By Sam Alzheimer Recently, walking in the woods with my six-year-old daughter, I was amazed at how fluently she could speak about endangered animals. She chattered away about the last white rhino that died a few weeks ago. She knew about passenger pigeons who were...
By Sam Alzheimer Looking for a great vocation story to tell Catholic kids? Here’s a gem from the recently-published A Friar’s Tale, by John Collins. It recount how young Peter (later Fr. Benedict) followed his school teacher and got quite a fright!...
By Mother Clare Matthiass, CFR Adapted from her book Discerning Religious Life Available at VianneyVocations.com Can you imagine starting a relationship with someone by taking him by the shoulders and exclaiming, “Am I supposed to marry you?” If he doesn’t break free...
Excerpted from pages 42-47 of A Priest in the Family, a book by Fr. Brett Brannen for families of men discerning the priesthood. I once heard the story of the Lotha tribe in Nagaland, India, a place that many Protestant missionaries had visited. They had all tried to...
By Fr. Kevin Bordelon, Vocation Director for the Diocese of Lafayette, LA In the fall of 2010 the Diocese of Lafayette had 28 men in priestly formation. This fall we expect 52. That’s an increase of 86% in six years. I think the word boom is appropriate to describe...
A note by Fr. Brett Brannen for his parish’s bulletin on April 17, 2016. Fr. Brannen is the author of To Save a Thousand Souls: A Guide for Discerning a Vocation to Diocesan Priesthood A number of years ago, when I was first ordained a priest, a mother came up...
by Sam Alzheimer How do young Catholics discover their vocations? There’s not an app for that. Often there’s not even an “aha moment.” Just as dating couples have some ups and downs then eventually decide to marry, most twenty-something seminarians will tell you that...
If you’re an active Catholic, you know we need more priests. In the U.S. and Canada, there are more than 5,200 parishes without their own pastor. What can you do? Quite a lot, actually. There are whole movements in the Church dedicated to promoting vocations....
by Sam Alzheimer If you’re a young Catholic man, perhaps priesthood has crossed your mind, but fear pushes the idea away: My friends would laugh out loud if they heard I was thinking about the priesthood! My parents would be shocked. I’m scared to death of...
by Sam Alzheimer In the United States, there are lots of “awareness days” and even “awareness months” for all sorts of causes. For Catholics, though, one in particular stands out. It’s National Vocation Awareness Week, which the U.S. bishops have moved to the first...
I was born in Louisiana but moved back to Statesboro, Georgia while I was young. My mother was Catholic and my father was a Baptist. I had two brothers and one sister. There was no Catholic school so I attended CCD and was an Altar Server in a very tiny Catholic...
The story of St. John Vianney, as told by Madame Des Garrets (Excerpted from the Vocation Lessons curriculum) This is my country. It’s flat. It rains a lot. The soil doesn’t drain very well, so you will often see puddles everywhere. The rain also makes a lot of mist...
