Priestly vocations in post-conciliar Malta

Abstract

The Council of Trent founded the Seminary institution for the formation of priests. In Malta, the Seminary was instituted in 1703. This dissertation aims to bring out dearly the solicitude which the Universal Church and the local ekklesia in Malta have shown for priestly vocations and the formation of the candidates for the priesthood. The Church in Maita was blessed with a rich harvest of vocations. Today vocations for the priesthood are not so numerous as in the past. However, a rediscovered ecclesiology of the Church as the People of God has given the Church a new pastoral way to help the members of the community to accept the call of God to serve the Christian community. In the Synod of Bishops of 1990 about The Formation of Priests in the Circumstances of Today and in the Apostolic Exhortation, Pastores dabo vobis (25 March 1992) of John Paul Il, the Church proposed the evangelisation of the environment where Christians live as the basis of the pastoral work for vocations. A survey was conducted among the young people who were members of the Centre for Diocesan Vocations from 197 4 to 1994 to find out the positive and the negative aspects of the socio-cultural and ecclesial contexts in which these persons lived. Besides describing their environment, the ex-members of the Centre for Diocesan Vocations were asked to say what - if they heard the call - had helped them to follow the vocation to the priesthood and what distracted them from it. When the results of this survey were analysed, it was found that adolescents and young people in Malta need a more profound commitment to the values of the Gospel and to the Christian life. To fill in this gap this dissertation proposes a propaedeutic programme of formation based on evangelisation that may help adolescents, young people and older ones to respond to the will of God for them and to become priests of the Church if this is His call for them.