Thread by @masterjedi747

So I think this article is raging dumpster fire of half-truths mixed with dangerous falsehoods. And as a canonist, I feel qualified to comment as someone having a relatively educated opinion. A thread.

The core problem reduces to this question:
What defines a "vocation"?

https://twitter.com/CrisisMag/status/1291763543960891393

If we want to be *very* traditional, then the formal and personal “calling” (voco, vocare) by the bishop for candidates to receive ordination - mirroring the formal and personal calling by Christ of His apostles - is arguably the only “true” vocation, strictly speaking.

Marriage, on the other hand, can only be called a “vocation” by employing an extended (perfectly legitimate, but more modern) sense of the term. Indeed marriage is very clearly not a "special calling" at all, since it is the ordinary state in life for most adults.

Finally, and most broadly, the internal experience of feeling "called" to a certain state in life by God might be taken as reasonable concept of "vocation". But then, there is absolutely no coherent reason why the single life could not be a true "vocation" for some individuals.

Regardless, it is emphatically incorrect to employ "vows" as a framework for analyzing this question, since neither ordination nor even marriage involves *vows* in the proper sense (CCC 2102; canon 1191 §1), but only promises of intent to fulfill natural or canonical obligations.

The author's sweeping claim that "Catholic vocations include permanent vows" is thus, quite simply, laughable - and betrays the depth of the ignorance at play - ignoring not only consecrated virginity, but religious orders who literally *only* profess temporary (renewable) vows.

All this, without even beginning to unpack the author’s oversimplified claim that nobody can “quit” the priesthood, religious life, or marriage: As if clerical laicization, dispensation from vows, and ecclesiastical permission for spouses to separate were foreign to Catholicism.

As if there were not Catholics who entered a "second" vocation later in life, after a previous state in life turned out to be not-permanent. As if the “double vocations” of clerical-religious or married-clergy should not make us pause and question if we might be oversimplifying.

The truth is more complex. Either we should be ready and willing to defend and affirm the idea that *not* everybody has a vocation in the strict sense: some have more than one vocation in life, some have only one, and some have none, and all of these possibilities being normal...

...or, we should get comfortable with extending the term, affirming Baptism as the universal ur-vocation by Christ to all of the faithful (ecclesia = ek-kaleo = called out from), and affirming that any state in life can be a vocation in accord with the universal call to holiness.