Bishop Donal McKeown yesterday announced a 'Year of Vocation’ in the Irish Church, which will run from Vocations Sunday 13th April 2008 to Vocations Sunday the following year, 3rd May 2009. The year has been in preparation for over a year, with the initiative coming from “the ground up.”
“We will be asking people to look to see what might be their own vocation and try to enable them to respond to that,” Bishop McKeown told a press conference at the conclusion of the bishops’ spring gathering in Maynooth.
Emphasising that the understanding of vocation in Catholic faith springs from baptism, Bishop McKeown said the year was necessary and that he and the newly formed Year of Vocation team were looking forward to the events that would mark the year.
This team will be led by Fr Paddy Rushe, National Director of Vocations, and Ms Brenda Drumm, Project Manager, will oversee various projects and initiatives which are being organised to highlight the special dignity of each of the specific vocations: ordained priesthood; religious life; married and family life; the single life, and the contribution to the common good through each individual’s calling or choice of career.
The bishop said he was aware of the decline in vocations to the priesthood and religious life. This year of vocation was not just a “question of moving to get new recruits in”.
It was a remodelling of the Irish Church.
“The emphasis will be on trying to energise communities,” he said.
He noted that the decline in priestly vocations affected not just the Catholic Church.
"Recently some Church of Ireland colleagues indicated to me that in the last fifteen years, the number of clergy in their diocese had dropped by a third."
Questioned about married deacons, Bishop McKeown said that the process of introducing a married deaconate was going on, although it was a “massive task,” and the earliest date for the introduction of married deacons to the Irish Church would be in 2012.
Some bishops were more enthusiastic than others, depending on the pastoral situation, he added.
Archbishop Dermot Cliffort emphasised that the main work of deacons would be “charitable work.” They would not be a replacement for priests. “In the early Church, their first job was to look after widows and orphans,” he said.
Emphasising that the Church was the “people of God,” Bishop McKeown said vocation was service to the Church, rather than removing people from the Church. “Lay people are not an appendage,” he said.
The aim of the Year of Vocation is to raise awareness of the common vocation that we all share in the Sacrament of Baptism as expressed through witness, love and service.
It will be officially launched by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, the Archbishop of Dublin, on Vocations Sunday on 13 April next.
Throughout the ‘Year of Vocation’ 2008 – 2009, the new dedicated website www.yourvocation.ie will be used to detail activities for the year.
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