1. Crisis in regard to vocations

Howsoever one wishes to describe the decreasing number of persons who are choosing the Consecrated Life or the Societies of the Apostolic Life, whether there are fewer vocations available to these Institutes, or whether the Institutes are not effectively attracting them or searching them out, the problem still remains. In those parts of the world where we find the "older Churches", we are witnessing a decreased number of persons who are choosing this way of life today. And this in turn has caused a certain inability on the part of the missionary Institutes and others who engage in missionary activity "ad gentes" to continue their missionary activity for the Church in "ad gentes" territories, where the Church has yet to be implanted, or where this implantation is still in its initial or very young stages and in need of rather intensive proclamation of the Good News.

This decrease in the number of those entering the missionary Institutes is complicated by the fact that the personnel who are already members of these Institutes are ageing and a growing number of their members for various reasons are returning to their native lands. This situation in turn has led to other difficulties within the life of these Institutes.

the tendency on the part of some of them to withdraw from their present apostolic activities, concentrating the forces which they still have on fewer activities or commitments in mission territories, or on using their elderly personnel in some form of missionary activity in their home countries, e.g. with immigrants coming from lands where these members were once employed (Africa or Asia for the most part at least now), or in various forms of missionary animation and cooperation. In some instances there exists a certain lessening of the members' enthusiasm to their missionary vocation "ad gentes", and their being more and more employed in ordinary pastoral activity in one or other of their dioceses of origin. Often enough this leads to an orientation of apostolic activity resulting from what Pope John Paul described as "changes occurring within the missionary field which have led them to no longer understand the meaning of their vocation and no longer know exactly what the Church expects of them today" (RM, 65). Another possible result of this decrease in numbers entering, and in the ageing of the veteran members, is the tendency of these Institutes to scatter their members in various undertakings, not all of which can be reconciled with the particular and special charisma of the Institute, thereby diminishing certain essentials of both the religious life itself as well as of the precise missionary charisms which it has received from the Holy Spirit through its founder. One can well imagine the net results of such a tendency, slow death and extinction. Still another result of the decline of persons entering Institutes from their countries of foundation, is the tendency to "import vocations" or to establish houses in mission territories exclusively for recruiting vocations in order to re-inforce the ranks of the Institute, often times for maintaining the works that have existed for decades in the land where the charisma originally took root or where it expanded to in its earliest years.
This is not the same as seeking recruits for the Institute in mission territories for forming them to continue the missionary charisma of the Institute, whether in the nations wherein these new recruits come from or in other nations in the same Continent that are still to be evangelized, or even in other Continents, where the mission "ad gentes" is still in force. One last difficulty that the CEP has encountered recently, and that is connected in some way with the decrease in vocations in missionary Institutes founded in the established Churches, is the tendency on the part of some Institutes to establish or strengthen the role of "Associate Members" or "Associates" of the Institute. In the past, where they existed, "Associates" were considered as something like Auxiliaries who assisted the Institute, mostly on the home front, in various ways, working as Secretaries, providing expert assistance in various fields to the problems faced by the Institute or engaging in various aspects of promotion.

With the decrease of vocations, these Associates began to be recruited for direct missionary activity in mission territories, after a preparation period and after having pronounced a promise to work for a given period of time. They serve in various capacities -teachers, health care personnel, directors of human promotion projects, etc. In some instances, however, they began to live and participate in community life with the members under vow or oath. Their reception as live-in members was often mixed, wanted by some and not by others. Since some of these Associates were married or single, but marriageable and of both sexes, their presence in the community houses of the Institute became a source of not a few tensions, since the distinction between the members in vows or oath and the Associate members became rather blurred even for what concerned purely internal matters of the Institute.