Seminary Highschools And Such

[Aloysius]

so say I want to raise my future family somewhere where the following would be available and plausibly visible options for my children:

-seminary high schools
-fully habited (so they'd be visible hehe) religious orders

is that possible anymore? are there any seminary high schools left on the earth? I don't want the only possible option for one of my children who might receive the call of God to the seminary to be to wait until after high school or after college before the seminary would even consider allowing him to discern through study.

[Thy Geekdom Come]

I think there's like one high school seminary in the country.

As good as it is to promote a presence of the religious around your kids and to encourage them if they have a religious vocation, I do hope you're not planning on trying to instill a vocation in them yourself. :

[kenrockthefirst]

Let me ask you this: I have three sons. Is there any way I can - should I - encourage one or more of them to consider a vocation?

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='kenrockthefirst' post='1267011' date='May 7 2007, 02:16 PM']Let me ask you this: I have three sons. Is there any way I can - should I - encourage one or more of them to consider a vocation?[/quote]
I think it would be better to encourage them to discern what God is calling them to and give them the tools and opportunities they need. Discernment requires, above all, docility to the Holy Spirit. Whatever you see your kids doing as far as their vocations, what the Holy Spirit wills is what matters. So I'd start by catechizing them about different vocations, priesthood, religious life, married life, the single vocation, praying with them to decide what they feel called to, what they feel their gifts would best serve, etc., encourage them when they think they may have a lead and give them an opportunity to look further.

This is coming, of course, from a catechist and not from a parent. I realize that some things are harder done in real life than in theory.

[kenrockthefirst]

[quote name='Raphael' post='1267034' date='May 7 2007, 02:37 PM']I think it would be better to encourage them to discern what God is calling them to and give them the tools and opportunities they need. Discernment requires, above all, docility to the Holy Spirit. Whatever you see your kids doing as far as their vocations, what the Holy Spirit wills is what matters. So I'd start by catechizing them about different vocations, priesthood, religious life, married life, the single vocation, praying with them to decide what they feel called to, what they feel their gifts would best serve, etc., encourage them when they think they may have a lead and give them an opportunity to look further.

This is coming, of course, from a catechist and not from a parent. I realize that some things are harder done in real life than in theory.[/quote]

When does that begin? My boys are 9, 7 and almost 5. We attend liturgy every week, my two older boys attend CCD. How do I slip in to conversation, "gee, guys, ever think of being a priest?" On a related note, our parish is St. Catherine of Bologna, who was a visionary. When my oldest learned that, he said he wanted to be a visionary, and we've prayed for that on and off during our prayers. I'm not sure, of course, that that's something he'd [i]really[/i] want, so how can we discern properly?

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='kenrockthefirst' post='1267038' date='May 7 2007, 02:42 PM']When does that begin? My boys are 9, 7 and almost 5. We attend liturgy every week, my two older boys attend CCD. How do I slip in to conversation, "gee, guys, ever think of being a priest?" On a related note, our parish is St. Catherine of Bologna, who was a visionary. When my oldest learned that, he said he wanted to be a visionary, and we've prayed for that on and off during our prayers. I'm not sure, of course, that that's something he'd [i]really[/i] want, so how can we discern properly?[/quote]
Well, I think the question of proper discerning is something you should talk to a priest or religious about. However, I think that you can definitely start at young ages. I know several seminarians who "played Mass" while their sisters were playing house. Children have a way of knowing what they want to do when they grow up, as I'm sure you know. As any good parent such as yourself would do, you encourage that attitude. If they want to be firefighters, you get them toy fire engines. If they want to be priests, you let them play Mass. Then they will grow into a more intentional stage, where they will start wanting to figure out exactly what it means to do that and whether they really want everything it incorporates. Once they begin forming that identity, you help them to accomplish it, while also giving them some room for change, if they should decide that they are beginning to feel called in a different direction. You tell them what a vocation is...when they're very young, tell them how God has a special plan for them...when they get older, tell them it's time to start figuring out that plan (in a general way)...then when, say, they're teenagers, if they feel pretty firm in their plans, help them to accomplish it and make sure through the whole time that they know a vocation is more than a career or occupation, and that it comes from God and that they have to pray for guidance. Once they get older, if they are attracted to the priesthood, maybe have your pastor over for dinner. Incorporate that vocation into the parish community. Ask others to pray, etc.

I remember when I was little, I wanted very much to be a husband and father. Then I fell in love with the Church and became a seminarian, but ultimately, the desire God had placed in me for human intimacy was the root of my vocation...that did not mean that I was more fond of human intimacy than divine intimacy, but simply that it was my vocational purpose on this earth.

So anyway, that's just my humble opinion on how to do things.

[Aloysius]

Let's not be too handsoffish, though, now. I think it's perfectly natural that there be this understood idea within the family that at least one of the kids is probably going to go for the religious or priestly vocation... I think there should be a high degree of prestige within the family understood as coming with that choice, too.

whereas most modern families attach high prestige to the eventual begetting of grandchildren, I think the highest level of prestige from the parent should be offered to those that would choose the religious or priestly vocation.

it is true that it is a call from God, but I think too many times we try to neglect the human aspects of that call. family-pressure should not come down on one particular individual, but an ambiguous 'pressure' that one or the other of the children (I'm imagining a large family model here) will enter the priesthood or religious life.

I think seminary high school should be an open option... I don't like the way things are done now; ie, put it off till you've tested every other water, gone to college, prepared for a possible career, and had a taste of what life would be like outside of the seminary... et cetera et cetera. A great number of holy vocations come from children who receive the call and at that point are fostered in that direction.

I don't like this whole destiny thing, either, where people basically see what they eventually do decide as their vocation as their destiny as God created them. in certain senses of predestination, sure, but as regards how it should be looked at and decided-- every single human being has a natural call to family life, and therefore theoretically ever single man could end up as a husband and father and not be breaking their vocation... an extra-ordinary supernatural call comes to some, and unless that call is fostered by human institutions and by family prestige, that call will be lost and they may go right through their natural vocation written into their bodies. I really have large problems with the way people look at vocations nowadays, it's just so individualistic and spiritualistic, rather than organic and concretely visible in institutions as it used to be.

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='Aloysius' post='1267209' date='May 7 2007, 04:28 PM']Let's not be too handsoffish, though, now. I think it's perfectly natural that there be this understood idea within the family that at least one of the kids is probably going to go for the religious or priestly vocation... I think there should be a high degree of prestige within the family understood as coming with that choice, too.[/quote]
No matter how you slice that, it's trying to push someone into a vocation that God may not be calling them to.

On another note, while family prestige does come with priestly and religious vocations, it should not be a deciding factor (that's how we ended up with the Medici).

It's perfectly fine to pray that your children enter priestly and religious vocations, but to try to pressure them into it, in any form, is your choosing your own pretty picture of a family over whatever God's plan might be.

I agree that many vocations come from a young age (thus, I said that they need to be nurtured from that point) and I agree that people don't need to have tried everything else. Priesthood is not the fall-back vocation, nor is it the default vocation.

I also agree that any man has a natural inclination toward family, but as St. Thomas Aquinas might argue, God takes that natural inclination and points it in some toward supernatural ends. God, however, does the pointing, not the parents. Parents should not pressure any vocation on their children, including marriage, but they should all be laid out openly before them and prayerfully considered.

I would also add that we should not distrust our natural inclinations. If God has really put it in a man's heart to be a husband and father, then by all means that should be considered a good sign that he is supposed to be. God works supernatural results through the natural realm. I left the seminary because I felt the natural call to be a husband and father...not that priests do not also feel that call (certainly, they do, and if they had all left the seminary, we'd be in trouble), but that I felt those things attracting me to priesthood were not the sacraments and liturgy (great as they are), but the prestige and also the retreat from the world (out of a fear of confrontation, not a desire for holy solitude) and the service to others, and that those things attracting me to marriage and family life were nuptial love, the raising of children, and the idea of being a father to many sons and daughters, should the Lord so bless me. These natural inclinations can be weighed. When I considered that those things attracting me to the priesthood were things I could do without priesthood, but those things attracting me to marriage were things I could not do without marriage, I felt that God had clarified for me the very purpose of my life on this earth, which I felt written in my nature.

God bless,

Micah

[Aloysius]

What I mean to say is that everyone has that natural inclination, and anyone has the potentiality of being in that vocation. There is no one who is by nature called to celibacy; everyone is by nature called to marriage. Which is why a vocation to celibacy can be easily lost, it is rare and fragile. I'm not saying not to trust your natural inclinations, on the contrary: I'm saying that your natural inclinations just mean you're a normal human being. Even those who will be called to be priests have the same level of natural inclinations towards family as anyone who eventually finds themself in that vocation.

No pressuring of any individual, sure, but making it clear that it's expected that one or the other of them will probably enter the religious or priestly vocation is not wrong. Things should not be done so individualistically as they are in modern society; the family-system ordered towards some of its members eventually becoming priests or religious is just an organic institutional direction.

Do you think it was wrong of families in the past to operate under this system, under this assumption? I don't think so at all... what about St. Therese's father? His family definitely operated under that assumption, that institutional organic family pressure, ambiguous and not directed towards any individual member of the family on the one hand, but real and encouraging of priestly and religious vocations on the other.

There's this individualist current underlying most thought about vocations nowadays, and it's detrimental and I believe it's contributing to the loss of vocations. And part of that is the over-extending of the principal that families should not "pressure" their children; it is true that they should not single out one or the other and say "this one is going to be a priest"; but in the overall attitude of the family it should be "one or the other of these children will take on the task of entering religious or priestly life".

[kateri05]

on the hs seminary note: the legion has 2 or 3 in north america alone

[EcceNovaFacioOmni]

[quote name='Aloysius' post='1267421' date='May 7 2007, 07:37 PM']No pressuring of any individual, sure, but making it clear that it's expected that one or the other of them will probably enter the religious or priestly vocation is not wrong. Things should not be done so individualistically as they are in modern society; the family-system ordered towards some of its members eventually becoming priests or religious is just an organic institutional direction.[/quote]
What do you mean by "expected"? All the children in one family could be called to married life.

[Aloysius]

I'm using these terms in a loose manner. In the end, that is true, they could all end up married and that'd be perfectly fine.

But haven't you ever heard someone old talk about the way their large family worked and used the word "expected"? hehe, that's what I'm goin for, a sort of culture of expectation and prestige surrounding that idea that one or the other sibling should take on the vocation.

I have a much more organically cultural view of the way God calls people than some of the more individualistic modern models... but I don't see it under this whole "destiny" paradigm, as if from their births there was this set number of the kids who were gonna be married and this set number who were gonna be priests/religious. I think at their birth they were all going to be married, that is, after all, what their bodies were made for; and that any one of them has the potentiality of receiving the call and succeeding at it, given the proper environment... it'd still be just as authentic of a call from God, but He didn't act through some mystical ethereal destiny but through organic concrete cultural institutions like families.

case-in-point: no one received the call to the priestly vocation in the Americas until after European contact. haha, whilst God did call St. Juan Diego to the priesthood, so did the Spanish.

So whilst I look for God's call in my children; that call will not only come from God, but from the family and from the institutions presented to them as visible and highly prestigious and recommended options

[quote]on the hs seminary note: the legion has 2 or 3 in north america alone[/quote]

where are they, I must build a house near one of them! haha

[EcceNovaFacioOmni]

I think the way I would go about it is having sure they had a lot of close interaction with religious. As long as they are around them and know they are normal people, I think they would give a religious vocation serious thought. I think that is mostly what we need - to tell young people that religious are not "different" people unlike ourselves and that it is a wonderful vocation that should be considered by all. I think there is a tendency to view it, even among the lay faithful (not just the world at large), as weird and something that is to be somewhat discouraged for their children. I'm not sure we need to necessarily say "I hope one of you becomes a religious, but if you don't that is fine," but let kids explore all that the religious life is. I think the problem is that too many Catholic parents don't understand it either, which is the root of the problem.

[littleflower+JMJ]

I have to vouch for seminary high schools. Gosh if only we had more of them....our diocese got SO many vocations out of ours until they closed it down. No telling how many more would we would have if it was still open. Its a shame really.

[EcceNovaFacioOmni]

[quote name='littleflower+JMJ' post='1267849' date='May 8 2007, 12:57 AM']I have to vouch for seminary high schools. Gosh if only we had more of them....our diocese got SO many vocations out of ours until they closed it down. No telling how many more would we would have if it was still open. Its a shame really. [/quote]
Why was it closed?