Dear Friends,
The show did call to mind the pressures I was under by my dad to become a priest - because he was in the seminary and then left.
(He often jokingly said he loved the "meditation periods" in the seminary - he used those to figure out ways to leave as soon as possible
).
The problem with having such pressure exerted is that it negatively impacts a person who would understand any decision to become a priest (or a deacon) to please his parents as doing so for the wrong reason.
And he would be correct.
Also, to become a deacon is not all that far removed from being a priest in the sense that a deacon's spouse has to consider that she would become a kind of public person in the parish, the fact that her husband's time is not always his own etc.
How do our Deacons here find the situation?
Alex
