I can't stop watching these Occupy videos. It's like some kind of circus sideshow. But after awhile, I started thinking...could all of these people have missed religious vocations?
I don't like the idea of missed vocations. I prefer to think that if God's calling you, He's going to get you at some point. Maybe the idea that a person would perpetually reject a bona fide call just seems too sad to me. We have free will, sure...but I'd like to think people would eventually choose the right vocation.
Looking at the Occupy protestors, though, is sobering.
The group seems quite heterogenous...so the following generalizations will have exceptions...but the narrative seems to suggest that these are people who think:
1) people shouldn't pursue private property
2) people should sacrifice their lives to help others
3) people should submit their individual wills to a superior collective, a common good
4) there is a higher moral law
5) that pursuing this higher moral law is worth abandoning all of your personal belongings and living with the poor
6) that people with wealth should donate money to the people without wealth so that the latter can live unburdened lives in pursuit of this higher morality
So...how is this not compatible with, say, a mendicant order?
If these people could just get off the drugs and the sex, they'd probably make great missionaries.
The real kicker is this -- nobody wants to just give money to a stoner-hippie-wannabe or a whiny college graduate. We don't want freeloaders. But a lot of people will gladly provide for the needs of religious because people value what the religious do even if it is just to sit in a cloister and pray (and most religious I know do more than that).
I'm not saying that every freeloader should sign up for Holy Orders just so they can get fed. We've had enough problems with people entering religious life with ulterior motives...but I wonder if convictions these people feel to live free of the bondage of personal possessions and to serve the needy might actually be the residue leftover from an even higher...and more dignified calling.
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