On Vocations
An expanded reflection from the Twitter archives.
The word ‘vocation’ has been diluted.
Thus begins a singularly problematic 2020 Crisis Magazine opinion piece by Mary Cuff, arguing that There Is No Vocation to the ‘Single Life’.
Now, before proceeding, it must be acknowledged that a deeply personal, emotional history shaping her perspective is transparently on display: she expresses that her heart “still remembers the bitter burden” of being an “unwilling, struggling” single person in the Catholic Church – and that is, undeniably, a legitimately difficult experience. I would even be happy to join her in rejecting any framework in which the single life is callously “offered as a consolation prize to unwilling singles”.
But as a celibate Catholic lay man, and as a cradle Catholic formed over multiple decades covering [checks notes] approximately every known form and level of Catholic education, from grade school up through a canon law licentiate, I feel qualified to defend my own competing view: Mary Cuff’s opinion is a dumpster fire – profoundly flawed, out of touch, and built upon a foundation of (at best) overconfident half-truths.
And yet, a key premise of her argument – that there are only two true vocations in the Catholic worldview (namely: priestly or religious life on the one hand, and marriage on the other hand) – is still a fairly common sentiment in some Catholic circles. And even now, the Diocese of Lansing hosts an essay arguing similarly that:
The ‘single state’ is an anticipatory state, awaiting a fulfillment… [either] in the marriage vocation [or] through a commitment to celibacy or virginity for the Kingdom. One doesn’t permanently commit to the single state…
God doesn’t ‘call us’ to be single as such, however, due to the reality of not living in a perfect world, some of us, even many of us, may remain single in this world… This doesn’t mean that we are called by God to be single permanently, as an actual calling.
In order to understand the roots of this claim – and the tortured mental gymnastics it entails, all to avoid admitting the obvious (namely: that the “single state” can take many forms, and that a voluntary commitment to the state of being celibate or unmarried can very obviously and logically be described as one form of being single permanently, as an actual calling) – we must explore a complex question.
What is a vocation?
The term “vocation” derives from the Latin voco, vocare: to call or summon. This is because the deepest, original Christian image of a “vocation” is none other than the literal vocal calling that Jesus extended to His twelve apostles: “Come, follow me.”
And it is precisely on the basis of that biblical image that the Church approaches the call to holy orders: not simply as an internal sense of feeling called, but more primarily as an external reality of being called by one of Christ’s vicars on earth. Of course, candidates should also feel called to holy orders by God: but discerning an authentic calling is difficult, since our subjective feelings in this life are never an infallible guide. Therefore – because it can be easy to confuse God’s radical call to holiness with a specific call to holy orders – candidates should not trust exclusively in their own discernment of God’s will, but hope to receive a formal and personal calling by the bishop (directly mirroring the formal and personal calling by Jesus to His apostles) as the final confirmation of their suspected calling from God.
If the word “vocation” has been diluted, it can only be because we have drifted from this primordial and most literal sense of the term. This was, in fact, the view defended by one of the most intelligent undergraduate professors I knew: he argued firmly that marriage is not a vocation properly speaking, because marriage is an ordinary state in life for the Christian faithful – whereas an authentic vocation, in the strict sense, is best understood as a special calling that you receive from the Church. Therefore, although the Church may now speak of marriage as a “vocation”, this should be understood as an innovation that can only be defended as an extended or equivocal sense of the term, but not the most proper theological sense.
And yet… everyone allows that the historical development of religious communities – who also “call” potential members to join their community in religious vows – can be sustained as a logical extension of the concept, even if the primordial biblical link to holy orders is no longer included as any component of that calling. Thus begins the dreaded slippery slope, and the potential for confusion.
Consider the claim of Father Richard Felix, O.S.B., who writes that:
"Strictly speaking, there are only two states in life, the married state and the unmarried; and two vocations, the Priesthood and the Religious life."
In this framework, the two vocations (priesthood and religious life) are distinguished from the two states of life (married and unmarried). Here neither marriage nor the unmarried state are deemed vocations properly, although he does immediately concede that “in a general way, we speak of four states or vocations”.
Another framework is proposed by Pope John Paul II, in Familiaris Consortio (n. 11):
Christian revelation recognizes two specific ways of realizing the vocation of the human person in its entirety, to love: marriage and virginity or celibacy. Either one is, in its own proper form, an actuation of the most profound truth of man, of his being ‘created in the image of God.’
This approach is also supported by Hans Urs von Balthasar, who argues firmly in The Christian State of Life that there can ultimately be only two Christian states of life: the married state, and the state of election (tied to the evangelical counsels):
No one would think of setting up, in addition to the married state and the state of election, a separate third state for those men [or women] who remain single in the world…
The ‘yes’ of the marriage vow and the ‘yes’ of the [evangelical] counsels correspond to what God expects man to be in imitation of Jesus Christ… No third form on which a state is life could be based is conceivable besides these two forms of genuine self-giving, nor does revelation envisage any such third form.
Balthasar’s reflections (see more here) must be taken seriously, even if his theological opinions do not definitively determine the mind of the Church on this matter. And yet… unless we wish to collapse all distinctions between vocations in the popular sense, and the fundamental vocations of the human person, and Christian states in life, or else more rigidly tie them together (as Balthasar also suggests), the fact remains that we can always make an effort to separate and distinguish these concepts.
And should we not? For indeed, under Pope John Paul II’s framework of two fundamental vocations (marriage and celibacy) we would be forced to concede that neither the priesthood nor religious life stand as vocations in the “fundamental” sense. And this is not an oversight, but a logical consequence of the fact that the sacrament of holy orders in the Catholic Church can potentially overlap with either of the two fundamental vocations: holy orders can be built upon a vocation to celibacy, but it can also be built upon a vocation to marriage (as in the case of Eastern Catholic married priests, or Latin Catholic married deacons).
In rare cases, the vocation of marriage can even overlap with a vocation to religious life, such as in this historical case recounted by The Pillar:
So, in 1817… Virgil and Jerusha entered the Church — along with their five children. Both Virgil and Jerusha blossomed spiritually in the Catholic Church, and it wasn’t long before they both felt a different calling…
As they grew in the Catholic faith, Virgil and Jerusha both discerned a call to religious life. Virgil wanted to enter the Jesuits. Jerusha wanted to become a Visitation nun.
Yes, they had five children, but some of them were permitted to accompany their parents into religious novitiates — a highly unusual circumstance. Jerusha and the three oldest girls entered a Visitation convent. Virgil entered the Jesuits, and his son Samuel came along. Their youngest daughter, Josephine — who was then only 10 months old — was entrusted to a family friend.
In 1820, three years after Virgil and Jerusha entered religious life, they both professed their religious vows at a Mass in Georgetown. Their children were present — and each of those children, including Josephine, eventually entered religious life themselves.
Confused yet? Good!
Recognizing the complexity of this question is the first step in untangling the threads, and discovering a path towards clarity. This path is winding, however, for the Church has shown a willingness to speak about vocation in multiple ways over the centuries, with various Catholic theologians proposing different frameworks. Perhaps one of the most useful approaches, then, is to identify which features are not actually essential to an authentic vocation. This discernment will lead us to two surprising truths.
The first truth, already touched upon, is that there is nothing theologically incoherent about the possibility of having multiple vocations simultaneously. If the indisputable existence of ordained religious and married clergy in the Catholic Church was not enough to make this clear, rarer historical cases of married religious (as above) and the existence of massive theological dissertations defending the theological possibility and coherence of virginal marriage should drive the point home.
The second truth is similar, though deceptively boring: there is also nothing theologically incoherent about the possibility of having multiple vocations consecutively. This brings us back to that 2020 Crisis Magazine piece, which advances several sweeping claims that are emphatically incorrect:
There have always been Catholics who do not take vows of either kind, but nobody in the institutional Church would have considered their situation a calling from God…
Catholic vocations include permanent vows. The calling of God is answered, publicly and irrevocably, with a commitment that accords with its solemnity.
The proposal of vows as some universal key for identifying Catholic vocations simply cannot be correct. And this is proven easily from the fact that neither holy orders nor marriage nor consecrated virginity involves any vow in the theological-canonical sense (defined in canon 1191 §1 and CCC 2102).1 There are simply promises to undertake various natural or canonical obligations – and in the case of marriage, even those are by no means strictly necessary, for valid sacramental marriages can absolutely be contracted simply by consent given without formal promises (such as in the Eastern Catholic and Orthodox churches). Marriage is not actually tied to vows or promises at all, properly speaking, but fundamentally contracted through simple consent.
Likewise, holding up permanence or irrevocability as a universal quality of vocations is deeply misleading. For some religious orders never profess perpetual vows at all, but only perpetually renewed temporary vows: and that possibility of a religious vocation built on exclusively temporary vows undermines the simplicity of this narrative.
You can quit a job or switch careers. Not so with the priesthood, religious life, or marriage.
This is deeply false – or at best wildly imprecise, exaggerating a grain of truth in each case beyond anything rationally defensible. To be very clear:
Valid ordination imprints an indelible mark onto the soul, but the clerical state linked to that character is by no means irrevocable or very difficult to “quit”. Many clerics have abandoned their canonical promises and obligations, and eventually been laicized as a penalty. Other clerics have freely requested dispensation from the clerical state, and been canonically returned to the lay state (even while ontologically remaining “a priest forever” in a deeper theological sense). Whether rightly or wrongly, one can certainly “quit” the priesthood in a very real way.
Valid religious vows, similarly – even the most perpetual or “permanent” of religious vows – can always in theory be dispensed legitimately, upon request. Whether rightly or wrongly, one can always potentially “quit” religious life.
Valid marriages can never be dissolved directly by the spouses, but some valid non-sacramental marriages can be dissolved by a subsequent sacramental marriage under certain conditions (canon 1143).2 The Pope can also potentially dissolve a valid and sacramental but non-consummated marriage “for a just reason, at the request of both parties or of either party, even if the other is unwilling” (canon 1142).3 And even in the strongest case of a valid and consummated sacramental marriage, which “cannot be dissolved by any human power or by any cause other than death” (canon 1141),4 the law of the Church unquestionably recognizes circumstances in which the spouses might lawfully “quit” common life, and separate with the bond remaining (canons 1152-1153, and 1692).5
Even if vocational states are naturally or generally anticipated to be indefinite, a posture of remaining open to discerning another vocation – either concurrently, or only later in life after an earlier vocational state has turned out to be transitory – is very defensible. If a spouse is widowed at a relatively early age, there is no doubt that they are free to discern and pursue a second vocation. If that same spouse consented to marriage knowing the other was gravely ill and soon to die, they may have fully anticipated their marriage to be only a temporary vocation. Even if Virgil and Jerusha had married with the expectation that they might eventually both discern a calling to religious life, this openness would not have contradicted the authenticity of their marital vocation.
Indeed, we cannot know the future, and therefore can never be certain how long our current state in life will endure. Rigidly insisting upon intended permanence as an absolute character of every true vocation is ultimately incoherent. It would be absurd and insulting to insist, simply because a given state in life has the foreseen potential to not last until death, this means it was never a true vocation or genuine self-gift. Again, whether a valid marriage lasts for 40 years or only 4 months before being dissolved by a sudden (or foreseen!) death, nothing prevents us from affirming that the widowed spouse was called to that state in life, for however long God willed the bond to endure.
Even if it is somehow “less perfect” in a philosophical sense, there is simply nothing fundamentally incoherent about the concept of a vocation that foreseen and embraced as potentially transitory and only for a time, if only in submission to divine providence. There is no deep justification for proclaiming that an authentic Catholic vocation or calling cannot exist at all without an expectation of radical perpetuity.
Seldom Affirm, Never Deny, Always Distinguish
So, how many vocations are there, in the Catholic Church? I’m afraid the best answer, in the end, is the most frustrating: It depends on how you define “vocation”. There is no silver bullet to instantly resolve or end this debate. But there is a path forward: recognizing complexity and making distinctions.
We can then allow different frameworks to exist side-by-side, and simply admit that “vocation” is something said coherently in many ways: in some senses more strictly, and in other senses more broadly. We can then debate the comparative merits of those different frameworks, and argue for whatever we think is best. For instance:
Option I: Strictly Linked to Holy Orders
The advantages of this view are numerous. It is a rigorously self-consistent framework. It has an obvious, literal, and biblical foundation. And there is an objective and externally verifiable criteria: unless-and-until you are literally called to receive holy orders by the bishop, you do not (yet) have any vocation, in the strict sense. Therefore, an unverifiable and merely subjective experience of internal-spiritual “calling” has no determining weight: unless the Church actually calls you to this state in life, you cannot definitively propose that you have an authentic vocation that is being denied – and this harmonizes perfectly with the principle that no one has a right to receive holy orders (CCC 1578)6. Finally, because the existence of a vocation is not discerned unilaterally by the candidate – instead it is discerned bilaterally, with the assistance of the Church – any inappropriate pressure for young Catholics to discern a vocation on their own is radically defanged. Indeed, one could find great freedom in embracing the idea that vocations are rare, and that it’s very normal to not have any vocation.
The disadvantages of this view include the fact that religious life based on public vows in the absence of holy orders is strangely but technically excluded. Then there is the fact that the existence of an external calling does not actually prove the authenticity of a vocation, for bishops are also not infallible: they can certainly call and validly ordain deeply unsuitable candidates, or fail to call candidates who do have a genuine internal-spiritual calling from God. In conjunction with this, the emphasis on understanding vocation as a special calling can easily fuel clericalism: giving rise to the false impression that one who receives an formal calling to be ordained is inherently more holy. This can also create inappropriate pressure on candidates: generating the false belief that it would be sinful to reject the bishop’s call to holy orders, especially if other priests are encouraging it, thus obscuring the truth that authentic discernment in this matter must be bilateral (thus there is an appropriate role for the subjective experience of an internal-spiritual call that corresponds to the external call).
Option II: Extended to Religious Life
The advantages of this view include the fact that it embraces the traditional possibility of a vocation being defined by a commitment to the evangelical counsels “through vows or other sacred bonds recognized and approved by the Church” (canon 207 §2).7 And it still retains a strong external criteria: insofar as one is called or invited to join a religious community, or at least publicly accepted by the bishop.
Again, a subtler advantage derives from the consequence of viewing both the married and unmarried states as not vocations in the proper sense, but simply ordinary states in life for the vast majority of Catholic adults, with purely natural obligations attached to each state. Normalizing the possibility of not having a vocation can alleviate the deep anxiety that comes from hearing the popular message that everyone has a vocation: a message that easily generates the false belief that every good young Catholic must discern a vocation, or else they have somehow failed.
The disadvantage of this view is that we have stepped onto the slippery slope: If holy orders and religious life are distinct vocations, then an ordained member of a religious order has two simultaneous vocations – in the strict sense! And now the supposed clarity of an external or public dimension is somewhat broken: for how do we consider lay persons who have professed private vows, without any external calling or public dimension in the life of the Church? And perhaps the most obvious difficulty: at least in recent decades, the Church has clearly embraced a more expansive view, and not hesitated to speak of vocations apart from holy orders and religious life. If even the Church does not require this much rigor in terminology, why should we?
Option III: Extended to the Married State
The advantages of this view stem from what was just mentioned above: this framework is now very commonly supported by theologians in the Church, and has received very explicit papal support. Nor is the external criteria lost, for spouses can obviously call one another to marriage, which is itself a public institution.
The disadvantages of this view are limited, but severe. First is the fact that our slippery slope has become dramatically steeper: Now that we have embraced one ordinary state in life (rooted in mutual consent) as a true vocation, by what criteria can we rule out other ordinary states in life that are embraced simply by consent? And if we agree that marriage and virginity or celibacy are the two fundamental vocations of the human person, by what logic must we insist on any public dimension at all? What makes a private vocation incoherent? Again, what of a private vow to embrace virginity or celibacy? What if that vow is only temporary? What of a promise or even simply an actual intention to remain celibate habitually? Our slope is rapidly approaching a cliff, and there is little (if anything) preventing us from reaching the edge.
A second major disadvantage stems from the fact that marriage is an extraordinarily common state in life for most people. If this reality is not counter-balanced by a deep institutional commitment to defending the claim that not everyone has a vocation, then the atmosphere of pressure to discern your vocation (everyone has a vocation! don’t you trust that God has a calling for you? pray harder!) risks becoming spiritually abusive. This entails a dramatic risk of further marginalization of those minority Catholics who do not feel called to pursue the limited number of vocational paths supported by the Church… or who have already pursued those paths, and been rejected… or who through no fault of their own are canonically impeded from pursuing one or more of those paths. If complexity is rejected, the potential for damage is extreme, and there are only two solutions to this dilemma: either we aggressively normalize the absence of a vocation as something valuable and legitimate, or we jump off the cliff and embrace a far broader view of Catholic vocations.
Many are afraid of this metaphorical cliff – sensing it approach, they argue that the word vocation has been diluted, and that the concept of a vocation to the single life is a convenient theological innovation to fit modern lifestyles, and that this is only furthering the vocations crisis. They panic and attempt to dig in, ignoring any philosophical incoherence that results – or else they attempt to retreat toward simpler frameworks, striving to reclaim the beauty of a concept of “vocation” that is seen as something special or rare. For indeed, if a real vocation can be rooted in merely a private, internal experience of feeling called by God to embrace something – even perhaps only for the foreseeable future! – then we have fallen headlong into the claim that everybody has a vocation, and a profound reign of vocational anarchy has descended upon us.
Option IV: Extended to Any Intentional State
The alternative, of course, is that the word “vocation” is simply being enriched by this complexity and diversity, rather than diluted or weakened. Everyone can relax.
And in fact, there is one very strong biblical reason to embrace the maximalist view: the original argument linking Christ’s “follow me” primarily to the sacrament of holy orders is absolutely not airtight. Jesus did not only call His ordained apostles to follow Him, but also issued that same fundamental calling to all His disciples. Christ’s universal call to baptism – and the universal call to holiness which flows from that and unfolds uniquely within each person’s life – is the ur-vocation. Even the etymology of the word “Church” points toward this deeper notion of a calling, in which God calls His chosen people out from the rest of the world, to be set apart:
Latin ecclesia, from Greek ekklesia [ἐκκλησία], where the word is a compound of two segments: “ek”, a preposition meaning “out of”, and a verb, “kaleo”, signifying “to call” – together, literally, “to call out”.
Scripturally and theologically, then, there are obviously two types of calling: the strict sense of a special calling linked to holy orders, but also the broad sense of a universal calling linked to baptism, which is in turn also profoundly linked to the priesthood (CCC 1268 and 1547).8 Consequently, the universal call to holiness rooted in baptism is an eminently justifiable lens for speaking about “vocation” in a maximalist sense. This very real calling comes not from the bishop, nor from any religious community, nor from a potential spouse, but simply and directly from Christ. And while holiness is a vocation shared by all, it is also something radically unique to each individual person.
And there are still rules! Even in this most radical state of free-fall, after jumping off the cliff, we can still say: not just any state in life stands as a vocation, but only an intentional state in life that is compatible with the call to holiness. Likewise, the fundamental link to a real calling has still been maintained: for even the most unverifiable internal experience of feeling called to adhere to a certain state in life is still presuming that first and most essential premise: being truly called by God.
Indeed, if we believe that God intimately governs the world at every moment, then we must believe that there are things that He desires each of us to do, that He calls us to do if we will listen. Thus saints can speak of discerning “a call within a call”, or (again) even embrace multiple vocational states simultaneously. And perhaps we would not describe short-term callings as vocational states, but the point remains: real callings are by no means strictly limited to states in life or long-term commitments, even if those are the clearest examples. God calls the baptized to respond in many ways – perhaps above all, in ministries of service – some of which might restructure a whole life, while others need only restructure decade, a month, or an afternoon.
There is also great truth in Mary Cuff’s instinct that the idea of an unwilling or involuntary vocation is repugnant, and I agree very strongly: an authentic vocation must be something voluntarily embraced, and not simply an unchosen or involuntary state in life. Therefore, the single state absolutely can be a non-vocational state! That is precisely what happens when it is not embraced in a more stable manner, but intended only as a transitory state or stepping-stone to something else, perhaps while you are in the midst of discerning God’s will for your life. Temporary vows, in that same sense, might not be a vocation! And yet: they can be, when they are embraced in more perpetual manner. Absolutely nothing logically prevents the single life from being understood similarly: it can be, when it is embraced in more perpetual manner.
And if other vocational paths are not available – whether permanently, or indefinitely, or temporarily, it does not matter – nothing prevents us from saying that you can be called to embrace your current state in life, at least for howsoever long it happens to last in God’s providence. Even a state in life that was initially involuntary, or inauthentic, or expected to be only temporary, can become a vocational state by freely and even joyfully adhering your will to that state in life which you believe God wills for you now – and that is a real and meritorious personal choice, not merely a made-up consolation prize.
Thus, I endorse the approach of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati’s Prayer for Vocations:
Option V: The Singularity.
But we’re not done. For even after we leap, and find our bearings, there is still a bottom hurtling toward us. Thus far, we have only been considering earthly vocations, and here there is critical point worth unpacking: just as the two callings of Christ (to baptism, and to holy orders) are ultimately united in the one priesthood of Christ, so too are the two fundamental earthly vocations (marriage, and celibacy) ultimately united. And this mystical link is found precisely in the fact that earthly marriage and earthly celibacy – each in their own unique way – point us toward and prefigure heavenly virginity, in which each soul is (through baptism) eternally “wedded” directly to its Creator and Redeemer. As Bishop Andrew Cozzens once noted:
It was the centrality of the image of marriage in the Scriptures which caused the Fathers of the Church and St. John Paul II to say that in some way every person is living marriage through baptism.
Again, as Bishop Erik Varden observes, in Chastity: Reconciliation of the Senses (pg.107):
The vocations to marriage and to the virginal state complement and illumine one another. This mutuality is spelled out in the prayer of consecration that crowns the perpetual, solemn profession of a Benedictine nun:
“This gift, Lord, has flowed into certain hearts from the fount of your liberality: no prohibition has diminished the honour of matrimony, and your first blessing remains upon its holy union, but you have granted that there should nonetheless be souls who, guided by your Providence, renounce the chaste bond of marriage. Desiring that mystery, they do not imitate the act of marriage but they love what it signifies.”
'Chastity' is associated in like measure with the married and virginal state: there is no distinction of degree; both are blessed. Both require a degree of battle, like any elective affinity. To bind oneself to a privileged love is to order other loves, letting motions of the heart and flesh be tempered by a will illumined by grace and reason.
It is impossible to underestimate just how deeply radical and joyfully freeing this framework can be – particularly for LGBTQ+ Catholics who struggle to find their place in the Church. As my friend Grant Hartley once wrote:
Coming to see celibacy as a path toward greater freedom and intimacy with God, rather than a necessary evil because I’m gay, helped me to really come to love my life. I think of one of the etymologies of St. Isidore of Seville that I have found instructive: the words “celibacy” and “celestial” come from the same Latin root, caelum, which means “the heavens”. Celibate folks are caelobeatus, or “blessed in heaven,” because their lives are images of the lives of the angels, who according to Jesus “neither marry, nor are given in marriage” (Matthew 22:30 NRSVUE). This means that celibacy can be a representation of our future resurrected state; celibacy now is an image of the glorious life all will live in the resurrection. This helped me to understand celibacy as something radical, even radically queer — something expansive and freeing rather than a restrictive straightjacket.
This is the great irony: that earthly marriage – a common state in life, capable of existing without formal promises, ultimately dissolvable at the very least by death – has one of the weakest claims to be a vocation standing alongside holy orders. For unlike ordination, which truly imprints onto the soul an indelible mark that will endure in eternity, earthly marriage imparts no such indelible mark. Earthly marriage, which will inevitably pass away, is thus also an anticipatory state in life – a fleeting image destined for dissolution and replacement, a stepping stone toward the true heavenly vocation that we all share: in which God will unite Himself with us forever through the Eucharistic wedding chalice, pledging to each soul: “Take this, and be immortal.”
In The End
This was always a stupid argument. The Magisterium of the Catholic Church has never definitively proposed one framework or controlling definition of a “vocation” to the exclusion of all others, and therefore, we have always truly been free to argue and disagree, and to speak about “vocation” different ways.
If you still favor a stricter view, I have no rigid intellectual or emotional objection. I would be happy to embrace the possibility that I have no vocation in the strict sense. But if you wish to hold a strict view, then you must be prepared to advance and defend the (currently deeply unpopular) corollary that most Christians have no special calling, no vocation in the strict sense, but only their ordinary baptismal obligations, and the ordinary moral obligations attached to the married or unmarried states. You must be prepared to defend the claim marriage is not a vocation in a strict sense, despite the obvious openness of the Church to speaking in this manner.
On the other hand, if you are comfortable stretching the term “vocation” to include marriage, then I do believe you’ve undercut any rigorously compelling basis for objecting to the prospect of extending “vocation” even to the single state (or quite honestly, for that matter, even to a stable career, especially one ordered to service).
But what you absolutely cannot do is rigidly gatekeep vocation terminology, or deny its obvious complexity in the theological tradition of the Catholic Church. And that, in the end, is the heart of my protest against Mary Cuff’s trash fire of a theological opinion. (In her defense, I will concede that “trash fire” was indeed very on brand for 2020.) Intellectual incoherence is stupid. Demanding greater rigor in terminology than the Church itself demands is at least suspect, and very easily actively harmful. So if you’re afraid to jump off the cliff, at least try to hold a coherent position, and concede that the truth is complex. Whether every person has a unique vocation rooted in their own personal call to holiness – or else some people have many vocations (even in the strict sense), while other people have only one vocation, and still others have no vocation, with all of these possibilities being normal – I don’t actually care.
Because whether we speak strictly or broadly, this is the critical point: complexity dissolves unjust pressure on young Catholics to discern rigidly between holy orders, religious life, and marriage. If our vocational frameworks generate anxiety from spiritual or psychological pressure, then we are obliged to help dismantle them, for the baptized have a profound right to immunity from any kind of coercion in choosing a state in life (canon 219)9, and that absolutely includes the “single life” or unmarried state. Whether the “single life” (understood as a voluntary embrace of celibacy, even only for a time) stands as a valid vocational state, or simply a valid non-vocational state, normalizing the inclusion of this option in our discernment is vital.
But there is no great theological danger in making the leap.
CIC canon 1191 §1: “A vow is a deliberate and free promise made to God, concerning some good which is possible and better.” // CCC 2102: “A vow is a deliberate and free promise made to God concerning a possible and better good which must be fulfilled by reason of the virtue of religion.”
CIC canon 1143 §1: “In virtue of the Pauline privilege, a marriage entered into by two unbaptized persons is dissolved in favor of the faith of the party who received baptism, by the very fact that a new marriage is contracted by that same party, provided the unbaptized party departs.”
CIC canon 1142: “A non-consummated marriage between baptized persons, or between a baptized party and an unbaptized party, can be dissolved by the Roman Pontiff for a just reason, at the request of both parties or of either party, even if the other is unwilling.”
CIC canon 1141: “A marriage which is ratified and consummated cannot be dissolved by any human power or by any cause other than death.”
CIC canon 1152: “if that spouse has not either expressly or tacitly condoned the other’s [adultery], he or she has the right to sever the common conjugal life, provided he or she has not consented to the adultery, nor been the cause of it, nor also committed adultery”. // CIC canon 1153: “a spouse who occasions grave danger of soul or body to the other or to the children, or otherwise makes the common life unduly difficult, provides the other spouse with a reason to leave”. // CIC canon 1692: “the personal separation of baptized spouses can be decided by a decree of the diocesan Bishop… [and if] the ecclesiastical decision does not produce civil effects, or if it is foreseen that there will be a civil judgement not contrary to the divine law, the Bishop of the diocese in which the spouses are living can, in the light of their particular circumstances, give them permission to approach the civil courts”.
CCC 1578: “No one has a right to receive the sacrament of Holy Orders. Indeed no one claims this office for himself; he is called to it by God. Anyone who thinks he recognizes the signs of God's call to the ordained ministry must humbly submit his desire to the authority of the Church, who has the responsibility and right to call someone to receive orders. Like every grace this sacrament can be received only as an unmerited gift.”
CIC canon 207 §2: “Drawn from both groups [clerics and lay] are those of Christ’s faithful who, professing the evangelical counsels through vows or other sacred bonds recognized and approved by the Church, are consecrated to God in their own special way and promote the salvific mission of the Church. Their state, although it does not belong to the hierarchical structure of the Church, does pertain to its life and holiness.”
CCC 1268: “The baptized have become ‘living stones’ to be ‘built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood.’ By Baptism they share in the priesthood of Christ, in his prophetic and royal mission. They are ‘a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, that [they] may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called [them] out of darkness into his marvelous light.’ Baptism gives a share in the common priesthood of all believers.” // CCC 1547: “The ministerial or hierarchical priesthood of bishops and priests, and the common priesthood of all the faithful participate, "each in its own proper way, in the one priesthood of Christ." While being "ordered one to another," they differ essentially… While the common priesthood of the faithful is exercised by the unfolding of baptismal grace – a life of faith, hope, and charity, a life according to the Spirit – the ministerial priesthood is at the service of the common priesthood. It is directed at the unfolding of the baptismal grace of all Christians. The ministerial priesthood is a means by which Christ unceasingly builds up and leads his Church. For this reason it is transmitted by its own sacrament, the sacrament of Holy Orders.”
CIC canon 219: “All Christ’s faithful have the right to immunity from any kind of coercion in choosing a state in life.”
Well-stated, Dan! As a perpetually privately professed celibate Catholic layman, I’m grateful for the call I received from God that was confirmed by the pastor of my parish. If anyone on here is curious how a private vow of celibacy in the Church works, feel free to message me. It’s a hidden vocation and a beautiful one.
I've taken to using the word "mission" as it isn't weighed down with the baggage of the word "vocation" and gets at many of the same points you write about here