I was a participant! It was very chaotic and the organizers seemed a bit overwhelmed by the massive turnout. By next year, I’m hopeful it will be a well oiled machine. 99% of attendees are called to the married life, not religious life, and yet the vast majority of vocational exhibitors at Seek are religious orders. This was the only exp…
I was a participant! It was very chaotic and the organizers seemed a bit overwhelmed by the massive turnout. By next year, I’m hopeful it will be a well oiled machine. 99% of attendees are called to the married life, not religious life, and yet the vast majority of vocational exhibitors at Seek are religious orders. This was the only experience really focused on practical support to discernment of the 99% vocation! Hopefully next year they’ll break it up by regions or ages over several days, and offer a few more age brackets for Young Professionals (23-35 is just too broad).
I'm inclined to think that, to some degree, this is because there is significant reason to be skeptical that 99% are actually called to marriage. I think probably 99% *want* marriage, and since marriage is a much more socially normal and conventional than any form of celibacy or vowed/consecrated/ordained life, there is insufficient opportunity for people to pause and be challenged to reconsider the assumption that the desire for marriage is the same as a genuine vocation. Religious life and holy orders have structures to help filter out folks who do not seem to have a genuine vocation: marriage has no such structure, effectively letting anyone who wants it in as long as they find a spouse. (Sure, marriage prep is a thing, but to compare that to a seminary application is disingenuous.)
I tend to think that the share of folks with genuine vocations to marriage is actually a much, much smaller share of the population than we assume, but many genuine vocations to religious life, holy orders, and other forms of celibate life are lost because of the general conflation of desire with calling, and a lack of both support and challenge.
In my experience, discerning a religious vocation ended up being what gave me clarity that I had a vocation to marriage. It’s through praying and using Ignatian discernment with these vocations that God can speak to how he made your heart. If every Catholic did this, we would have more priests and religious in my opinion.
There's nothing wrong with a dating event, it sounds fun. However, you better hope more than 1% of attendees are called to a religious vocation, or those getting married and having children are going to have great difficulty finding priests to administer the sacraments to themselves and their families.
1% would be great! Even 0.25% (ie adjusting for women and men called to religious life but not priesthood) Catholic young people being called to the priesthood would be ~5x as many priests per Catholic in the US as now (1:2000)
I was a participant! It was very chaotic and the organizers seemed a bit overwhelmed by the massive turnout. By next year, I’m hopeful it will be a well oiled machine. 99% of attendees are called to the married life, not religious life, and yet the vast majority of vocational exhibitors at Seek are religious orders. This was the only experience really focused on practical support to discernment of the 99% vocation! Hopefully next year they’ll break it up by regions or ages over several days, and offer a few more age brackets for Young Professionals (23-35 is just too broad).
I'm inclined to think that, to some degree, this is because there is significant reason to be skeptical that 99% are actually called to marriage. I think probably 99% *want* marriage, and since marriage is a much more socially normal and conventional than any form of celibacy or vowed/consecrated/ordained life, there is insufficient opportunity for people to pause and be challenged to reconsider the assumption that the desire for marriage is the same as a genuine vocation. Religious life and holy orders have structures to help filter out folks who do not seem to have a genuine vocation: marriage has no such structure, effectively letting anyone who wants it in as long as they find a spouse. (Sure, marriage prep is a thing, but to compare that to a seminary application is disingenuous.)
I tend to think that the share of folks with genuine vocations to marriage is actually a much, much smaller share of the population than we assume, but many genuine vocations to religious life, holy orders, and other forms of celibate life are lost because of the general conflation of desire with calling, and a lack of both support and challenge.
In my experience, discerning a religious vocation ended up being what gave me clarity that I had a vocation to marriage. It’s through praying and using Ignatian discernment with these vocations that God can speak to how he made your heart. If every Catholic did this, we would have more priests and religious in my opinion.
There's nothing wrong with a dating event, it sounds fun. However, you better hope more than 1% of attendees are called to a religious vocation, or those getting married and having children are going to have great difficulty finding priests to administer the sacraments to themselves and their families.
1% would be great! Even 0.25% (ie adjusting for women and men called to religious life but not priesthood) Catholic young people being called to the priesthood would be ~5x as many priests per Catholic in the US as now (1:2000)