Spiritual Wars IV: A New Hope

I am very excited about the new campaign in my Diocese to promote and encourage young men to answer the call to priesthood. Since Fr. Ron Hutchinson, the new director of priestly vocations in Grand Rapids, took over his job in June, many things have changed in regard to vocations in my diocese. The most important of these is the appreciation and desire to encourage those who choose to follow the call or ordination. Before Fr. Ron took over his new office there was not much in the way of incentive to answer the call to priesthood in the Diocese of Grand Rapids. The old website (updated now by Bishop W. Hurley) for the Diocese was not much to boast about and a new applicant seeking to find information on answering the call in Grand Rapids had to dig through many pages before coming to the 'Vocations' page. The page was full of information on vocations to the Diaconate, Eucharistic Minstistry, Lay Apostolates, etc...and way at the bottom was a very small little insert for the Priesthood, with a broken link to an email account that was no longer used (at least as far as I found) by the Vocations Director then in office.

Since Bishop Walter Hurley has taken the reigns of the Diocese and installed the ambitious, orderly, and very reliable Fr. Ron Hutchinson as Director of Vocations in the Diocese, we have a new web-page on the Diocese website dedicated solely to priestly vocations! Not only is this webpage an awesome and much needed addition to the website, but on top of that, I think that the new site is beautifully laid out, and contains a lot of useful information.

Grand Rapids currently has 15 seminarians and I hope that many more will come. With this new website, I am sure that if they do have the call and want to give it a try, they will have the information that they need at their fingertips. The life of a Priest is not a popular choice in this modern world of ours, and as such, I think that it is the duty of every Bishop to ensure that they make every effort to make information about the priesthood as easily available as possible. You never know how many vocations may have been lost simply because they did not receive the helpful nudge in the right direction. Do not be silent! Encourage vocations!