Vocation

[ithinkjesusiscool]

Pax!
I have heard people saying that the highest vocation is the vocation to become a monk/nun. Is that Church teaching?
So the other vocations are less high/good?

[cappie]

I think comparisons are odious, as they tend to create a special class of persons which can lead to pharisee like behaviour which is not the intent of the teaching or might add the teachings of the Popes particularly from Pope John XXIII until the present Holy Father. Language can either clarify or muddy the waters.

 

The Church teaches that marriage and the consecrated life both find their origin in God Himself, and are thus both to be held in high esteem. According to the Church, the two vocations are inseparable to one another; they reinforce and support each other (cf. p.1620). It is thus that marriage should never be scorned or looked down upon, nor should sex be viewed as somehow "dirty" (the Manichean and Gnostic heresies--today in a derivative form of Puritanism--viewed the material world and the body as an evil);

 

    Catechism of the Catholic Church, p.1620: "Whoever denigrates marriage also diminishes the glory of virginity. Whoever praises it [marriage] makes virginity more admirable and resplendent. What appears good only in comparison with evil would not be truly good. The most excellent good is something even better than what is admitted to be good."

 

    Bl. John Paul II, Theology of the Body: "The 'superiority' of continence to marriage never means, in the authentic tradition of the Church, a disparagement of marriage or a belittling of its essential value. It does not even imply sliding, even merely implicitly, toward Manichean positions, or a support for ways of evaluating or acting based on a Manichean understanding of the body and of sex, of marriage and procreation. The evangelical and genuinely Christian superiority of virginity, of continence, is thus dictated by the motive of the kingdom of heaven. In the words of Christ reported by Matthew 19:11—12, we find a solid basis for admitting only such superiority, while we do not find any basis whatsoever for the disparagement of marriage that could be present in the recognition of that superiority."

 

In this vein, we may consider marriage to be a good, and consecrated life, a better good. This echoes Paul exhortation to the Corinthians; "So then, he who marries the virgin does good, but he who does not marry her does even better." (1 Cor 7:38). Saint Ambrose, in a treatise on virginity, repeats; "I am comparing good things with good things, that it may be clear which is the more excellent."  We must remember too that we are only speaking in an objective sense, and we are assuming each life is lived according to its ideal.