Speaking to the Serra Club dinner, renown for fostering vocations to the priesthood, diocesan and religious orders, Archbishop Timothy Dolan outlined 4 priorities:
1. Emphasize the vocation of marriage and family:"Taking care of the first crisis will take care of the second," said Archbishop Dolan. "Vocations to the priesthood and religious life come from lifelong, life-giving faithful marriages."
2. Re-create a culture of vocations: "There were no good old days in the Church. Every era in Church history has its horrors and difficulties. We need to recapture the climate/tenor/tone/ambiance in the Church where a boy or man isn't afraid to publicly say, 'I want to be a priest,' and where his family, relatives, neighbors, parish, priest, sisters, teachers and even non-Catholics are robustly supportive."
3. The laity need to not be afraid to ask their priests to help them be holy: "For a faithful Catholic, a priest is essential for growth in holiness because he gives us the sacraments, and without the sacraments we can't be holy. When you ask us to help you be holy, we realize that we must be holy, and you remind us that there is something unique in the Church that only a priest can do."
4. Priests must be reminded that they are here to help the laity
get to heaven: "A priest is an icon of the beyond, the eternal, the transcendent.
Heaven gives us hope and meaning in life."
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