Last Sunday at St.James Catholic Church Father Ulick gave an emotional and thought provoking sermon, the small and friendly community sat listening closely as he brought up a daunting subject for the Catholic Church; the decline in priestly vocations in the UK. Since 1990 ordinations into the priesthood’s in England and Wales a year have halved [www.ukvocation.org], this shows the extent to which the vocational lifestyle is losing it’s appeal to the youth and introduces the question, what does this mean for the future of the church? 

St.James is a tight knit parish, who provide more than a weekly mass, for many in the community it is the crux of their and their children’s social life, holding a weekly youth group called Mini Cats as well as tea parties for the elderly, it is truly a unique and familial parish. However none of this would be possible without Father Ulick who guides and supports each and every event and fundraiser along with amazing volunteers; one parishioner commented that “there would be no parish without Father”. However for many parishes across the Uk this will be the reality as more and more churches are merged together due to the Priest shortage, indeed Father Ulick commented “the idea of merging St.James and St.Margrets was brought up just under a year ago”. 

How, you may ask, can this be fixed? Father Ulick observed that we cannot go back to “shoehorning our sons into the priesthood” however the option should “be part of the conversation”, this made me wonder is that what is causing the lack of young boys desiring to devote their lives to God? Christian parents never introducing the subject at dinner? Perhaps, but I believe it maybe a deeper and more complex issue, our society is moving away from religion as 53% of adults report to have no religious affiliations what so ever in 2017, perhaps the Uk is simply not producing priests because our society does not encourage the lifestyle it would demand. When rationalising this Father Ulick commented that despite his celibate lifestyle he has lived a “fulfilling life”, and has had experiences which allowed him to grow as a person. 

So I pose the question to you, would you devote your life to God?