Like most priests I've attended lots of Priest Assembly days and listened to the usual talks on the problem of the 'vocations shortage'. My own view is that we are barking entirely up the wrong tree. Although the lack of vocations is a problem it is not the problem, merely a symptom of the problem.
Vocations are like happiness - you cannot seek it in itself. Happiness comes automatically, all by itself, when we get certain things in our life right.
The problem about vocations is that we have got too many things wrong and I believe a major one, if not the main one, is that we priests are scandalously disobedient.
Every vocation is a grace and grace flows through the pipeline of obedience. When we are not obedient as priests we are discouraging the very vocations we tell each other we desire. Every single act of priestly disobedience, no matter how small, whether catechetical, liturgical, moral, theological, canonical or otherwise dries up vocations at their source - God's grace.
And the laity notice - especially the young. They notice when the priest is not wearing the right vestments at Mass or changing the words to suit himself; teaching falsehood or half-truths from the pulpit; saying yes to people when he should be saying no; not dressing as a priest should; handing his duty of leadership over to those who should be following his lead, and a thousand other small and large 'disobediences'.
Disobedience caused the fall of Satan and it was the deadly sin of Adam and Eve. Obedience was the painful path Jesus took to redeem us.
Reflect on Acts 5:32* and then ask ourselves: When are we priests going to stop the 'talk' and admit that the shortage of vocations is to a very large extent our fault - that we just don't deserve them?
*[And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.]
