been one to like to step foot in a situation I did not fully understand from the beginning.  Yet I find myself surrounded of late by reminders that Christ calls us to faith not proof, trust not pre-made decisions.  Am I being asked to ask the Church to serve in a special way once again?  What will happen if She says no?  What will happen if She says yes?  Trust.  Faith.

So, at the end of this entirely-too-long post I only hope you have some small understanding of why I’ve been so lax in posting of late.  With our RCIA classes having just started up again and my heart, mind and soul slowly working through this series of questions I’m sure I’ll have plenty about which to post.  I only hope it isn’t as dizzying for you the reader as it has been for me.  Thy Will be done, Lord.

This one from the folks at CNA.

H/T to Benedict on plurk.

Two priests very well known across St. Blog’s share a common celebration today.  I’m not going to give anything more away than that and to say ad multos annos!

The Church is slowly catching on to how to use the new media as a way of evangelizing this generation of always-online youth.  This video is just another example of that.  And how very, very true is the message contained inside.

H/T to Adam’s Ale.

I have two thoughts on this.  First, Deo gratias!  Second, it’s about time!  We need our priests, and they need our prayers, and that reciprocal need has not been so keenly felt in a long, long time.  The full announcement from the Vatican is here.

Benedict XVI highlighted the “indispensable struggle for moral perfection which must dwell in every truly priestly heart. In order to favour this tendency of priests towards spiritual perfection, upon which the effectiveness of their ministry principally depends, I have”, he said, “decided to call a special ‘Year for Priests’ which will run from 19 June 2009 to 19 June 2010″. This year marks “the 150th anniversary of the death of the saintly ‘Cure of Ars’, Jean Marie Vianney, a true example of a pastor at the service of Christ’s flock”.

This comes immediately on the heels of the Year of St. Paul.  I think that makes a very interesting compare and contrast exercise, but even more so that it strengthens different parts of the priestly identity.  Thank you, Holy Father.  Let us always pray for our Priests!

I’m quite sure it’s a gag, but it probably would do quite well in our culture.  Brought to you by the fine folks at Aquinas and More, I present to you the “I Am Priest” vocations poster.

A couple of weeks ago during our RCIA sessions a question came up as to why priests wear the color black.  It’s a seemingly simple question, but one that gets right to the nut of why so many other seemingly simple questions about the Church aren’t clear – they simply have a long and involved pedigree and even then have disparate applications at times.  It’s a sure recipe for confusion.  So … to set it at rights, I’m going to lay out what I’ve been able to dig up so far on this seemingly simple question.