Help wanted: Inquire within

That was another one of those clever billboards the Archdiocese of Chicago came up with several years ago in a campaign to promote the Catholic priesthood. With a son in major seminary studying for the priesthood, I’m personally very close to this subject. In my usual passionate way of pursuing answers to obvious questions, I keep wondering, aloud, what we can do to kick-start a new culture of vocations and help men hear the call. After all, it’s not like God has stopped calling. It’s that there’s too much cultural noise and static jamming the lines of communication.

I had a good talk with a diocesan vocations director last weekend about this, after the first Mass of a newly ordained priest. How to reach young people with the message that “it’s cool to be Catholic” and “it’s manly and cool to be a priest”? Good news is, the Church is starting to say that more to today’s culture, and it’s about time. The Archdiocese of Chicago is launching a new and ambitious campaign to tap local men for ministry in their own hometown.

The 13 men lying prone on the altar of Holy Name Cathedral on a recent Saturday were a testament to the Catholic Church’s long push to recruit a new generation of priests from around the world as seminary enrollment in the U.S. sagged. Four of the men hailed from Poland, three from Kenya, two each from Mexico and Peru, and one from Tanzania. But of all these men before Cardinal Francis George, leader of the third largest archdiocese in the nation, the one that really stood out is Fr. Michael Scherschel, 42, who took his vows that day just a few miles from the church where the riddle of whether to enter the priesthood first entered his mind.

And if the Chicago Archdiocese succeeds in a new push, Scherschel will soon be joined by many more homegrown members of the clergy. Beginning July 1, the church will launch a drive to find more of them, using the 500 or so active priests across the city and suburbs to help spread the word. Roughly a dozen full or part-time priests will work Chicago’s 80 neighborhoods and northern suburbs much like recruiters for the police or fire or any business group would. Schools will be visited in the 364 local parishes, as well as public and private institutions, colleges and universities and career fairs, as the archdiocese looks to reverse a trend in which, currently, about 90% of all seminary freshman drop out…

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops applauds the effort, saying this “fishers of men” approach at the local level could help cultivate a corps of priests in Chicago that not only knows the language of the neighborhood, but the politics and the culture that helped develop it and the people who live there.

Chicago is known as the “city of neighborhoods” because – although it’s a major, metropolitan, world-class city – it has a hometown feel and the collection of ethnic and culturally diverse neighborhoods makes for rich traditions.

Experts are unaware of any similar formal local recruiting effort elsewhere in the country. But over the years, from New Hampshire and Maine to Iowa, Mississippi and Wisconsin, many tactics have been employed to lure a new generation of Catholics to the priesthood — Internet campaigns, TV commercials, high school marketing and nominating petitions in dioceses. In this new campaign, the archdiocese will rely on a more intimate approach, appointing a new vocation director, at least 12 full and part-time priests, and using pastors at regular masses to spread the word from the pulpit during homilies and announcements — or by simply walking up to strong lay members and asking if they have heard the call.

You know, that’s actually what prompted many current priests to enter the seminary. Somebody simply asked them if they’ve ever thought of becoming a priest. We don’t do that anymore…..although the Church is turning that around.

Another great example of that is “Fishers of Men.”