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.

Home during his spring break this month, Stamm talked excitedly in his family's elegantly appointed living room about his upcoming weekend with a group of friars in Emmitsburg, in Frederick County, who own nothing and beg for food.

"I think when people see this radical lifestyle they are drawn to it. It's very liberating to not be attached to the unnecessary," he said.

Stamm considered going right into the seminary after high school. But he decided he should live for a while in a more secular, diverse environment -- to see whether he was sure he wanted to become a priest and to have a broader experience so he could "serve people better" if he did take that step later. He says it is likely he will enter the seminary after college.

His decision to delay attending seminary is not uncommon. Dozens of high school seminaries have closed as church officials have begun to believe that people can commit more seriously when they are older. According to academics, the average American priest is ordained in his late thirties, and the age of women entering religious orders is rising as well, to the early thirties.

Opposition from parents is the biggest challenge the church faces in the vocations field, officials say.

Bob Sledgeski is Catholic and was the one who pushed his daughter to start attending the more charismatic services at Our Lady of the Fields. Now, they have teenager-parent arguments about whether her grades are suffering because she is spending so many nights at church. He appreciates the role priests and nuns play and is ready to accept God's will but wonders whether his daughter could satisfy her urge to serve God in some other way, such as with the Peace Corps.

Chelsea Sledgeski is trying to sort it out. Until about a year ago, she thought even the idea of God was "weird -- how someone could dedicate their whole life to something they couldn't even prove."

But then she started going to church, to the pizza nights, the musical services and the skits about Lent that play off the show "The O.C." One night in the church's lower hall, priests and nuns came to talk to the teens.

"And I remember them talking about how they made these sacrifices, and they couldn't get married and took vows of poverty," she said. "I remember them just being very happy about it, and I thought that was kind of strange. How could you be very happy about not owning anything? But now I'm starting to get it."