Truly, unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain who build it. And unless we pray for vocations by making our own the mind of Christ, we pray like puffs of wind. "Round and round goes the wind" of such prayer. Christ sleeps and does not listen.

The vertical dimensions of the priestly vocation

Christ coached the disciples through exercises of working miracles. He channeled through them extraordinary powers of his own, which were out of range of their native talents. He sent them on missions during which "they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many that were sick and healed them" (Mark 6:13). Not with medical skills, not with magic words, but with exciting powers of Christ in them they worked these wonders. They were being exposed to the rarefied atmosphere of the "other world."

Their lifestyle should bespeak their disconnect from secular pursuits. Money should not turn their heads: "The gift you have received, give as a gift," (Matt. 10:8). Henceforth "The Lord is my portion and my inheritance" is their mandated lifestyle (Dominus pars mea et hereditas mea).

This having been said, nevertheless the three-year apostolic course was not all work and no play. The promised "hundred fold reward in this life" sometimes showed through. At Cana the wine was excellent, and there was plenty of it. The occasional stop at Martha and Mary’s house had its gastronomical rewards. They had money to shop for the noon meal when stopping off at Jacob’s well in the town of Sheckem. The women who followed Jesus to serve him (cf. Mark 15:41) may have helped to provide for the apostles as well. When on mission journeys, Jesus instructed them to seek hospitality with someone who was worthy. There is no record of instructions that they should seek out the poorest house in the neighborhood.

Prayers for vocations heal secular thoughts

Prayers for true vocations according to the intentions of Christ will transform the thoughts of those who pray. Bishops, priests, and seminarians will grow into the mind of Christ, who loves the Church, who has compassion because the flock is "harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd" (Matt. 9:36). Pope John Paul II pointed out that priests are Christ’s extended presence in a very special manner:

Through the ministerial priesthood Christ continues his saving mission down to our time. For this reason, he appointed Bishops and priests, who "in the Church and on behalf of the Church . . . are a sacramental representation of Jesus Christ, Head and Shepherd, authoritatively proclaiming his Word, repeating his acts of forgiveness and his offer of salvation" (Apostolic Exhortation Pastores dabo vobis, n. 15). They are sent to preach the good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and sight to the blind; to set at liberty those who are oppressed (cf. Luke 4:18). Therefore, ministry in the Church is not a human achievement, but a divine institution.

With all respect and esteem for the valuable services of the laity in parish communities, it should never be forgotten: in the sacramental realm a lay person cannot replace what is distinctive of the priest. Only a priest can replace another priest (Address at Sankt Polten, Austria on June 20, 1998).

The Pope also pointed out to members of Serra International that prayer for vocations is a school of life:

But at the same time prayer for vocations is also a school of life as I had occasion recently to point out: "By praying for vocations we learn to look with Gospel wisdom at the world and at each person’s need for life and salvation; it is a way of sharing in Christ’s love and compassion for all mankind" (7 December 2000).

The early Church prayed for laborers

It is not likely that the Gospels would have recorded Christ’s request for vocational prayers if the early Christians had not already been doing exactly that. When the hundred and twenty disciples were assembled in the Upper Room after Christ’s Ascension, they "devoted themselves to constant prayer" (Acts 1:14). The first order of business at the Assembly was to select a worthy apostle to fill the vacancy left by Judas. Then on Pentecost Peter preached a powerful first message, and Baptisms began, some three thousand on that very day. They needed help to manage the logistics. Next we hear about the ordination of deacons. Soon we read that Paul and Barnabas installed presbyters in each church with prayer and fasting (Acts 14:23). They would not have done so, we assume, if the Church in Jerusalem had not authorized such procedure. We also assume that the early Church adopted guidelines concerning the laying on of hands for ordination of bishops and presbyters, which Paul then passed on to Timothy (1 Tim. 3).

One of the challenging qualifications for ordination was giving up family life. Pope John Paul II read in the Gospel an implication that the apostles were celibate: "According to the Gospel, it appears that the Twelve, destined to be the first to share in his priesthood, renounced family life in order to follow him" (General Audience of 17th July 1993). We may infer from this that when the early Church prayed for vocations, this included prayers for a celibate clergy.

Furthermore, their prayers likely asked for a clergy with courage. Bishops and presbyters were high profile targets for persecution. When Herod killed James with the sword and saw that it pleased the Jews, he next laid hands on Peter (Acts 12). Eventually, Peter and perhaps all the apostles became martyrs.

The models for the clergy which Jesus had shown to the Church had been selected with care. One rich young man was rejected because attachment to wealth was a problem (Matt. 19). Another loved too much the comforts of home life: "The foxes have lairs, the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head," (Luke 9:57). Still another failed the test of unconditioned obedience: "Let me bury my father first" he said (Luke 9:60).

Shoring up chastity among the clergy

Why is it that the number of seminarians in theologates in the USA declined dramatically from 8000 students in 1967-68, to 4000 in the year 2000? Note the year 1968. It is the year in which Father Charles Curran led a massive dissent against Humanae Vitae. "Readers with long memories will hearken hack to July 30, 1968, when 87 Catholic theologians from 24 different Catholic higher-education institutions issued their ringing dissent – ‘the shot heard round the world!’ – against Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae (a dissent later to be subscribed to by more than 600 theological dissenters). . ." (Kenneth D. Whitehead, Crisis, January 2001). Part of that manifesto of dissent reads: "It is common teaching in the Church that Catholics may dissent from authoritative non-infallible teachings of the Magisterium when sufficient reasons for doing so exist." That is an egregious and manifest error. From it sprang a "culture of death" in its manifestations of rampant contraception, sterilization, divorce, live-in before marriage, sodomy and others. Dissent in Catholic seminaries is the genie now out of the bottle. Until our seminaries recover obedience to the Magisterium and cultivate a love for the Vicar of Christ, look for further closing of seminaries.

Dissent is now institutionalized and fermenting in the Catholic Theological Society of America. Some years ago, before I cut my membership, I attended the unfortunate meeting during which the Society elected Father Charles Curran as vice president. Thunderous applause broke loose in the hall when his name was announced as the winner. I simply sat in my chair without clapping hands. Next to me sat a member applauding wildly with the rest. He looked at me askance. Applause continued, I sat unmoving. He looked at me again, and then again, and finally in disgust, got up and moved away from me to another row of chairs. It was the last year in which I paid membership dues to the Society.

The dissent of CTSA is currently directed against the document Ex Corde Ecclesiae. "The marked anti-Roman attitude of the CTSA a decade ago seems to be little changed today," observes Whitehead in the article cited above.

Cardinal Bernard Law voiced his disappointment with the continued dissent of CTSA, and asked for a change: