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.”