Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, can I? Can I? Please, please. Why not? Ple-e-e-ease.

Probably all mothers hear that sort of plea from their children. “Can I do this? Have that? Go there?”

Regardless of a negative answer, and in fact provoked by it, the drone continues until either the mother is worn down and gives in or the child throws a tantrum, gets over it, and then gets on with life until the next whine.

Each of us will admit to trying that tactic when we were young.

Most of us will claim to have outgrown such antics.

Not so.

Not, at least when we transfer our whining from Mommy to God.

The boom in religious infrastructure

In the two decades or so after World War 2, seminaries, novitiates, rectories and convents were overflowing.

Architectural firms and construction companies made a profitable business of expanding or erecting seminaries and formation houses.

Bishops and religious superiors crowed about how those crowded facilities were signs of the Holy Spirit at work, evidence of God’s favour.

That was then

The situation, at least in the West, has changed dramatically.

Seminaries have closed for lack of students.

I have heard the story, possibly apocryphal, of one that was converted into a minimum-security prison, a move requiring almost no adaptation since seminaries were designed to keep groups of young males isolated and under observation and control in the first place.

Other religious houses have been turned into retreat centres to serve a minuscule and shrinking clientele.

Many have been sold to developers interested in the land under them rather than the buildings sitting on it.

Imported priests

In response to the decline in the number of clerics, bishops in the West import priests from countries with surpluses of clergy and financial shortages that remittances from rented priests can answer.

Often, those priests are neither trained nor prepared to work in cultures and churches other than their own.

This can exacerbate the problem of emptying pews in parishes.

For many years, clergy have arrived unprepared for the cultural challenges they face.

Can this global clerical trade sustain the Church—or is it deepening disconnection?

The scandal of religious women

Scandalously, some congregations of religious have recruited young women in poor countries to come to Europe solely to maintain facilities and care for elderly sisters rather than to engage in the apostolate.

Holy Spirit speaking?

No one seems willing to consider that if they considered a surfeit of candidates in the past to be the work of the Holy Spirit, it follows that their dearth today might also be a work, a message, from the Holy Spirit.

Might forms of ministry that have served the Church for centuries be due for retirement, renovation or replacement?

It is time to pray for insight so that we might discern what the actual message of the Spirit is today and for the future.

How many prayers for “an increase in vocations to the priesthood and religious life” must we offer before we realise that our prayers have been answered and “No!” is the answer?

Must we, like whiney children, keep pestering God?

We may never know what the Spirit has in store until we take God’s “No” for an answer.

• William Grimm, a native of New York City, is a missioner and presbyter who since 1973 has served in Japan, Hong Kong and Cambodia. A graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York, he is the publisher of UCA News.
• First published in UCANews.com. Republished with permission.
• Flashes of Insight is an international publication. The editorial policy is that spelling reflects the country of origin.