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



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