More Ways to End the Vocations Crisis
by ANTHONY ESOLEN
My recent article on the self-inflicted crisis of vocations to the Catholic priesthood engendered a lot of discussion, from which I conclude that my suspicion is correct. Many Catholics are content with strategies of suicide, because they do not really want the Church to prevail in her war against a world deranged. Since in our day the derangement is most obviously about things having to do with marriage, sex, children, the family, and those differences between men and women that are attested and variously respected by every culture that has ever existed, in every geographical area and at every stage of technological development, that means that they want the sexual revolution to change the Church rather than the Church to defeat the revolution. They are anti-missionaries, come to preach the gospel of chic hedonism. In our time, when someone says, “I don’t agree with all of the teachings of the institutional Church,” you can bet your house that the disagreement has nothing to do with three Persons in one God, but rather two persons in one bed.
You can flush the people out by observing their reactions to good news. Mention that the sisters of Our Lady Queen of Ephesus, in Kansas City, are devoted to the magisterial teachings of the Church, that they are joyful messengers of the Lord, that they celebrate the complementary virtues of manhood and womanhood, and that if their average age were too much lower they’d have to face a truant officer. Note the reply.
“Well, that’s good for them.”
“They’re just one convent.”
“If that’s their choice, I respect it. But their day is past.” I translate: Old-fashioned prigs!
“Correlation doesn’t imply causation.” No, certainly not. The rooster doesn’t make the sun rise. But the slogan is mainly used to duck the obvious. As I’ve seen it used, it means, in socio-speak, that if you take your kid fishing a lot, and your kid grows up with a hobby called fishing, we can’t conclude that there’s any connection between them. Young women filled with love for the Church and for Jesus do not naturally gravitate towards women who are filled with love for the Church and for Jesus.
Or say that priestly orders that maintain devotion to the mysteries of the faith are doing very well. Mention the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter. Tell about what a couple of priests of Opus Dei did to save a jewel of a church from destruction—Saint Mary of the Angels in Chicago. Suggest that something similar could be done in your neighborhood.
“That order attracts reactionaries.”
“Opus Dei is evil.”
“We have to become a new Church for a new time.”
A former student of mine worked for a year at a live-in women’s center run by bitter old nuns—by the Feminist Nunsuch. It was down the street from Saint Mary of the Angels. The sisters refused to allow the priests to come over to celebrate Mass there for the people. “We don’t need them,” they said.
Now, if that’s your attitude, I am not speaking to you, not in this article. Wellington doesn’t ask Napoleon how he should arrange his battle-lines.
If you do not believe what the Church teaches regarding the neuralgias of our time, I am not speaking to you. If you believe that women should be ordained, or that a mancan marry a man, or that the government should permit people to snuff out their children before they reach a certain state of cuteness, or that the Pill is good for what ails us, or that divorcing men and women can call Solomon’s bluff, saw their children in two, marry their new squeezes, and be patted on the head by the Church for doing so, while the abandoned spouse is played for a chump all around—I am not speaking to you.
If it’s your worst nightmare that men might be kindled with ardor for the Church—the real one, not the mythical Futurechurch, known only to the illuminati, those who have taken a night school course in ecclesiology and who wear special glasses—then obviously we have nothing to talk about. You want the Church to conform to the world; you want the Church to suffer a shameful defeat. You want to deform the Church to infect it. I want the Church to cure the world by transforming it.
If you do accept the teachings of the Church but you are content with the status quo when it comes to vocations, I am not speaking to you. You’ve had things your way for forty years. Enough already. I want results. I want victory. So in that spirit I make these recommendations, to those who also want victory:
My recent article on the self-inflicted crisis of vocations to the Catholic priesthood engendered a lot of discussion, from which I conclude that my suspicion is correct. Many Catholics are content with strategies of suicide, because they do not really want the Church to prevail in her war against a world deranged. Since in our day the derangement is most obviously about things having to do with marriage, sex, children, the family, and those differences between men and women that are attested and variously respected by every culture that has ever existed, in every geographical area and at every stage of technological development, that means that they want the sexual revolution to change the Church rather than the Church to defeat the revolution. They are anti-missionaries, come to preach the gospel of chic hedonism. In our time, when someone says, “I don’t agree with all of the teachings of the institutional Church,” you can bet your house that the disagreement has nothing to do with three Persons in one God, but rather two persons in one bed.
You can flush the people out by observing their reactions to good news. Mention that the sisters of Our Lady Queen of Ephesus, in Kansas City, are devoted to the magisterial teachings of the Church, that they are joyful messengers of the Lord, that they celebrate the complementary virtues of manhood and womanhood, and that if their average age were too much lower they’d have to face a truant officer. Note the reply.
“Well, that’s good for them.”
“They’re just one convent.”
“If that’s their choice, I respect it. But their day is past.” I translate: Old-fashioned prigs!
“Correlation doesn’t imply causation.” No, certainly not. The rooster doesn’t make the sun rise. But the slogan is mainly used to duck the obvious. As I’ve seen it used, it means, in socio-speak, that if you take your kid fishing a lot, and your kid grows up with a hobby called fishing, we can’t conclude that there’s any connection between them. Young women filled with love for the Church and for Jesus do not naturally gravitate towards women who are filled with love for the Church and for Jesus.
Or say that priestly orders that maintain devotion to the mysteries of the faith are doing very well. Mention the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter. Tell about what a couple of priests of Opus Dei did to save a jewel of a church from destruction—Saint Mary of the Angels in Chicago. Suggest that something similar could be done in your neighborhood.
“That order attracts reactionaries.”
“Opus Dei is evil.”
“We have to become a new Church for a new time.”
A former student of mine worked for a year at a live-in women’s center run by bitter old nuns—by the Feminist Nunsuch. It was down the street from Saint Mary of the Angels. The sisters refused to allow the priests to come over to celebrate Mass there for the people. “We don’t need them,” they said.
Now, if that’s your attitude, I am not speaking to you, not in this article. Wellington doesn’t ask Napoleon how he should arrange his battle-lines.
If you do not believe what the Church teaches regarding the neuralgias of our time, I am not speaking to you. If you believe that women should be ordained, or that a mancan marry a man, or that the government should permit people to snuff out their children before they reach a certain state of cuteness, or that the Pill is good for what ails us, or that divorcing men and women can call Solomon’s bluff, saw their children in two, marry their new squeezes, and be patted on the head by the Church for doing so, while the abandoned spouse is played for a chump all around—I am not speaking to you.
If it’s your worst nightmare that men might be kindled with ardor for the Church—the real one, not the mythical Futurechurch, known only to the illuminati, those who have taken a night school course in ecclesiology and who wear special glasses—then obviously we have nothing to talk about. You want the Church to conform to the world; you want the Church to suffer a shameful defeat. You want to deform the Church to infect it. I want the Church to cure the world by transforming it.
If you do accept the teachings of the Church but you are content with the status quo when it comes to vocations, I am not speaking to you. You’ve had things your way for forty years. Enough already. I want results. I want victory. So in that spirit I make these recommendations, to those who also want victory:
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