Veritas et Sapientia-The Spiritual Vocations of Wives & Priests Are NOT Careers

Mandeville, LA – [Editor’s note: I did not discover the identity of the author of the following, only their online pen-name: The Zippy Catholic. – MC]

A fairly typical comment in casual conversation:

“He was considering becoming a priest, but chose to pursue a career in medicine instead.”

The vocational alternatives to vowed religious life are not careers.

The vocational alternatives to vowed religious life are family life and bachelorhood/spinsterhood.

There is nothing wrong with these latter vocations: they really are the right place for those who are called to them.

And there is of course nothing intrinsically wrong with pursuing a career, just as there is nothing intrinsically wrong with building a house or working a farm.

But by overwriting the conceptual place reserved for vocations with careers, modernity takes one more step forward in its project of murdering the spirit. – The Zippy Catholic