So says The Christian Science Monitor. I believe it. The emptiness of secularism, consumerism, and promiscuity takes time to become clear to many people, but it does become clear to some of them before they marry and really do have to make sex and money into priorities. Apparently, the influence of the previous bishop of Rome, Pope John Paul II, has translated some of the disillusionment into renewed fervor for some of the young.As a college student, I myself one spent a week on retreat at a "primitive" Benedictine monastery in New York State. Transported, for that week I did everything the monks did. At the end of the retreat, I told them I wanted to stay on as a postulant. They told me to go back to the Big Apple where I belonged. Maybe they were right; but I know well that vocations were not encouraged in the decade or so after Vatican II nearly to the extent they are now. My experiences, by no means limited to that monastery, actually confirmed that vocations were often discouraged. We've been seeing the results since, and they have nothing to do with the celibacy requirement.
Now we may be seeing glimmers of change. May more young people answer the call.
Charles:
ReplyDeleteIf the past is any guide, edifying Christian marriages arise from holiness, which in turn is inspired among the laity primarily by people who give themselves solely to the Lord and his Mystical Body, the Church—most of whom are priests or religious. At any rate, I've never seen any evidence to the contrary.
So my prayer is that, as these young Italians give an example to the others of love of God and renunciation of worldly pleasures, some of the others whose vocation is marriage will live marriage accordingly.
Best,
Mike