Excerpt

Anxiety. Fear. These words frequently come up in commentary about young Catholics and vocational discernment. As one recent writer puts it: “Devout young adults — even not-so-young adults, in their late twenties and thirties — often get stuck in discernment, unable to commit either to marriage, priesthood, or religious life for fear they might actually be called to a different vocation.” Whence this anxiety? Among the many causes of this phenomenon is a culture of vocational discernment — which we can term “vocational rigorism” — that took clear shape during the seventeenth century and that still informs much of the advice given to young Catholics. One key element in vocational rigorism is the loss of a distinction between counsels and commands (also called precepts). How might distinguishing counsels from commands serve the needs of anxious souls? . . .