Vocation Awareness Week
Opportunity to encourage, pray for increase in church vocations

What do these men have in common?

	Editor's View Mary C. Uhler

• A widower with a son who recently returned from Iraq.
• A mechanical engineer who is a lieutenant in the Army Reserve.
• A man who came to the United States from Mexico in 1991 and worked with his family as a migrant laborer.
• A man who was a Methodist who converted to Catholicism.

All of these men were all ordained as Catholic priests in 2007. They are among nearly 500 men from dioceses across the country who were part of the ordination class of 2007.

Ordination class is diverse

A press release from the National Conference of Catholic Bishops talked about the 2007 ordination class. It said the class was filled with well-educated professionals, newcomers to the nation, and people touched by war.

Several of the new priests have military background. Some were immigrants to the United States; about a third are foreign-born, with many from Asian countries. About six percent are converts to the Catholic faith.

Some vocations run in families. Some have brothers who are already priests or are studying to become priests.

The men ordained have a broad range of educational and professional backgrounds. Many are educators, including former teachers and principals. Two new priests are pilots. Others worked in finance, were physicians, architects, attorneys, and musicians.

What does this say to us? Obviously God is calling many different kinds of men to the priesthood. The same is true for those who are becoming religious order priests, Sisters, and permanent deacons.

We are seeing a diverse group of men entering the seminary in our own Diocese of Madison. There are young men in high school and college as well as older men in "second careers." Our diocese, too, has seminarians who are converts to the Catholic faith.

Focus on church vocations

January 13 begins National Vocation Awareness Week. This is an annual observance when the Catholic Church calls upon members of the church to join in prayer for an increase in all church vocations.

"We know that one of the most urgent needs in the Church today is for a greater number of priests, deacons, Brothers, and Sisters in consecrated life, and most fundamentally, a strengthening of sacramental married life," said Msgr. Jim Bartylla, diocesan vocation director, in a letter sent to parishes for Vocation Awareness Week.

Included with his letter were sample intercessions and bulletin announcements and other items to celebrate Vocation Awareness Week. He encouraged people to go to the Vocations Web site found on the diocesan Web site at www.madisondiocese.org for lots of information about vocations. Short video interviews of the diocesan seminarians and priests can now be viewed on that site.

Perhaps if others hear the stories of our seminarians and priests, they will realize they, too, could be called to a Church vocation. We also hope that people will read this week's special supplement on vocation in the Catholic Herald to find out about how people have answered God's call in many different ways.

Keep praying - it's working!

Above all, we can all pray for vocations and encourage people we know - including ourselves and our family members - to consider a Church vocation. It seems as if our prayers are being answered on a diocesan and national level. Let's continue Eucharistic Adoration and other prayers for vocations. It's obviously working!

Mailbag

	Mailbag policy We reserve the right to edit or reject letters. Limit letters to 200 words or less. All letters must be signed. Please include your city or town of residence. Send letters to: Mailbag The Catholic Herald 702 S. High Point Rd. Madison, WI 53719-3522 Fax: 608-821-3071 E-mail: info@madisoncatholicherald.org

Evil masquerading as good intention is insidious

To the editor:

Maggie Carrao, in her letter to the editor in the December 20th issue of the Catholic Herald, missed an essential point made in Father Pacholczyk's December 13th article on evil when she took exception to his comparison of Planned Parenthood to Nazism. Thus, I feel the need in charity to offer some fraternal correction.

Father Pacholczyk states, ". . . it [evil] doesn't necessarily present itself in a monstrous or dramatic way." In fact, evil can't present itself truthfully, but must present itself falsely as an "apparent" good in order to be accepted.

There is a famous line, "Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice must pay virtue." The devil in the Garden of Eden had to present an evil as a good, i.e., eat of tree of the knowledge of good and evil and you will be like gods. It was indeed a painful lesson to humanity in false advertising.

Likewise, Hitler advocated lethal discrimination against Jews and others by promoting the goal of "racial" honor in the Nazi rise to power in a period of suffering in democratic Post-World War I Germany. Planned Parenthood advocates abortion as alleviating "neglect and abuse of unwanted children" or as "freedom of choice" in our American society. I begin to wonder if the Hemlock Society will promote suicide as a weight-reduction program in our consumer culture.

As Father Pacholczyk noted, many only see the full horror and true intention of evil after the fact, as Maggie Carrao can rightly do with World War II Nazism. The best early warning system to identify the hypocrisy of evil is to put the seemingly "good" intention next to the actual act and its consequence and dispel the false advertising.

For example, the devil actually means, "Eat the fruit, lose eternal life." Hitler actually means, "Promote Aryan superiority, kill Jews." Planned Parenthood officials actually mean, "End child abuse, kill children in the womb" or "It's your choice, murder the innocent." The Hemlock Society could say, "Lose weight, kill yourself."

Evil masquerading as good intention, as in the cases of Hitler and Planned Parenthood, is insidious - it anesthetizes our consciences as we walk off the moral cliff in a stupor of self-deception wrapped in a cloak of self-righteousness.

Msgr. Jim Bartylla, Diocese of Madison

Disagrees with Kmiec's solution to illegal immigration

To the editor:

Mr. Kmiec's article on immigration (Catholic Herald, December 27 [print edition only]) would be laughable if it weren't so intolerably condescending. On what basis does Mr. Kmiec conclude that his proposed solution to illegal immigration is "what most Americans want"?

Moreover, Mr. Kmiec's proposed solution conveniently ignores the one requirement utterly required for it to work, a requirement that is staunchly opposed by Mr. Kmiec and those in his camp. Mr. Kmiec writes, "It's not rocket science: Determine the unmet demand for jobs, and let that many people into the country."

And what does Mr. Kmiec propose to do with the several million other potential immigrants who number above the new, higher legal quotas? Shall they be summarily shot at our borders with Mexico and Canada?

If Mr. Kmiec's simplistic solution is to have any hope of succeeding, our borders must function as borders, i.e., as meaningful barriers to illegal entry into this country.

Joseph T. Leone, Brooklyn

Should share the good news of Second Vatican Council

To the editor:

In the Catholic Herald, there has been a seemingly constant stream of gentle, loving, firm leadership on what Vatican II IS NOT for the past several years.

I would like to suggest adding a focus on what Vatican II IS. My goodness, the world's bishops, theologians, religious, and lay leaders spent almost four years being guided by the Holy Spirit on, arguably, the most important event in the past 400 years of the Church.

Is it not possible that the Holy Spirit is waiting for the bishops of the world to shout out the good news of the council to the Body of Christ?

Don Lund, Stoughton