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John G's avatar

I can say that, at least experientially as a seminarian, this is true. I didn’t really think about seminary until I met a seminarian and he asked me if I’d thought about it. My pastor frequently asked guys who are serving if they’ve thought about priesthood and girls if they’ve thought about religious life and that question is often enough to get people to think about it.

I had the initial question and that got me actually thinking and then a person at Mass said they thought I’d be a good priest and that got me thinking and praying about it more. Presenting priesthood and religious life as real options is a big part of it.

The stats about proportions of ordinations and seminarians also seems to line up with what I’ve noticed just comparing number of seminarians from different dioceses at my seminary. I come from a smaller diocese and in comparison to one’s with much larger Catholic populations we hit well above our weight. Interesting to see the stats line up with my intuition

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Jo's avatar

Could The Pillar do a more detailed analysis of the impact of student loan debt on vocations, especially how it affects men’s and women’s vocations differently? Anecdotally, it seems like there are more opportunities for men to start formation with debt, while it’s more common for women to be required to be debt free and pay a kind of “dowry” when they enter religious formation to cover the cost of health insurance, etc. Not sure if the data actually bears this out though. Obviously there are material realities to religious life that can’t be ignored, but I do worry that religious vocations are increasingly being limited to the financially privileged, which has to impact ministry down the line. As a friend of mine in college once said, “Taking a vow of poverty is very expensive.”

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