Hearing God's Call In Search for Happiness

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Hearing the Call
The U.S. Catholic Church is intensifying efforts to encourage young American Catholics to pursue religious vocations.

"We are the most medicated generation. Everyone is searching for peace and happiness and love in all the wrong places. And most seminarians have experienced that world," he said.

Far from being daunted by the acute shortage of priests and nuns, young people who sense they may be "hearing the call" of religious life see it as further inspiration, saying it reflects the culture of self-centeredness and materialism they hope to change.

Bryan Kuzma, 18, is listening for the call these days -- whether he is in business class at Anne Arundel Community College or busing tables at an upscale seafood restaurant at night. The skinny graduate of Anne Arundel's South River High School says he always felt "a sensation of peace" at church, "like nothing can happen to me, like I'm in God's graces."

He was that way through high school, where he felt alone amid what he called the superficial "drama" of teenage life and kept to himself as his grades suffered. He never spoke about his faith.

The first time he heard a religious vocations talk a couple years ago, he thought, "No way." But the idea began to take root last year at the Catholic Underground, a popular retreat in New York that was hosted by a community of gray-robed friars and included poetry readings and musicians playing Christian funk and reggae. "They were so happy," he said of the friars.

Although his family is "hard-core into faith" and his friends are understanding, Kuzma said, he sometimes worries about what they would think if he became a priest. He also wonders whether he has the spiritual fortitude. He has dated and isn't sure whether celibacy is for him, even though he supports the rule because it allows someone to "commit fully" to the church .

Church vocations officials use the word "discernment" to describe the process people go through in trying to tell whether God is calling them to veer away from the mainstream, saying it is as inexplicable as falling in love. But they also compare it to a dimmer switch cranking up a light or logs being stacked on a growing fire, saying it can take years, or even

decades, before a candidate is ready to make the decision.

Peter Stamm has been interested in joining the clergy since third grade, when he became an altar boy at Our Lady of Victory, a church near his subdivision of Spring Valley in Northwest Washington.

"I don't know why I wanted to do it. I just remember being deeply attracted to the role the priest had," said Stamm, 18, who is studying philosophy at Boston College.

By ninth grade, the call was too loud to ignore, drowning out the intensifying sex abuse scandals that prompted his classmates at the parochial St. Anselm's School to be unkind.

"People made their voices very well known that I was a pedophile, a homosexual, like in the halls and stuff," he said with no inflection. "Luckily, I was at a good place in my prayer life. I accepted all the persecution I got and prayed for people doing it."