Guidance Procedures for Religious Vocations in Coeducational Secondary Schools of the Archdiocese of Omaha
The Most Reverend Leo A. Pursley, D.D., Bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend Diocese, in a keynote address delivered at the Fifth Annual Vocation Institute held at the University of Notre Dame in July, 1951, eloquently and succinctly put into words the thoughts that have been pressing the leaders of the Catholic Church in the United States more and more in recent years: "We must all face the fact, the strange, hard, unwelcome fact that, after two thousand years of Christianity, the Lord of the Harvest is still saying to us: ’The laborers are few,' so pitifully, so tragically, few! And we feel impelled to ask: Dear Lord, why is it so? Must it be so? What can I do so it may not be so?" A religious vocation is a call of love to love, a call to seek the highest good by living the highest life, a call that comes from God as a gift of His love for us and can be truly accepted only by the response of our love for Him. To say, therefore, that there are no more vocations would be equivalent to saying that God has ceased to love us. To say that no more vocations are accepted would mean that we have ceased to love God. To say that not enough calls from God are heeded and followed--that is to touch on the very heart of the matter, the very crux of the question that lies heavily upon the heart of the Church Militant today.
Nebraska -- History, Omaha, Nebraska -- History, Education, Catholicism, Catholic Church -- Vocation
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