Vocational crisis and educational crisis

30. Often in our Churches the objectives and even the basic strategy are clear, but the necessary steps for awakening an openness to vocation in our young people remain somewhat undefined; and this because today, more than before, the educational system is weak, both within and outwith the Church: that system which, together with the definition of the objective to be attained, must also provide the pedagogical paths leading there. With its usual realism, the Instrumentum laboris also says this: "In fact, we note the weakness of many pedagogical bodies (groups, communities, oratories, schools and, above all, families)".(⁹⁵) The vocations crisis is certainly also a crisis of pedagogy and of educational programmes.

We will seek then, always beginning from the Word of God, to highlight precisely this convergence between goal and method, in the conviction that a good theology can normally be translated into practice, become a pedagogy, can outline routes, with the sincere desire to provide the various pastoral workers with an aid, an instrument useful to all.