Vocations, Vocations, Vocations

Guiding students toward a life path
By Rich Barlow May 17, 2008
You'd expect the Jesuit-run Boston College to guide students seeking to be Jesuit priests. But at a time when a priest and nun shortage bedevils the Roman Catholic Church across its religious orders and dioceses, BC is taking, if you will, a more catholic approach.

Since November, Manresa House has been doing business on a leafy residential street near the Chestnut Hill campus. Jointly run by BC and the Jesuits' New England province, the house provides counseling for students considering the religious life, even if their spirituality is pulling them toward the Franciscan hood or Augustinian auspices or duty as a diocesan priest.

(The New England Jesuits do, however, use the second and third floors of the house to lodge nonstudent out-of-towners on overnight retreats to specifically contemplate the Jesuit call.) The comfortable living room, with sofa and plush rug, bore artifacts on a recent visit attesting to the sacred and secular: On a table sat a brochure about "Ignatian Spirituality" next to a chocolate Easter bunny.

The Rev. Jack Butler, a burly man with an iron handshake who runs the house, proudly wore university-emblazoned garb (a BC sweatshirt) but also had his undone Roman collar protruding. As part of his job at Manresa, he said he must sometimes suppress his inner Jesuit.

"Personally, Jack Butler hopes with my whole heart that you look at the Society of Jesus and want to be a Jesuit," he says. "But maybe God wants you to be a Benedictine." The Catholic church has scores of religious orders - clergy or laity, men and women - who follow prescribed religious rules in pursuit of the order's mission, be it service or the contemplative life. (BC officials estimate that about 20 students entered the priesthood each year in the 1960s; that's down to three or four a year today.) BC sophomore Nathaniel Hibner saw the religious life in his mind's rearview mirror during high school in Ohio. A lawyer's life loomed, but the object in the mirror turned out to be closer than it looked after he heard engaging Jesuit professors in class and Butler in the Sunday pulpit. He came by Manresa House for a sit-down and has been reading literature and hearing speakers discuss the religious life at the house ever since. Those speakers dispelled his misconception that all are certain they want to join the ministry before they enter it. He was struck by "the joy I've always found when I see them, especially when they interact with one another." A political science major, Hibner plans to continue his reflection after college during a Peace Corps stint. If it was human ministers who attracted him to ministry, the ambience in which he pondered mattered, too. Butler's campus office was "a little more sterile environment" than Manresa, where students can relax on the sofa, have their pick of a chair, or just snack sitting on the floor, and "there's a lot more space, a lot more openness."

Butler juggles his campus and Manresa duties with his job as vocation director for his order in New England, which means that "anybody who's interested about being a Jesuit has to come through me, or you don't become a Jesuit in New England." That's typically a full-time job, but BC and the New England province negotiated an arrangement under which they share Butler's services.

That deal, in turn, switched on a mental light bulb at the BC administration. As a Jesuit-run school with 14,000 undergraduate and graduate students, what could the school do to promote the mission and ministry of the church? Manresa House - named for a town in Spain where Catholics come to pilgrimage - was born as a formalized college commitment to Catholic vocations, complementing an informal meeting group run by BC President William Leahy for students pondering the priesthood, Butler says. Through a spokesman, Leahy says that, given his school's Catholic roots, "we want to do everything we can to foster vocations to the priesthood and religious life." That commitment confronts "a world today that doesn't necessarily value the decision for ministry," says Butler, citing the call for celibacy in America's sexualized culture. The revelations of sexual abuse of children by priests weren't exactly an effective recruiting poster, either. About half of the people who've cycled through Manresa have raised the scandal as a concern about entering ministry, according to Butler.

The reaction is different, depending on a seeker's age. (Manresa House sees potential priests from college age up to 50.) "The students have this wonderful idealism - 'Those guys that did those horrible acts, they weren't faithful. [But] we're going to get it right.' " Older advisees worry more about how they'll be perceived as priests in the scandal's wake. That pragmatism comes with age, says Butler; the oldsters are also the ones "that are often asking me: How does insurance work?"

Since Manresa's debut, Butler has advised perhaps 10 students, while another 22 people have stayed overnight while considering the Jesuits. Guiding people toward their life's path doesn't always mean exhorting them to the religious life. "My job is to help you find your deepest desires," says Butler. If, after counseling a person, her desire is to marry and help raise a family, "I'd say, phenomenal, I've done my job. I've helped you discern your vocation."

Photo is of Fr. Jack Butler, S.J.

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