Community urged to help with vocations

The Christian community must become more aware of its responsibility to provide vocations, the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Desmond Connell, has said.

He was speaking yesterday at the launch of a 30-minute video on the life and ministry of a priest by the Dublin Diocesan Vocations Centre. Titled Curriculum Vitae, the film concerns Father John Kelly, a chaplain at Tallaght Hospital who served in Donnycarney for eight years until July 1999.

"Every member of the diocesan community has a part to play in the process of preparing the ground, so that the seed of a vocation can take root and be nourished," Dr Connell said.

He said he was delighted to ordain three young men as deacons on Saturday and added that in a few weeks Bishop Moriarty would ordain Michael O'Grady from Dollymount "as our first Dublin priest of the new millennium". Dr Connell also said there would be a further ordination in November.

The life of a priest was lived "not in isolation but at the heart of a community. It is a life of service and self-giving. At times it can be quite demanding, but it is also very rewarding," he said. Dr Connell thanked the media "for everything you do which is in the service of truth, and in the cause of justice. Your vocation has many things in common with the vocation of the priest."

The director of vocations for the Dublin archdiocese, Father Kevin Doran, said it was a difficult time to become a priest. "Western culture at the end of the 20th century is not particularly supportive of the spiritual dimension of our humanity. Everything seems to be instant and temporary," he said.

"On the other hand, it is a time when, increasingly, people are looking for a deeper meaning and purpose in their lives. Western society, perhaps without even realising it, is searching for its soul."

Cardinal Danneels , Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels, recently told an audience of more than 200 priests from the Dublin archdiocese that priests must "accept that in the future we, as church, will have to learn to live a poorer life: in finances, personnel, prestige and impact, media influence, perhaps even poorer in grey matter, competence and academic education. Certainly poorer in number."

Speaking at Clonliffe College last week, he said the church needed a new image and the priest was "no longer a figure around which unanimity exists".

"Faith is less and less transmitted via the bloodline of the family. Faith has more and more become the voluntary adherence to a very personal position, often no longer supported by family and friends," he said.

"This means that the social legitimation of the priest is located elsewhere than it was in the past: no longer in social consensus but in a voluntary acceptance by a more limited group."