Given for God's People

by Ernest Doclar, USAC Communications Committee Chairman

In April, some 1,100 priests, religious, and lay men and women gathered in Montreal to discuss strategies to increase the number and quality of vocations to consecrated life and priestly ministry.

Thirty-three years have ticked by since I last visited Montreal. It was the year of the World’s Fair. My family and I absorbed little of the flavor of the great city on the St. Lawrence since we spent only one long day at the venue. We enjoyed the fair’s hubbub, its magnificent exhibits, and international cuisine (on our budget, mostly fast food). But because we traveled with five adults (one a grandmother) and two babies, all stuffed into my Ford Falcon wagon, it was rushed.

By comparison, my sojourn to Montreal for the Third Continental Congress on Vocations in April 2002 packed tightly a leisurely-acquired mix of sights and sounds. Most memorable were the skyscrapers and gorgeous houses of God in this city of the Royal Mount. The latter left little doubt that this is a very Catholic city, with some 80 percent professing our faith.

As one of some 1,100 delegates from around the Western Hemisphere (but mostly the USA and Canada), I helped represent the USA Council of Serra. Our organization, designated by Pope John Paul II as the vocation arm of the church, sent 28 representatives to voice our concerns and to contribute to the outcome of the congress.

President Giovanni Novelli of Livorno, Italy, and President-elect Sue Cicherski of Irving, Texas, represented Serra International, while President Claire Howard of Bethlehem, Pa., and President-elect Bill Ramsey of Omaha, Neb., represented Serra’s USA Council.
The congress was well-attended by priests and religious from north and south of both our borders. The majority of them bear responsibility to promote vocations to either dioceses or orders. Some 120 young people, mostly under 25, spoke loudly and enthusiastically for their constituency. And to lend added maturity and stability to our groups were dozens of bishops and archbishops, as well as Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte, Archbishop of Montreal, and Cardinal Zenon Grochelewski.

As night fell on the first day of deliberations, two observations stood out: the organizers had laid a solid foundation for this conference. The team was headed by Archbishop Roger Schwietz, OMI, of Anchorage, Alaska; Bishop Richard Grecco of Windsor, Ontario; and Bishop Andre Rivest of Montreal. Co-chairs Father Ed Burns of Pittsburgh and Father Raymond Lafontaine of Montreal had labored diligently for years before the first delegate signed in at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, congress headquarters. A hard-charging group of priests, brothers, and sisters from both principal participating countries rounded out the leadership team.

Most of the nitty-gritty occurred at table discussions which developed after keynote speeches. As often is the case, those latter were outstanding priests and sisters who challenged the delegates. Speaking were: Rev. Donald Senior, CP; Rev. Ronald Rolheiser, OMI; Sr. Marie Chin, RSM; Sr. Mary Johnson, SND de N.; and Rev. Gilles Routhier. They spoke on a wide variety of vocations-related topics, ranging from the biblical foundations of ordained ministry and consecrated life to the effect of contemporary events on vocations. All these addresses would hammer at the congress’ trilingual theme: “Vocación, Don de Dieu, Given for God’s People.”

Perhaps the greatest example of the genius behind this congress showed itself in the composition of the100-plus table teams. These comprised a broad mix of lay men and women, priests, and religious. There were the young and the old, single and married. By far the youngest participant was a 3-month-old baby girl brought by her parents, the Gorgeses of Wichita, Kan. Delegates spoke French, Spanish, and English. Radio receivers for translation were available.

Take my table for a sample of diversity: We were nine—Sr. Susan Cook, a Canadian; Sr. Maria Colombo and Sr. Onellys Villegas from the USA, all three directors of vocations for their orders, the latter two, Spanish-speaking. Representing youth (and an order of religious) was Karen Henning from the USA and Canadian seminarian Gabriel Levesque. Speaking for priests were: Bishop Jean-Paul Ploufle of Sault Sainte-Marie, Canada; Fr. Jose Rosales, a Costa Rica seminary director; and Fr. Jim Hughes, a Canadian vocations co-director, and our team moderator. I completed the team.

At each period of table discussion, our recorder, Karen, jotted down our conclusions which would then go to the planning team to be weighed, digested, compiled, and published post-congress. Among many suggestions our group recorded: Fr. Rosales pleaded that all of us should do whatever we can to encourage and facilitate the participation of our diocesan youth to attend the Toronto Youth Congress slated for this summer. We all agreed that this is going to be a superb chance, once in a generation, to inspire youth continent-wide to take the baton in the cause of vocations.

I spoke of my pet project: to encourage the bishops of North America to adopt a universal, far-reaching (but probably costly) advertising campaign like the U.S. Army used successfully some years ago. (Remember “Be All You Can Be”?) I’m afraid that my table confreres didn’t quite buy into it though.

Fr. Anh Tran, vocation director for my home diocese, Fort Worth, Texas, agreed that his table team discourse produced a lot of inspiration and hope. “What I observed at the congress,” said Fr. Tran, “was that there are an awful lot of smart people out there in the dioceses. There’s a lot of ingenuity that can solve the vocations problem. We’ve just got to tap it. And we must urge our bishops to ask the laity for its help.”
“Some of us believe that one key to aid vocations,” Father Tran continued, “is to get more lay women and men involved in adult catechesis. So many of our adult Catholics don’t know the basics of our religion. If parents understood the church better, they would help promote vocations.”

Throughout, we sent aloft a lot of prayer to the Holy Spirit for vocations. We prayed before, during, and after every plenary session. The beautiful liturgies at the Basilica of St. Patrick, the Cathedral of Mary, Queen of the World (right next door to the congress headquarters), or on the final Sunday at Notre Dame Cathedral, couldn’t have been more awesome. One couldn’t help but be convinced that our hopes for more and better vocations to consecrated life and to the priesthood would come about with some 1,000 or so Catholics praying for divine aid.

Of course, music played an important role in this congress. We had our own song, trilingual, specially composed for this event. Its name: “On a Mission.” This catchy tune opened almost every session and, played gently, called us to order from noisy table discussions.

My family, my local Serrans, and those nationally will all ask me, “Was it all worth it? Did you get what you expected out of the congress?” If I expected collegiality, I certainly got that in spades from my table companions. Their dedication to the task of vocations offered commonality of interest and a lot of hope that we’ll achieve our aims of more and better vocations.

If I expected some hard results, I may have been naïve. Organizers promised that we would be encouraged by the publication of the final documents from the congress. Those will be a few months in coming. So I withhold any judgment until that time. In the meanwhile, I’m going to pray like heaven and plug on in my personal pursuit of vocations in my local dioceses…and I encourage all my cohorts to do the same.

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