Bucking the downward trend in vocations, there are 19 new seminarians in Maynooth this year. Kitty Holland visited them
It was while driving from Dublin to Co Kerry on the June Bank Hholiday of 1999 that Michael Carroll (33), from Mount Merrion in Dublin, first felt that he was being called to a closer relationship with God.
"I have an aunt who is a nun and she was always leaving things around the house. I saw this tape she had left about Medjugorje and I thought I'd bring it to keep me company on the drive down. "As I listened to it I really felt like Our Lady was inviting me to the Church."
As one of the 19 new seminarians starting at St Patrick's College, Maynooth this week, Carroll is part of a recent upward trend in vocations. When the number was announced last week, president of the college, Monsignor Dermot Farrell, welcomed the slight increase apparent over the past few years. It was, he said, "good news for Catholic communities throughout the country".
The newest trainees hail from 12 counties - four come from from Co Dublin, two from Co Clare, two from Co Cork, one from Co Derry, three from Co Donegal and one each from counties Kildare, Limerick, Mayo, Tipperary, Tyrone, Westmeath and Wexford. They range in age from 17 to 50, and most, according to Msgr Farrell, have had "life experience" before reaching a firm decision to follow their vocation. This is a positive thing, he says: "People who go forward today really have to think it out, think it through."
Carroll, a former graphic designer, had studied French and psychology at Trinity College and says he had a happy, stable childhood. He always felt "very close to God". Like many, he continues, he drifted away from his faith while in college and "enjoyed college life".
However, the life revolving around parties, lectures, drinking and exams left an emptiness he couldn't make sense of. "I struggled quite a bit during college and never came up with any answer." He graduated in 1995, did a Fás course in desktop publishing and began his career in that field.
"Though it was ticking along merrily, I knew in my heart it really wasn't enough." Listening to the tape on the way to Kerry, he realised he had lost sight of what was important in his faith, particularly in terms of the presence of Jesus in his life.
He went to Medjugorje himself that year. "And I had a real experience of Jesus being there, true and present in the sacrament. It wasn't just symbolic of Jesus. He was there. That had a dramatic impact on my faith."
All the while he insists he was getting great job satisfaction from his work but he found the hurley burley of the Dublin social scene unsatisfying. Spiritual sustenance came increasingly from his faith.
He became involved in a young adults' prayer group in St Stephen's Green and met some "incredible people". He travelled to World Youth Day in Rome in 2000 where Pope John Paul II said it was Christ that encouraged us to "do something great" with our lives. "I suppose you could say I was all the time taking baby steps to where I am now."
FROM TYRONE, THE second youngest new seminarian, Ryan McAleer (18), says he sensed an attraction to the priesthood from a "young age".
"I couldn't put my finger on any one thing. I suppose at first it was the novelty of being a priest. I grew up in a relatively religious family and obviously my faith was nurtured." He served as an altar boy and never kept his vocation secret. There were some who questioned it. But "in a sense that strengthened the vocation. I had to keep asking myself why I was being called."
Asked whether he feels anxious about the challenges ahead and celibacy in particular, he smiles, nodding. "Well, celibacy is part of the discipline and I accept that."
Fergal O'Neill (32), from Shannonbridge, Co Clare, has worked as a carpenter and was a member of a religious order in Dublin for eight years, before deciding his calling was to parish priesthood. "I have had doubts on a lot of things," he says. "I do have bad days and I ask: 'God, what am I doing here?' But I pray and then something happens during the day to restore me."
All three said the support they have had from family and friends has been wonderful. The older two speak of the decade-long journeys of reflection, introspection and occasionally crisis they have travelled to come to this stage. Carroll describes himself as almost excited by being at this point, this new beginning, the sense of peace and the surety he feels, finally.
MSGR FARRELL WELCOMES the modest but steady increase in vocations, - up from 13 in 2003. Though the numbers remain low compared with the highs of the 20th century, he is optimistic that the last 50 years' decline are not symptomatic of a terminal crisis.
"It's important to realise there were times when things were far worse for the Catholic Church," he says.
Taking a long, historical view, he points to the crisis of the Penal Laws in the 1500s "when the whole parochial structure collapsed", and a whole generation of Catholics had little or no contact with the institutional church at all.
Again in the 1840s there was a huge shortage of priests. "Remember we had a population of 8 million, and a fragment of the number of priests we have now ministering to them. I think what happens is the church goes in cycles. The church reflects the cycles of society." Despite the recent upheaval in the church's fortunes, Msgr Farrell says the gospel has a vital, irrefutable role.
"There's a hunger for more than the material side of life, a yearning for fulfilment beyond the ephemeral. Humans are spiritual beings and that can be lost sight of in the hurley burley of the pace of life."
The factors behind the fall in vocations since the 1960s have been well rehearsed. "Low fertility rates, less support from families, higher employment, greater opportunities at third level, increasing secularisation, less prayer life - all of these are factors," says Msgr Farrell.
THE SEX ABUSE scandals and the initially aloof manner in which the church handled them exacerbated the decline. He agrees that criticisms levelled at the institutional church may, if they don't deter a man from following his vocation, at least delay him. Men coming forward do not always have the support of their families, he adds. "You could assume that support in my day. You can't now."
But while people may feel free to criticise the institutional church, they are very supportive, he says, of their priest.
"People are critical of all faceless institutions," he says "not just the church. But there is huge support from the parish for their priest." And he is confident there is "more balance" coming into Irish society's view of the Catholic Church. "The authoritarian institution as people might see it is only one aspect.
"I think people are seeing more aspects to the church - the pastoral, the NGOs like Trócaire, the social justice work, the spiritual leadership and guidance."
For those men that do come forward, he says, a far more rigorous screening process - including psychological assessment - is in place. "I know anecdotally that people are applying [to train as a priest], and out of the screening process more than half don't get to the first stage."
Also the training itself has changed, with far greater emphasis on developing the "human" side of the priest.
"There is far greater recognition now of the need for this focus." Referring to the scandals that beset the church in recent years, Msgr Farrell says they were not spiritual failings, but human.
If that attention to the human dimension had been part of the training in the past, would those men behind the scandals have been "caught" and prevented from going forward for ordination?
"Yes, they would have been sifted out. There is much more rigorous, ongoing assessment of students now. If they don't seem to be measuring up they will be asked to leave." About 60 per cent of those who start in year one will not in the end be ordained, he says. He does not agree with his colleague Fr Kevin Doran, national co-ordinatorfor vocations, who said the death of Pope John Paul II would have a lasting effect on vocations. "No, I think it's far more complex than that. Any vocations that might come out of that mightn't be very sustained."
The area the Irish church needs to work on, Msgr Farrell says, is in reaching out to adults. "The church needs sustained work in terms of adult faith development. Sometimes our faith development is almost stunted at primary, secondary school level. The Sunday homily is not going to do that. That needs to be addressed through adult catechisis." The Irish Bishops' Conference has turned its attention to this area in the past two years, he says.
Michael Carroll hopes he will be part of reaching out to other adults, and showing how for him the church had the answers.
"Spiritually the church has not changed, people's perception of it has," he explains. "I could have stayed where I was, on the treadmill, not growing spiritually at all."
While the world has been shouting about what was wrong with the Catholic Church, it has always been calmly providing what he, and he believes thousands like him, are seeking.
"I welcome opportunities - like this interview even - to highlight what the church has always been quietly offering."