Middlesbrough Diocese: A Culture Unfavourable to Vocations
Blogged by James Preece on 2nd May 2009
If I had written this, people would say I was just being a fundamentalist blogger. Can you guess who did write it?
A clue: It wasn't the Pope...
Yes, I really believe that God is still calling many to priesthood and the religious life. He is still choosing men and women to serve in a spirit of thankful self-giving and with an uncompromising desire to follow and live out the gospel. However, I would say that the secular and spiritual climate generated by our culture is not favourable to these vocations, nor do they nurture a free and mature response to the call. Here I am not just talking about the wider society; I am talking about the Church, and the particular Church in this diocese of Middlesbrough. It is from our own that priests and religious will come, from our own diocese, from our own parishes, from our own families, from our own sons and daughters. It is we who will create a culture favourable to responding to God’s call; no-one else.
First they say : "the secular and spiritual climate generated by our culture is not favourable to these vocations" and we're all thinking.. okay, everybody knows we live in a bad culture, turn on the TV and it's all sex and violence.
Then they say: "Here I am not just talking about the wider society; I am talking about the Church, and the particular Church in this diocese of Middlesbrough."
Translation: The culture in our Church in this diocese of Middlesbrough generates a secular and spiritual climate which is not favourable to vocations...
Harsh.
So who wrote it?
Reader Comments
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Dawn Young said...
Hazard a quess it's an Anglican female priest.
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Ben Whitworth said...
Just a hunch: the Bishop of Middlesbrough?
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