Coming up, we were able to catch up with Father Richard McNeely, director of the Office of Vocations for a brief interview in the midst of all of his travels and work promoting vocations, visiting seminarians, helping with discernment, and more. Welcome to Around the Archdiocese. Sharing information, insights, and stories about our Catholic faith from across the Archdiocese of Galveston, Houston. You're listening to Around the Archdiocese.
Here's your host, Sean O'Driscoll. Hello and welcome. My name is Sean O'Driscoll. I'm blessed to serve as the Senior Communications Manager here for the Archdiocese and serve as the host of this program.
And now, this is an episode that we wish we could have done several weeks ago back when it was National Vocations Awareness Week. But this guy is so hard to pin down with his schedule. In fact, this is going to be a shorter episode because you don't have a lot of time today. You're constantly on the move.
And I'm speaking, of course, with my colleague, Father Richard McNeely, director of the Office of Vocations for the Archdiocese of Galveston, Houston. Father, welcome. Thank you, Sean. Hi, everybody.
Thanks for spending time with us today. Yeah, it's good to be here. It probably was my fault that this is a little late because I was out of town on National Vocation Awareness Week, so we'll do this podcast. Okay, but you were out of town because, well, you're in position as the director encompasses quite a lot, if I understand correctly.
What does a typical day look like? Or let me back up, is there a typical day in the life of a Vocations director? Yeah, there's probably not. And it's good to point out that I am not just the director of the Vocations office, but I'm also the director of seminarians.
So I spend a lot of time visiting seminarians. Managing is probably not the right word. Sometimes I refer to myself as like their manager in kind of like a baseball kind of way. But I'm, you know, support from somebody who follows up with them and kind of checks in on them, seeing as how they're doing.
We get an annual report from their seminaries. And not everybody's at St. I think that's what confuses people. I think that is confusing because we hear, well, there's a seminarian, but he's not over at St.
Mary. He's not here in town. So how is he still a seminarian for our diocese? Yeah.
So seminaries are like schools and we can send them out to various schools or seminaries. One of the things that's probably helpful to know is that the St. Mary's seminary only handles what we now call configuration stage, which is where they learn their theology. It's kind of like the graduate level of seminary.
It's the seminary they go to before they get ordained, but it's not the seminary they usually start at. And guys can start there if they've already met a lot of prerequisites and done a lot of work already. So this would be like a background in philosophy, basic theology before they are able to get to as you, that analogy of a graduate level study. Yeah, that's correct.
Although we don't want to conflate all of what we do to just the academics, but it's definitely a part of it. So if you don't have a college degree, you can't go to St. Mary's yet. You really have to go somewhere else.
But there's a lot of other work that they do in training the man how to pray and some of the basic rhythms and habits that a seminary needs. They do that work at the, at these other seminaries. We send the six seminaries in total, including St. Mary's.
Wow. Yeah, I was out of town. I think the week before I was in Dallas, there's a seminary called Holy Trinity Seminary there at the University of Dallas. And then there's another seminary that we're sending to in Conception, Missouri.
It's part of a monastery, Conception Abbey. And yeah. So I was in Missouri in rural Missouri in Conception Abbey at their seminary when we had National Vocational Awareness Week. So you're managing all the seminarians on top of if someone is curious about or says they feel a call towards the priesthood or religious life, that's also under your purview as well.
Yeah. So we really were an office, we liked to say office of vocational discernment. We're an office that really tries to accompany young people from kind of early stages of thinking about their vocation. And for men called to Dass and priesthood, we're going to accompany you all the way to ordination.
So I mean, the vocations office has been walking with some guys who are called to Dass and priesthood for like, I don't know, 12 years by the time they get everything. Yeah. So we really, you know, that's kind of one of the joys of being a vocation director. Some of these guys, I really get to know well because I've, well, as long as I've been in this office of vocations, they've been in seminary or I've known them, you know, because I reached out to them or they reached out to me in like 2018 when I started and now they're in seminary.
And we're still, you know, in communication, talking about their faith, talking about their growth and trying to talk about how God is really calling them to be that holy priest. So it's a lot of fun in that sense. I get to know some people really well. And you get to accompany them on that journey, which to have that continuity, you know, you become kind of that, that physical embodiment of that, of that, that dedication, that promise, you know, that God will always be there with us, that the church will be there with us.
You become that living embodiment for these men as they go through this. Yeah. I am the representative of the church. And in those cases, really what we say on the representative of the bishop or with Cardinal Denardo in those cases.
So he also is somebody who follows, you know, the seminarians progress through reading these reports and things like that. But at the end of the day, you know, he'll delegate a lot of that. Very grateful for his delegation. A lot of that falls to my responsibility.
And I kind of report things to him. So we both look at these seminarians, but I'm probably the one who's going to meet these seminarians annually or sem, what's twice a year semiannually and things like that and take care of them during the summers so that we take that off of all the many responsibilities that card knows. When you talk about this process in this journey, I'm curious about your own journey and how you came to the priesthood. Is this something you always wanted or always thought about?
I mean, we hear stories from some priests where, well, I remember playing priest when I was young and my mother made me, you know, little vestments and I would, you know, act along all the motions that the priest was doing on the altar. And yeah, I hear others who were, well, no, I hated CCE. I didn't like going to Mass, but in both ways, God ended up calling them to the same vocation. What was your journey like?
So we, in the vocations office, we really do walk with people from the initial stages of that journey and for everybody who, you know, wants to be a priest or a sister, at some point there was a moment where they had to want to follow Christ, where they have to be a disciple. And so that's kind of where we pick people up. Men and women who are disciples trying to follow the Lord. We have a lot of resources in the vocation office to try to reach them and help them further that journey of discipleship.
And so for me, I didn't start discipleship until I was much older. I guess somehow it's funny that I went to Catholic schools for all my life and things like that. But I guess I never really took my faith seriously until I was in college. And I started to have like stirrings of like real desires to commit my life to Jesus.
And a lot of that was in response to graces and just experiences of God's love that, yeah, I'll treasure for the rest of my life. I remember once it was really like a good Friday where we had a new pastor, Father John Wire, was reading out of the diary of St. Faustina. And I heard Jesus tell me that he loved me so clearly.
I was crying in church uncontrollably. Like I am embarrassed, usually to cry. Certainly I was as a teenager. I guess I might have been 21 at that time.
Still embarrassed. And just, yeah, I was so moved by the love of God. I think that's where my discipleship journey really started to take place. I had been taking my faith a little more seriously in college because I had some good friends who were trying to live their faith and they challenged me a lot.
And I went to a Catholic college. And so there were some great classes. I was a philosophy major, along with business and some of those philosophy classes really challenged me to think about deep questions in life. Like, what is happiness?
What is the meaning of life? Who is God? How can I know he's real? And how can I, you know, what is my goal and how can I achieve it?
So I guess those things all kind of set me up for this conversion experience, a conversion of heart. And from that time on, I really tried to live my life in a way that was like, I want God in my life and I want to follow Jesus. I want to know him. And I spent a lot of time doing that so much.
Like I remember after that conversion experience, I was the kind of guy who would get people to pray the chapel at three o'clock. And also I read St. Paul's Dairee more than I read my textbooks. And so it didn't go well at finals time.
I was kind of overboard. But it all evened out. And I think at that point in my life, I started to really think about what is God asking me to do? What can I do for God?
Because I know how much he loves me now and I want to love him back. And it wasn't until that point that I really began to ask those questions. So I recognize that people are in a lot of different points in their faith. It is kind of a journey.
Hopefully it ends in heaven, not hell. But from the moment of baptism, those people are called to holiness, to God, to union with God. But they're also called and given a mission. And I guess that's the thing.
It's like they won't begin to really receive that mission until they've reached some of those prerequisites. They've got an open heart. They've started to follow the Lord. And those are the people we work with now.
And it's kind of a joy because I guess I get to work with people who are on fire for the love of God, just like I was in college and are looking to find out what is God want me to do, what can I do for him? Yeah. Talk about that question. What does God want me to do?
We've thrown out the word discernment several times now in our discussion. And I think so many people aren't quite sure what the actual definition is. I think, secularly, we get this idea that discerning is kind of, okay, I say a prayer and say, God, what do you want me to do? And that it's just a simple, well, I felt in my heart, I should be a priest.
So I guess I'm supposed to become a priest. But my understanding is it's more of a process, not really a moment. Yeah, it shouldn't be a moment. I mean, I try to tell people who are thinking about priesthood, you can't be a priest in a year.
I mean, like four years, like it takes a long time. And that's built in by the church because we don't want somebody making a quick decision about being a priest because we know that commitment won't be there. That needs to develop and it just takes a long time to do so. So, you know, if you're going to equip and train somebody to be like a leader in the faith, they've got to have pretty strong faith.
A lot of guys probably are afraid of priesthood for that reason. They're thinking like, man, I can't do this. Well, you can't now, but after seven or nine years of training, you probably can because God can work on a soul and in that way. Anyway, I guess, I don't know if I answered your question there.
I kind of listened. I was discerning your response. Yeah, but to say something about discernment, you know, we've actually tried to start to use the word discover. I haven't changed my language because I'm still using the word discernment.
But we want to put it out there that really discernment is discovery of your mission. And you're right that discovery, you know, it's not a one time thing. It's something that I think people don't even realize, but it happens in the seminary. Really, like that's why we put you in a program for that long is that, you know, guys who go to seminary pretty convinced that they're called, but they need to further discern that as they discover more about who God is, who they are and things like that.
But discovery starts again with that turn to discipleship. Like I want to follow the Lord and it needs some prerequisites. You have to have an open heart and you have to have that attitude of like, I want to do what God wants. Not everybody has that.
You probably also need a prayer life. You need some silence in your prayer life that prayer life needs to be committed. You know, we don't find guys who are or women for that matter who are called to religious life or priesthood who, you know, go to a Sunday Mass once a month, who pray before meals only, you know, that's not the stage of people who want to connect their life to Jesus. Because they're going to go to from that to multiple daily masses and, you know, hours of time.
Just give them the multi-volume brief read. That's why they're out there head-spin. That's right. Figure out these ribbons.
I guess that's something I wanted to ask about as well. I know you're also, your office also deals with women who are discerning religious life. How is that process different in discernment or is there a difference in that discernment across us from men and women? I think it's a lot.
It's very similar. You know, the one thing from our perspective as people who are trying to guide and accompany, we can't accompany women as far because we don't have a dastasis in seminary for one. We don't have like a convent. So in that case, you know, we try to help women hear that call to dedicate their lives to the Lord, to consecrate themselves.
But then in what community or what capacity we don't really have a say in that. We have the same as, you know, if somebody wanted to get married, at some point they need to start dating somebody. They need to find the other person and discern that with them. Being married myself, I found dating help quite a lot.
I mean, Sean, you would never say like, you know, I prayed in a room for eight hours. I've discovered my college marriage and now I'm done. No, you need to go find the person you're going to get married to. And then they need to agree to this.
Like it's not a, okay, God has shown me all these signs. I'm called to marry this person. That's great. But he needs to tell them the same thing or you're not getting married.
It's kind of like that in, you know, any other version of consecrated life or priesthood with diasim priest, you discern, you know, with help of the cardinal here and myself and the admissions board and the seminaries. When you're entering or thinking about religious life, you have to discern with the community. And so I think that's where we don't really have the next steps for the young women who are thinking about committing themselves to Jesus. Well, it's like, well, now we need to find you a community, but I don't do that finding you do.
And there's somebody out there, you know, I can't really walk you through that process. There's some initial guidance that we can give, but otherwise I think that's where we kind of say prayers for the woman and goodbye. And they walk that part with somebody else. I think helping someone male or female to discern, you know, their gifts, their talents, where God has given them, you know, those opportunities that kind of match up with the carerisms of a particular order or particular ministry, whether that's dalasasasin or, or whatever, I think there's a real opportunity within there that your office kind of takes a moment to not necessarily point them to where they should be, but tell them a sess, you know, or sort of if you're here at A, maybe B is the next place you should be going.
Yeah, we don't want to, I mean, I don't want to make it sound like we don't have any, you know, guidance for women in that way. We try to tell them, you know, how to listen to the voice of God. And then from there, we point them in the right direction. We don't just say like, good luck, you know.
Now if someone was interested and felt like, okay, well, maybe God is calling me to the priesthood or religious life, how would they, like, what would be the first step for them? Do they go? Do they call you? Do they priest?
Do they find, you know, whoever the vocation sort of lay representatives in their parish? How do they get started on that process? I think they can reach out to our office. We have a website, we have email.
They can follow us on social media and things like that. But really communication would be great. We don't have an overwhelming amount of requests for guidance. It's true that we can't guide somebody for six months.
I mean, that, you know, we couldn't have, we just don't have the resources to be able to do this long term for a lot of people. But in terms of like, look, one email and one conversation might be enough for us to point you in the right direction and say like, okay, I think it would be good if you got more involved in your parish or this spiritual director is really good. Work with them. Or here's a great retreat for you.
Like we usually, actually, this is our thing in the office. We just try to point out the next step. We just need you to take the next step. We don't need you to make decisions usually or like sign up on the dotted line.
Just take the next step. You have had a variety of ministry opportunities within the diocese of different parishes and doing different things. What is it about vocation's ministry in your role now? What is it for you that you find just edifying and rewarding?
Like I said, working with seminarians, watching them through that process has been really beautiful. I mean, when I go to ordination, I know how much went into that moment. How much suffering on the part of the man, how much waiting, how much change, how much grace. And so those are really beautiful moments having worked with this man.
And then finally being able to see him receive that gift from the Lord is a tremendous joy. I think there are other joys. I really enjoy working with the young church. I like to say, and maybe this is a topic for some other time, like there are some things I see that I think most people don't get to see.
I know there are a lot of people out there who worry about the church, maybe a generation above me like baby boomers or jenaxers. Sometimes I hear them talk about vocation's or the church, and there's a lot of crisis and urgency in their language. But when I look at the young church, I don't see that. I don't see a lot of room for fear or reasons to worry.
I know that people are like, hey, my son and daughter doesn't practice the fades. But what I see, because if I work with, are these young people who are alive with the Holy Spirit and well into their faith, who will change the world? Because you don't need that many grains of salt to flavor something to season it. And there's just so much out there.
Sometimes I go, like I was at the University of Texas yesterday, walking around to their student center in the campus. Did you bother Jonathan? Yeah. That's originally from Houston.
And that is correct. And in fact, I actually did part of my undergrad within UT years ago. But he's doing great stuff out there at the Catholic Center. Yes.
And it's true that not every student is on fire. And there are a lot of reasons, like if you go to that school, you know, you could lose your faith. But there's also this bastion of like discipleship right on the edge of the bell tower of campus here. And it's just reasons to really hope.
Certainly the same could be said of like Texas A&M. And a lot of, you know, these colleges like UST and things in our own Houston area, there's just a lot of hope. I think these schools where young people are kind of nurtured are now areas where you could grow in faith. Whereas they probably weren't, you know, 10 or 20 years ago.
And things like that just make me really hopeful that like, I don't care what trials are going to come. They're not going to be able to stamp out, you know, God's movement in the young people. Last question. I know you have to go.
But for the average person just listening, maybe they personally don't feel a call to priesthood or religious life. Maybe they're already married with children. What can they do? What's one or two simple things they can do to promote vocations?
Sure. One is to pray. So we, I know that sounds, I want to use the word, like it sounds pretty common. It sounds pretty mediocre or menial.
It almost sounds like it's too simple and too easy. Yeah. Where we all need to start and sometimes stay prayer. It really is, I mean, communion with God, beseeching God for things.
That's where it starts. And that's where it finishes. God is going to be the one who raises up people to the priesthood. I don't get people, their vocations.
I don't call them. God does. So I really want to ask people to pray for this. Certainly their support in other ways is welcomed.
I mean, we do run off of things like the DSF or the Corpus Christi collection. We're very grateful for all of our benefactors, including like the Scanlan Foundation who helps us out so much. And there are probably some volunteer opportunities to be honest that, you know, as a parish, once a parish priest, I knew that so many of the parishioners ran things. And here in the Chansery department, we don't have people who run things other than the paid employees.
And we're not enough. Like we just can't do this alone. So there are parish vocation committees. There are other opportunities to serve and they could contact our office asking us, hey, how can I serve?
We'd love for people to collaborate with. And a lot of information is available on the website, which is HoustonVocations.com. HoustonVocations.com. And you can also follow Houston Vocations on social media to keep up to date on upcoming events, ways that you can get involved, prayers, highlights of some of our seminarians who are scattered throughout the six seminaries preparing God willing for the priesthood, reminding everyone that's not only a discernment for them, but a discernment for Cardinal and for the Diocese as well.
So we just ask for prayers all around. Father, thank you so much for spending some time with us. Thank you, Sean. It's been a pleasure.
Really appreciate it. And as always, if you want to learn more about the ministries and offices of the Archdiocese, you can find us online at archgh.org. That's A-R-C-H-G-H.org. Thanks for listening.
We'll see you next time here on Around the Archdiocese. Thank you. See you next time. Bye.
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