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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 July 2024
One of the Christian notions that has been offered a new lease of life as a result of the twentieth-century renewal of ecclesiology has been that of vocation. It no longer ought to be possible to write an article entitled ‘vocation’ in a Catholic encyclopedia and go on to deal exclusively with the call to the priesthood or the religious life. Even when an author has the intention of dealing with these topics, he should nowadays feel obliged to begin with remarks to the effect that all Christians—and, indeed, all men—share in the same vocation to the kingdom of God. It is the sacrament of baptism that is the seal of a vocation before ever there is a question of an ordination or a religious profession. Just as the notion of the ‘Church’, once confiscated by the clergy, has had to be handed back to the baptized, who all begin and mostly remain as lay people, so has the notion of ‘vocation’. A vocation from God is something which every Christian must learn to detect and act upon, whether or not he remains a layman all his life. One hopes that children in Catholic schools run by religious orders are no longer led to believe that there are just two major possibilities in their lives: either that of having a vocation or, if they do not have this, of getting married. (Not that I am going to spend time in this article in setting up marriage as an alternative vocation; rather the reverse, as we shall see.)
page 438 note 1 Leclercq, Dom Jean, La tradition: baptème et profession: genèse et évolution de la vie consacrée, in Aspects du monachisme hier et aujourd' hui. Paris, 1968Google Scholar.
page 438 note 2 Jeremias, Joachim, Infant Baptism in the First Four Centuries. London, 1960Google Scholar.
page 439 note 1 Lubac, H. de, Exegèse médiévale, Paris, 1959Google Scholar, quoted in Leclercq, op. cit., p. 83.
page 439 note 2 Leclercq, op. cit., p. 86.
page 439 note 3 I hope to deal in a later article with the present‐day assessment of the evangelical counsels.
page 440 note 1 Quotations taken from the English translation by Talcott Parsons. London, 1930.
page 441 note 1 Weber held that ‘neither the predominantly Catholic peoples nor those of classical antiquity have possessed any expression of similar connotation for what we know as a calling (in the sense of life‐task, a definite field in which to work), while one has existed for all predominantly Protestant peoples’ (p. 79). In fact, it seems that such a usage entered French around 1850, perhaps by an independent transference from the standard Catholic usage.
page 444 note 1 Cf. S. Lyonnet, La vocation chrétienne à la perfection selon Saint Paul, in C. Colombo et al., Latcs et vie chrétienne parfaite, t. 1. Rome, 1963.Google Scholar
page 445 note 1 I think there would still be much sense in using the notion of vocation for deacons, priests and bishops in that they are called by the church, by the people of God themselves, to mediate to them the communion, the word and the forgiveness of God. The sooner we return to the idea that God calls men to the ministry through the voice of the faithful, the better. But this is another question from the one we are discussing.
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