The diocese of Ferns is using the popular social networking website ‘Facebook’ as one of its tools in a new drive to attract new vocations. At a press conference in Wexford, Bishop Denis Brennan launched the Vocation Promotion Programme which is a multi-pronged plan to raise awareness of the need for new priests.
Fr. Joe McGrath revealed that people registered on ‘Facebook’ who live in the Ferns diocese will be contacted to inform them about religious vocations.
The campaign will also use a prayer service booklet, prayer cards, posters, a DVD produced in the US and other promotional items to get the message across about vocations in the diocese.
Meanwhile, priests will visit schools and explain the DVD which tries to explain the meaning and work of a career in the priesthood.
The campaign is being run as part of the Church’s Year for Vocations but Fr McGrath said it was part of a longer-term strategy to reverse the decline in recruits.
“We are starting now because we don’t want this to be a sprint, we want a marathon, we are going to continue this for years to come,” he remarked.
The diocesan team running the campaign reviewed the pattern of vocations in the diocese and the age profile of clergy over the last hundred years.
Nearly half of the 117 priests currently working in the diocese of Ferns were ordained in the 1950s and 1960s and are aged over 64, while five of them will retire shortly.
On the other hand, the numbers of new clergy ordained has dropped sharply in recent years.
Ferns has had only five ordinations in the eight years since 2000, compared with 18 were ordained in the 1990s, 17 in the 1980s, 19 in the 1970s and 25 in the 1960s.
One of the main differences between now and 1909 the team discovered was the number of priests who had retired, from one in 1909 to 17 currently.
Fr McGrath pointed out that the diocese is 1400 years old.
“Like fourteen chapters of a book, if you only read one chapter, you don’t get the whole story, he remarked.
“The present chapter has a shadow of abuse hanging over it and it will be part of our story forever, but won’t dominate us or stop us from preaching the message.”
Calling on his priest colleagues to present themselves as positive and enthusiastic, he said their most important resource was themselves and throughout the last decade they had stood at their posts and faced the crisis up front.
Bishop Brennan described a vocation as a “mysterious thing” and “an affair of the heart”.
“It is hard to understand, as it is partly a calling and it’s partly a response,” he observed.
He said the diocese has to work in the ‘real world’ but was inviting young people to join it.
Priests, Dr Brennan noted, were an integral part of their communities and are “very badly missed when they move on”.
He does not expect increased recruitment to the priesthood because of the recession and there was a strict entry process which included psychological assessment and an interview with the bishop, because he wanted “to get people coming who are suitable,” he said.
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(Source: CIN)