So, You Want a Priest in the Family

So, You Want a Priest in the Family

By Jim Moore, Contributing Writer

My wife and I are the thoroughly amazed parents of a young man who, God willing, will be ordained a priest in 2027. 

Why thoroughly amazed? Because we can’t believe God actually allowed us to be involved.

Talk about God drawing straight with crooked lines! We got married at thirty-six after taking paths that left our guardian angels scratching their heads. Or halos. Or whatever angels have. A few years later, we welcomed our son through the intercession of Our Lady, and she has had a loving hand on his shoulder ever since.

Seriously. The two of them are as thick as thieves. He came home from his classical Catholic grade school once and told my wife, “You’re a great mom!” and while she was beaming, added, “But Mary’s better.”

Obviously, he had learned something that day along the lines of, “Isn’t it amazing? Blessed Mother loves you even more than your own mother does.” And then, as small boys do, he shared his newfound knowledge without nuance. 

Innocent as the incident was, it still caught Mom by surprise. But after a minute, she shrugged and told herself, “Honestly, you can’t really argue with that. Can you?”

I was relieved to find out the teacher hadn’t spent any time discussing the merits of St. Joseph that day.

Now, back to our son’s vocation. If I came across as humble above, let me set the record straight. Being puzzled about God’s crooked line art doesn’t stop me from enjoying the position we’re in. I’m happy to take some credit where none is due . . . but only to an extent.

“Playing the seminarian card” and getting impressed looks from fellow Catholics is a lot of fun. And I love saying obviously untrue things like, “What do you expect from him, having been exposed to my personal sanctity all these years?”

What isn’t a lot of fun is some of the conversation that happens after playing the seminarian card. It’s not unpleasant. Just uninformed.

“How did you do it? I really want one of my sons to be a priest.”

“You’re so generous to give your son to the Church.”

“But you’ll never have grandchildren!”

Let’s take those in order.

“How did you do it? I really want one of my sons to be a priest.”

 We did nothing but treat the priesthood the same way we treated every other good idea our son ever voiced about his future. When he first mentioned the priesthood at the age of six, we did the same thing we did when he brought up being a police officer, a firefighter, or an emergency medical technician. We said, “That would make us very proud.” Then we helped him explore his interests. I was happier than anybody about his various choices. Every idea he ever had made me sigh in relief that he wasn’t repeating my youthful delusions about rock ‘n’ roll. Helping him explore the priesthood was actually the easiest of all his ideas. We just took him to Mass, encouraged him to be an altar boy, and made the Faith a priority at home. All things we would have done anyway.

“You’re so generous to give your son to the Church.” 

As well-meaning as this one is, it makes our son sound like a box of Cheerios we dropped off for a food pantry. He isn’t ours to GIVE to anyone. God gave us the honor of participating in his birth and caring for him. All rights of creation revert to the Father. Too often in the history of the Church, parents have assumed ownership and imposed a religious vocation on an uncalled child to the detriment of both the child and the Church. Don’t let the desire to take manly credit for a priest, or the motherly pride of being buried with a manutergium, stop your son from making the actual contribution to the world that Our Lord would prefer him to make. 

How do we know what Christ is looking for in a priest, anyway? Let’s leave the recruiting to Him with an able assist from diocesan vocation directors. By all means, suggest that your son attend a Quo Vadis event if you think he might be open to a vocation. But let the nudging stop there.

“But you’ll never have grandchildren!” 

We get this one a lot because our son is an only child. As mentioned above, we got started late and became parents only through IVF (Interceding Virgin Faith). I, of course, have a quippy answer always at the ready: 

“No, we won’t have grandchildren. On the other hand, look at all the money we’re going to save on gifts!” 

But seriously folks, how selfish can people possibly be that they demand procreation from their children just to satisfy a personal desire to pamper grandchildren? We actually had a very devout Catholic woman tell us she was going to pray against our son’s vocation solely because she wanted us to know the joy of grandchildren. Even my own dear, departed, heroic, and devoutly Catholic mother actually said to me (when her grandson first expressed an interest in the priesthood as a child), “He can’t do that. He has to carry on the family name.” 

First of all, it was just the statement of a little boy at the time; there wasn’t anything to discuss. But still, my first thought was, “What family name? Moore? If I threw a handful of rocks into a crowd on St. Patrick’s Day, my odds of hitting at least one Moore would be pretty good. And I doubt I’d be related to him.” 

Plus, as far as I know, there are no major historical contributions or legacy institutions our particular strain of Moore needs to worry about representing. No gaping holes in secular history should we eventually pass from the scene.

To sum up all of this rambling, here’s the only advice I have for parents who would like a priest in the family: It’s all about making sure the boy understands that the priesthood is a perfectly excellent choice in your opinion and that you support him 100%—whatever good path he chooses for his life.

You don’t get, give, or produce a priest. Christ calls a priest. The best thing YOU can do is stay out of HIS way. 

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Jim Moore is a copy and content writer by trade and an obscure playwright and songwriter in his spare time. A 20^th-century graduate of Seton Hall University, Jim’s career has included stints in broadcast journalism, Catholic magazine editing, the world of greeting cards, in-house writing for a telecom company, trade association communications, political activism, and freelance work for a broad spectrum of industries. His songs have been heard by dozens of people and his plays have been produced in both the US and Ireland. Weekly, he can be found sharing an open mic with other old men and their guitars.