The Lack of Vocational Perseverance...Why do young religious abandon Vocation? By Br. Sergio del Moro

 1 - The phenomenon of the abandonments

2 - Analysis attempt;

3 - How to proceed (Method See, Judge and Implement)

The Pope expressed himself thus: "You have chosen an important theme. We can say that, at this moment, loyalty is put to the test. The statistics you have examined prove it. We are facing a "hemorrhage" that weakens the consecrated life and the life of the Church itself. We are worried about abandonment in the consecrated life. It is true that some leave for an act of coherence, because they recognize, after a serious discernment, that they have never had a vocation. But others over time weaken in fidelity, and often only a few years after perpetual profession. What happened?"

 We live in a society, the Pope continued, where economic rules replace moral laws, dictate and impose their own systems of reference to the detriment of the values ​​of life. "A society in which the dictatorship of money and profit defends its vision of existence.In such a situation, we must first let ourselves be evangelized and committed to evangelization

 A) absence of spiritual life: personal prayer, community prayer and sacramental life. Often, the lack of spiritual life leads to a great crisis of faith, for many the deepest crisis of religious and consecrated life and of the life of the Church itself. This means that the votes lose their meaning - in general, before abandonment, there are many and continuous faults against them - and not even the consecrated life. Clear, therefore, that in these cases the abandonment is the "normal" and more logical exit.

b) Loss of sense of belonging to the community, to the institute and, in some cases, to the Church itself. There is a disaffection for the community and the Institute, with a series of consequences (of every two priests who leave, one goes to the diocesan clergy ...): problems of interpersonal relationships, misunderstandings, lack of dialogue and authentic communication , psychic inability to live the needs of fraternal life in community, inability to resolve conflicts. I was always impressed to see the religious who abandon the religious life with all the naturalness, without any drama. They leave happy. It is clear that they leave nothing, because their hearts were already elsewhere.

c) affective problems: a very wide problem: the falling in love that often ends in marriage, the violation of the vow of chastity with homosexual or heterosexual relationships, more or less frequent - both among men and women, much more than what is he thinks, says the secretary. These problems have clear repercussions on fraternal life, which influence relationships, continuous conflicts ...