By Fr. John Adamski

Last week’s big vocation news was the widely publicized announcement that the Archdiocese of New York has launched an elaborate vocation promotion campaign budgeted for $100,000.

The decline in the number of men interested in the priesthood is a known fact in today’s church. Here in Atlanta, we have not matched the growth of our local church with a corresponding increase in vocations, but at least we have maintained the same number of seminarians for much of the past decade.

New York hasn’t been that successful. Their numbers have dwindled considerably and their needs remain great. The current vocation campaign is their effort to spread the word that the church in New York needs and wants today’s dedicated young people.

I enjoyed seeing one of the New York ads which appeared recently in the New York Daily News. It was well done and I was proud of its quality. Many of us – priests and lay people – still see and believe in the value of ordained leadership and service within today’s church.

I believe that our church can be a place where many different ideas about some of these issues are expressed as long as we’re starting from a recognition of the value of the church and its leadership, as Christ established it, and then facing contemporary problems and needs.

New York’s campaign seems to be giving special attention to destroying the myth that priests spend their time, and perhaps not much of that, in church. The ads present the lives of several different priests working in various ministries as examples of the diversified activities which often define the daily work of a priest. Via this column we have considered the same problem in the past. It lingers on as a misunderstanding probably because most people identify their priests with his most obvious role: celebrant of community worship. Far more people come into contact with a priest through their immediate involvement with church that in any other single way. Nevertheless that is not the full scope of what ministry means today. Wherever and whenever any person has needs that is the proper place for the presence of the priest.

In an increasingly depersonalized world, the priest must be a clear sign and expression of a different vision: the perspective and the reality of God’s care for men. Certainly, every Christian shares this responsibility but it is heightened for the priest because he is recognized as leader in the Christian community. The message of the gospel must become the Good News in today’s world through the generous, selfless activity of every priest in establishing that goodness through his genuine efforts to care for all men.

Undoubtedly, the “all things to all men” description of priesthood is a practical impossibility. Priests share the common human weaknesses and failings which prevent any person from achieving all his goals and ideals. Priests have their bad days just like everyone else. But the priest has not been called to be a superman who has infinite powers of resolving any problem. Infinity is God’s sphere. The life of the priest should instead be an affirmation that the Christian values of love, justice, understanding and forgiveness are crucial for human life.

Today’s young people have repeatedly shown their capacity for dedication and commitment to a goal and ideal that they find important. The church of New York is trying to proclaim the importance of ministry in today’s world.

You and I should be sharing that same sense of importance through our attitudes toward and appreciation of today’s priest. When the atmosphere of church and world reflect an awareness of that value, we won’t have a vocation problem any longer.