Father V. directs us to this article on “Why Vocations Programs Don’t Work”. Naturally I think the article is pure genius, since it says thing such as:
If youth ministers and, more specifically, priests take the time to teach their young people how to pray alone, in community, liturgically, before the Blessed Sacrament, with an icon or crucifix, in nature, with Scripture, or with a journal, disciples will emerge. Don’t be fooled; young people desire to learn to pray and to pray well, and they want their leaders to teach them.
Yes. My kids beg to pray. Even in my very rough start as a first-year teacher with no training, the day we set a dozen fifth graders loose in the church with brochures on How to Pray The Stations of the Cross, they were all over it. No groovy music, no splash, no drama. Just a quiet empty church and a prayer card, and the chance to move from station to station and pray. It was good. Stunningly good.
Moreover, it’s all too common that those working with youth soft-step around difficult or controversial Church teachings in an attempt not to drive young people away. Gone are the days of young people defining themselves as liberal or conservative Catholics. The stakes are much higher today: either you believe in God or you don’t. As the Southern novelist Walker Percy said upon his Catholic conversion, these days it is either “Rome or Hollywood,” there is no more middle ground. As such, young people want to be challenged. They want to think and understand and wrestle with big ideas. So why not spend time teaching them about the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Paschal Mystery, the Liturgy, and the Last Things? It is no secret that the Church’s teachings on sexuality are counter-cultural, but this is precisely the draw for so many young people—that the human person is more than simply an object of pleasure, and that there is something beautiful about God’s creating us male and female, in his image and likeness, and that there is a divine plan for the way we express ourselves.
To which I say: Preach it, Father.
And yes, all these things need not wait until the kids are 17 and “mature”. I teach a 100% G-rated class. Boys and girls know they are boys and girls. They know that babies come from mothers and fathers. They know that families are good, and they desperately want to grow up to be like their parents, to live in a home where they are loved by both parents . . . they understand good whether they themselves get to experience it or not. We who are afraid of controversy, are just afraid of telling the kids what they already know deep down.
And in any case, how exactly does free pizza and a trip to the amusement park prepare a young man for seminary?
–> Would you really promote, say, engineering majors, by hosting a high school engineering club that shied away from any of that frightful math and science stuff? Don’t teach the kids to solve equations! If they truly feel called, they’ll embark on their own quest to discover the value of the unknown! We don’t want anyone intimated by rigid adherence to the number line!
I’ll stop there. I have this vocation I need to tend to. But one of the combox requests at Fr. Ference’s article asks for more detailed “how-to’s”. At the risk of over-promoting a mighty good blog, I send you to this enjoyable and insightful article on teaching about the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes. Which includes a lovely vocations twist I for one had never noticed.