What if it were your son?” “

One priest for every 750 faithful in 2001, one for every 450 in 1911: the decline in vocations in the Catholic Church of England and Wales, since the beginning of the last century, is undeniable. But it is a trend that has undergone variations. “Usually the crisis of vocations in the UK is described as a disaster of biblical proportions”, explains Paul Embury , priest and director of the national Office for vocations of the Catholic Church of England and Wales (http://vocation.com ), in an interview with SirEurope. “I think, however, – he continues – that rather than a disaster it is an opportunity to find a solution to this problem in one way or another”. “It’s frequently the case that the faithful in church complain because there’s no new priest and yet they do very little to encourage new vocations”, continues Father Embury, “As Christians we have the responsibility to identify our vocation and to cultivate it, make sure that it develops and help others to find theirs”. The national Office for vocations of the Catholic Church of England and Wales has just these two tasks: promoting vocations in the Church and in the country and helping particular vocations to be fulfilled, such as the vocation to marriage, to the priesthood and to religious life. “Each individual – continues Father Embury – is free to choose the vocation to which he feels he is called. The Church is a community of those who have been called and at the same time a community of those who call”. Why are vocations constantly in decline? “In the rest of the world vocations are on the rise, but in Western Europe they are falling, a fact that prompts questions about the type of culture in which we live. We have to ask ourselves if our choice of life is a vocation or a career”. What’s the difference? “We need to pay heed to God’s call for our life. By career we simply mean a job. If we speak of vocations, we speak of a different way of considering our existence. In making our choice of life let us try to listen to the invitation God is making to us. Perhaps today there too few opportunities or chances for us to do so”. Does that mean it is more difficult to understand our own vocation? “The wider the range of options available to us, the louder the noise of the world around us, the harder it is for us to listen and find ways of responding to our vocation. Our culture does not encourage the young to ‘a journey’ of vocation. A different culture needs to be promoted: a community of those who feel they have been called and who express their vocation in parishes, schools and universities. In this way we begin to see changes, new movements in the Church, and the meaning of vocations acquires significance. I think that the ecclesial movements and associations are vocations by nature. Belonging to one of them in itself means cultivating one’s own vocation: the movements are new buds of life in the Church. The concept of vocation comprises a commitment that endures for the whole of life, whereas in contemporary culture everything is transient, there’s nothing that lasts”. Don’t you think that vocation to the priesthood is also discouraged by the difficult conditions in which priests live? “It is a very stimulating commitment. I’ve worked in prisons, in schools, and in a residential youth centre, and I have had so many sources of satisfaction in my work. The pace of life of a priest is hectic. The vocation of being a witness of God lasts for the whole of one’s life”. How much does the drop in vocations impact on the future of the Church, which many call uncertain? “If we look at the statistics one has this impression, but the numbers are not the real problem. In the climate that prevails today, people have a struggle committing themselves to anything. It’s true that the number of Catholics, priests and churches has declined over the last 150 years, but it is always a comparison with the past. In 1850, 1860 and 1870 there was not a huge number of priests. Between 1950 and 1960 the number of priests actually reached its highest level. People speak of crisis, shortage of priests, but that only concerns the situation over the last thirty or forty years”. Fact File The crisis of vocations was recently analysed by the weekly The Catholic Herald (11/2) in a feature with the provocative title: “Why does not your son become a priest?”. The article by Mark Minihane emphasises that “dismay, anguish and anger are some of the emotions people feel when their own parish church shuts down”. Yet, he continues, “ the reasons why many mothers don’t want their sons to become priests include living in big houses alone, having low salaries and being unable to marry. It needs to be pointed out that there are no priests who go hungry among us, and besides some of the loneliest people I’ve ever met have been married …”. The question, according to the commentator, is that “instead of protests, demonstrations and sit-ins, we should ask ourselves how we should tackle the future as believers in God. Why not spend our energies in a more positive way?”.