THE VOCATIONS DELUSION OR WHY THE CALL IS NOT SUPERNATURAL
The worshippers of God believe that God made every person for a purpose. Their
living out that purpose is fulfilling their vocation. It is doing what God wants
them to do.
The Roman Catholic Church, and some others, recognises four vocations, the
religious life – becoming a nun or a monk, the priesthood, the single life or
marriage.
It is difficult to see how any vocation apart from the one to marriage could be a
calling in life. A calling to a life of celibacy, a life that refuses to fall in
love and be loved that way, a life that refuses to be productive and create
human life to love and be loved by, a life that doesn't really constitute living
is a handicap not a gift. Anybody that hasn't experienced marriage would seem to
have little knowledge of what they are doing when they renounce it. Is a
tranquil life in a monastery really better than a life of struggle for all the
best joys do not come cheap?
The teaching of many religions regarding vocations is that it is not a sin to
refuse to follow the path that you feel called by God to walk. It is said that
is not sinful for a man who feels called to the priesthood to refuse to become a
priest.
“Those who refuse to accept are not thereby loved less by almighty God. Nor can
we believe that God holds a grudge or removes all his graces and helps” (page 7,
How to Choose Your Vocation in Life).
“If the young person does not accept the invitation, there is no sin or total
loss of God’s love” (page 20 ibid).
When you think, you can see why the cultists teach this. The Church is terrified
of being accused of harassing people and of being in conflict with the law by
blackmailing anyone into her service by telling them that they will sin or be
damned in Hell forever if they do not get ordained if they feel they should. She
knows that if she compels people to become priests she will have to impel people
to get married and she cannot dare do that.
God would be offended by vocations when they are accompanied by the attitude
that it isn’t a sin to flee from them. Nobody can have a sacred vocation to do
evil and that is what they have if they go into a vocation with this bad
attitude. Then the vocations would be nothing to do with God at all.
Religion speaks of how generous God is to all of us. We owe him generosity in
return. If we are really grateful for the blessings he has given us we will say
yes to the vocation he has laid out for us. So it is ingratitude to say no.
Ingratitude is an insult for he has generously forgiven our sins which is an
infinitely (unlimitedly) valuable thing when it opens up the gates of Heaven to
us and the unending bliss that lies within it. Ingratitude is a very serious sin
and must deserve eternal punishment. Nobody can harbour it and be the friend of
God.
Christianity says that God died for us proving his infinite generosity. If we
start being hypocritical with vocations we are throwing his kindness back in his
face and trampling on the corpse of the man-God.
It is said that one will not be truly happy if one frustrates one’s vocation.
And if that is not a sin then happiness must be a sin! And if happiness is not a
sin then it is evil and unrighteous to fight your vocation.
The doctrine about refusing vocations not being sinful is incoherent when if you
have a vocation offer from God and turn it down, it can only be for the wrong
reason. This makes a distinction between something being wrong and something
being sinful which is impossible. It denies that sin is what is wrong and what
is wrong is sin. If correct then both are just a load of make-believe. Religion
is saying that there is no right and wrong and that we should obey its rules
just because it says so. The women who have died over the contraception ban have
been murdered by the preaching of their priests.
For religion to ask people to give their lives to a vocation is for it to try
and exploit them. Seminarians are just being manipulated. They have the right to
sue their religion.
The Church says that it cannot be a sin to refuse a vocation but it says that
such refusal is caused by sin specifically ingratitude (page 66, The Mother of
God and Our Interior Life). This means that it is not a sin to refuse a vocation
in itself. But you refuse because you are guilty of the sin of ingratitude so it
is sin that is behind the refusal.
But refusing a vocation must be a sin in itself when it is an expression of
ingratitude! It is the form the ingratitude takes so it must be a sin. It makes
no sense to say that it is not. It is like saying that it is not a sin to lie
but the cowardice that leads you to lie is where the sin is. The argument is as
wrong as saying it’s not a sin to murder but it is the sin of hate that makes
you murder. Plus if you refuse your vocation you are refusing something good in
favour of something less good. If it is not a sin, nothing is.
Because one will not feel attracted to one’s vocation all the time it follows
that reason must decide if you have a vocation. You must decide if you have
anything to offer. But the problem is we all do no matter how bad we are. Those
Christians who do not respond to Jesus’ call to go away to other nations and
leave everything to spread the gospel often unsurprisingly feel they are
hypocrites. Reason as they understand it, tells them to do it. They can’t be
expected to feel like doing it. They claim to be sacrificing for Jesus and this
shows that they are kidding themselves. A sacrifice that is small that is made
to avoid making a bigger one is really an insult and a subtle manifestation of
excessive selfishness.
The doctrine of St Alphonsus was that anybody who takes holy orders without a
true vocation commits a most grave sin (page 504, The Great Means of Salvation
and of Perfection). Also, the sin is so bad that it shows a stubbornness that
will extremely rarely give way to contrition and the acceptance of divine pardon
(page 505, The Great Means of Salvation and of Perfection). At least with a sin
you can repent it and move on the way to God but to take holy orders or the vows
of a religious is to set your life on the wrong way (page 507, The Great Means
of Salvation and of Perfection). Priests without a vocation inevitably do
intense damage to the Church (page 510, The Great Means of Salvation and of
Perfection).
Vocations are of human origin. People who are in pagan religions that supposedly
lead to hell report a vocation to follow that religion so why should Catholic
vocations be real? One has the same feelings as the other so feelings prove
nothing.
People feel called to become priests and bishops. And if they had not
they would not have been to blame for a widespread cover up of clerical sexual
abuse and clerical use of child pornography. If Jesus really called them
then Jesus must take the main blame. He must be given it. There is
no point in saying many clergy are good for that is nothing special. Many
people are good most of the time. It is irrelevant. A man-made
religious system that has people falsely thinking they have a divine call is to
blame as a system for the evil of clerical sex abuse and covering up. What
comes from man has to take responsibility for man easily is complicit in evil
and does evil. Being complicit in the evil of others is actually worse
than doing it yourself in the sense that you do know how bad you will be but you
do not really know with others and their evil is a Trojan Horse.
BOOKS CONSULTED
APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION, James Heron, Outlook Press, Belfast
HOW TO CHOOSE YOUR VOCATION IN LIFE, Thomas Artz C.SS.R, Liguori Publications,
Missouri, 1976
MORAL PHILOSOPHY, Joseph Rickaby SJ, Stonyhurst Philosophy Series, Longmans,
Green and Co, London, 1912
NEW CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA, The Catholic University of America and the
McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., Washington, District of Columbia, 1967
THE GREAT MEANS OF SALVATION AND OF PERFECTION, St Alphonsus De Ligouri,
Redemptorist Fathers, Brooklyn, 1988
THE MOTHER OF GOD AND OUR INTERIOR LIFE, Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP, TAN,
Illinois, 1993