Male Discerners

[Anselm]

I know that the majority of posters here are female, so as one of the minority I wonder how the other male posters are finding the process of discernment. Have you been travelling this particular road for long? What made you first consider the religious life? Do you have a particular order or house in mind?

[PhuturePriest]

I have been traveling the road for six years, though I've only been officially discerning for two. The first time I I thought about it I was ten, and it was the month of June or July, I can't remember which. I visited the EWTN shrine, and I saw the Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word there, and I decided right then that I was going to be a religious. That lasted about two weeks, and then I forgot about it. In August, I went to the Midwest Catholic Family Conference (I've gone every year since I was four or five), and when I was there we got this book about Priests and the Mass. A little while after, I suddenly thought "I want to be a Priest!" and I went off to find that book. I got really excited and got my sister, and I took her to the swings to tell her. When I told her, she was ecstatic, and said "If you become a Priest, I'll love you!" (Which is her exaggerated way of saying that she's really happy).

 

It wasn't long before it was forgotten again, and this time it would be forgotten for three years. In February of 2011 when I was fourteen, I felt a very strong call to the Priesthood, and I started discerning immediately. I was very serious about it and got a spiritual director, and I started contacting communities left and right. Now I've discerned that if I am called, it is likely to the diocesan Priesthood, and it's taken a long time to come to that point. I think I finally discerned that in November.

[Anselm]

That's very brave of you! Do you feel able to discuss it with friends? I'll certainly pray for you.

[PhuturePriest]

That's very brave of you! Do you feel able to discuss it with friends? I'll certainly pray for you.

 

Haha, I don't know about brave. And definitely! But I'm a super talkative person, so it really isn't any surprise. And I'll pray for you, too.

[arfink]

I know it's probably tacky and tasteless to point out that discernment also applies to people considering the married state, despite what dUSt seems to think.

 

But in the spirit of all things non-lay-vocation-related I would just share that I did go to a seminary and determined that was not where God wants me. And wrote about it some also:

http://www.phatmass.com/phorum/topic/124300-a-seminary-story/

 

 

[OnlySunshine]

I know it's probably tacky and tasteless to point out that discernment also applies to people considering the married state, despite what dUSt seems to think.

 

But in the spirit of all things non-lay-vocation-related I would just share that I did go to a seminary and determined that was not where God wants me. And wrote about it some also:

http://www.phatmass.com/phorum/topic/124300-a-seminary-story/

 

I don't think that's necessarily dUSt's point.  He just didn't want this Vocation Station forum turning into a forum for those discerning marriage when it's intent was for those discerning priesthood or consecrated life.  ;)

[Anselm]

Thanks Arfink, I was really fascinated to read that after chatting to you a bit the other day. I certainly don't think discussing a vocation to marriage is tacky! I suppose, having asked others for theirs, I should explain my own journey so far...

 

I grew up in a small rural village in south-eastern England (British people, if you've ever seen The Darling Buds of May, it's where that was filmed). My family, or at least my parents, were atheists but had my twin brother and me baptised because it was the done thing. My father's family were an odd mix of northern Socialists and elderly Catholic aunts. I think my mother's family were nominally Methodist but that never featured. My parents were married and I was baptised in an Anglican church but after that point my only experiences of religion while growing up were the termly compulsory services at school.

 

Fast-forward a few years. For as many generations as anyone knows about lots of my family have been in the Royal Navy. I decided when I was 13 that I would like to do the same and so when I was 16 I attended the 'Admiralty Interview Board' to apply for a scholarship to run alongside my A Levels. I got that and so, when I left school at 18 I went to Britannia Royal Naval College, the navy's training establishment for officers in a beautiful little town in south Devon. There I came into contact with the Anglican Chaplain, though purely because he ran the rowing club! I spent another couple of years training and began my first proper appointment as a naval officer at Faslane, the UK's nuclear submarine base on the river Clyde in Scotland. It's a little cut-off, so the Wardroom (officers' mess) was a very social place. Again I got to know the Chaplains and decided to be confirmed. It was at that point that I became an Anglican by accident! In western Scotland, because I was both English and an officer it was assumed that I would be an Anglican rather than a Catholic!

 

However, once confirmed in the Scottish Episcopal Church my mind turned pretty fast to vocation and, with the encouragement of the Chaplain at Faslane (who sadly died of very lately diagnosed cancer a year later) I made the decision to pursue ordination in the Church of England, making that decision at the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. After passing the 'Bishops' Advisory Panel' (which advises Anglican Bishops on whether to sponsor potential seminarians) I left the Navy (not an easy task for me as I loved it) and arrived at St Stephen's House, an Anglican seminary in Oxford. St Stephen's House has always been known as the 'Anglo-Catholic' college within the CofE, but very soon after arriving I started to feel rather uneasy, not about being there, but about ordination itself. I enjoyed the community life so much that I couldn't really imagine being a Curate living alone in a parish without the daily offices and meals in common. Allied to that was a growing dissatisfaction with the Anglican Church as I realised that my religious convictions, doctrinal beliefs and liturgical practices meant that I felt much more at home in a Catholic church (of which Oxford has many).

 

Because of those doubts I left at the beginning of my second year and, through the help of a friend's Capuchin Friar Godfather, the Jesuits at Campion Hall offered me temporary accommodation. It was at their suggestion that I telephoned one of the colleges of the university in Oxford to ask whether I could come to study Theology. That was very unorthodox as the interviews had taken place a year earlier and applications had closed several months before that! However, after an interview (and, on my part, much prayer) I was admitted and moved in a week later.

 

Three years later and my attraction to the religious life that I had first noted at St Stephen's House had not disappeared. I had taken quite a few retreats with communities, one with the Carmelites but mostly at a house of the English Benedictine Congregation in south-western England. I loved my visits there and started to think that it might be for me, even though in the back of my mind there was a niggling thought about a more strictly contemplative life. I had been received into the Catholic Church and had become a teacher at a boarding school. Because of that job it seemed all the more obvious for me to join an EBC house - monastic life combined, often, with teaching in their schools! Still, the contemplative niggle remained. That brings me to where I currently find myself; still teaching, but convinced more and more every day that my future lies in a Benedictine community. In particular a Solesmes house on the south coast of England... I have visited before and will be back there for a conversation with the Novice Master at the end of this month. I live close to England's only Charterhouse and have a great admiration for the determination and power of the Carthusians' prayers; I try to send them donations when I can and in return they have sent me some fascinating and very useful books of essays and meditations. Even so, the Solesmes tradition of agricultural work combined with academic study and a great devotion to the liturgy has such an appeal, particularly at the house in question. So, I would be very grateful for prayers!

 

[PhuturePriest]

Thanks Arfink, I was really fascinated to read that after chatting to you a bit the other day. I certainly don't think discussing a vocation to marriage is tacky! I suppose, having asked others for theirs, I should explain my own journey so far...

 

I grew up in a small rural village in south-eastern England (British people, if you've ever seen The Darling Buds of May, it's where that was filmed). My family, or at least my parents, were atheists but had my twin brother and me baptised because it was the done thing. My father's family were an odd mix of northern Socialists and elderly Catholic aunts. I think my mother's family were nominally Methodist but that never featured. My parents were married and I was baptised in an Anglican church but after that point my only experiences of religion while growing up were the termly compulsory services at school.

 

Fast-forward a few years. For as many generations as anyone knows about lots of my family have been in the Royal Navy. I decided when I was 13 that I would like to do the same and so when I was 16 I attended the 'Admiralty Interview Board' to apply for a scholarship to run alongside my A Levels. I got that and so, when I left school at 18 I went to Britannia Royal Naval College, the navy's training establishment for officers in a beautiful little town in south Devon. There I came into contact with the Anglican Chaplain, though purely because he ran the rowing club! I spent another couple of years training and began my first proper appointment as a naval officer at Faslane, the UK's nuclear submarine base on the river Clyde in Scotland. It's a little cut-off, so the Wardroom (officers' mess) was a very social place. Again I got to know the Chaplains and decided to be confirmed. It was at that point that I became an Anglican by accident! In western Scotland, because I was both English and an officer it was assumed that I would be an Anglican rather than a Catholic!

 

However, once confirmed in the Scottish Episcopal Church my mind turned pretty fast to vocation and, with the encouragement of the Chaplain at Faslane (who sadly died of very lately diagnosed cancer a year later) I made the decision to pursue ordination in the Church of England, making that decision at the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. After passing the 'Bishops' Advisory Panel' (which advises Anglican Bishops on whether to sponsor potential seminarians) I left the Navy (not an easy task for me as I loved it) and arrived at St Stephen's House, an Anglican seminary in Oxford. St Stephen's House has always been known as the 'Anglo-Catholic' college within the CofE, but very soon after arriving I started to feel rather uneasy, not about being there, but about ordination itself. I enjoyed the community life so much that I couldn't really imagine being a Curate living alone in a parish without the daily offices and meals in common. Allied to that was a growing dissatisfaction with the Anglican Church as I realised that my religious convictions, doctrinal beliefs and liturgical practices meant that I felt much more at home in a Catholic church (of which Oxford has many).

 

Because of those doubts I left at the beginning of my second year and, through the help of a friend's Capuchin Friar Godfather, the Jesuits at Campion Hall offered me temporary accommodation. It was at their suggestion that I telephoned one of the colleges of the university in Oxford to ask whether I could come to study Theology. That was very unorthodox as the interviews had taken place a year earlier and applications had closed several months before that! However, after an interview (and, on my part, much prayer) I was admitted and moved in a week later.

 

Three years later and my attraction to the religious life that I had first noted at St Stephen's House had not disappeared. I had taken quite a few retreats with communities, one with the Carmelites but mostly at a house of the English Benedictine Congregation in south-western England. I loved my visits there and started to think that it might be for me, even though in the back of my mind there was a niggling thought about a more strictly contemplative life. I had been received into the Catholic Church and had become a teacher at a boarding school. Because of that job it seemed all the more obvious for me to join an EBC house - monastic life combined, often, with teaching in their schools! Still, the contemplative niggle remained. That brings me to where I currently find myself; still teaching, but convinced more and more every day that my future lies in a Benedictine community. In particular a Solesmes house on the south coast of England... I have visited before and will be back there for a conversation with the Novice Master at the end of this month. I live close to England's only Charterhouse and have a great admiration for the determination and power of the Carthusians' prayers; I try to send them donations when I can and in return they have sent me some fascinating and very useful books of essays and meditations. Even so, the Solesmes tradition of agricultural work combined with academic study and a great devotion to the liturgy has such an appeal, particularly at the house in question. So, I would be very grateful for prayers!

 

That's an amazing story! It's so cool that you've actually visited the Carthusians there. I discerned with them (And the Solesmes Congregation in England as well) briefly, and they seemed like such a cool community. Sadly, I'm such a talkative person that I knew in my heart I would never make it as a Carthusian, so instead I've decided God is probably calling me to talk parishes to death instead. :P

[Luigi]

Anselm - 

 

I LOVE the way you write. Write more so I can read that, too. 

[Luigi]

Have you read Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul by Tony Hendra?

[Anselm]

Luigi - haha, thank you! I'm sure I will write more, when I can think of what to write about. I haven't read Tony Hendra's book (though I've heard of it), but I have read Dom Luke Bell's 'A Deep and Subtle Joy', which has a foreword written by him. The house in question is a fascinating mixture of French and English monastic traditions, founded as it was by the exiled monks of Solesmes during the French anti-religious laws of the early 20th Century. It is in a beautiful place too, just a short walk past mediaeval Cistercian ruins down to the sea.

 

At the moment I'm reading 'Where Silence is Praise', a book of essays and reflections written by a Carthusian in Parkminster in 1958 and  of which they very kindly and unexpectedly sent me a copy this week.

Edited May 4, 2013 by Anselm

[Anselm]

Are there really only two of us? Well that's depressing...

[PhuturePriest]

Are there really only two of us? Well that's depressing...

 

Pretty much. Males are a rare breed in Vocation Station, and male discerners are even more rare. But don't worry: Being more scarce makes us higher in value than if there were nine thousand of us. ;)

Edited May 6, 2013 by FuturePriest387

[Luigi]

Are there really only two of us? Well that's depressing...

There are others who are thinking about diocesan priesthood - I've read their posts in the past... but there aren't many thinking about joining orders. 

[Anselm]

Hmm, why is that I wonder?