#12667 Can God Force You to Be a Priest? Vocation and Discernment - Fr. Marc Gandolfo

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Catholic Answers

Christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 9 April 2026

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“Can God force you to be a priest?” This question opens a discussion on vocation and discernment, addressing the complexities of divine calling. Other topics include how individuals can establish their own religious orders, the challenges of pursuing a diaconate while managing military commitments, and the implications of missing one’s vocation.

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Questions Covered:

03:20 – Can God force me to be a priest?
10:48 – If someone has a call to religious life, how do people go about creating their own convents and religious orders?
16:20 – I feel a call to the diaconate. I’m military and the classes conflict with my time. How much effort should I put into doing this? Should I talk to my bishop about it?
20:42 – What if you miss your vocation?
25:12 – What is a vocation?
29:19 – I feel a call to disciple others but am having a hard time figuring out what that looks like. What advice do you have?
35:30 – I’m a revert and am 37. Is it too late for me to discern a vocation?
40:10 – If a person who never marries or becomes a priest can have an equally fulfilling life, aren’t they missing something?
43:35 – Why do seminaries require so much education for people to just be priests and not bishops?
46:40 – What is the ministry of acolyte? Is it just an adult altar boy or is it deeper than that?
49:23 – I am a dedicated single man and find my life very fulfilling.
51:35 – I’m Protestant. Why is celibacy a requisite for the priesthood?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Buying or selling your home, real estate for life can connect you with a pro-life real estate agent.
0:05.2	When Real Estate for Life receives a referral fee, they donate 65% to Catholic Answers.
0:11.5	Learn more at realestateforlife.org. Hello and welcome to Catholic Answers live and happy Easter to you. I hope your
0:35.0	your octave of Easter, your Easter week is going very, very well.
0:39.4	And how much we have to celebrate this week.
0:42.3	This is a joyful week.
0:43.8	It's all one big celebration, this octave of Easter.
0:48.2	And thank you for spending some of it with us.
0:51.7	First hour, our good friend, Father Mark Condolfo is here. He is the director
0:56.4	of vocations here, the vocations director here in the diocese of San Diego, and we're going to
1:02.6	talk about vocations. If you are a person who thinks, perhaps I have a vocation, you are,
1:08.6	we love it if you would call, but if you've got a question about a member
1:12.4	of the family, if you've got a general question about the theology of vocations or whatever,
1:18.6	if you've got a vocation question, you're welcome to call 8883187-884, triple-8-3187-884.
1:27.2	Father Gandalfel, thank you very much for being here. Thanks, Cy. It's great to be back. I'm excited. And during the octave of Easter, no less, what a great time to be here. Well, now, is this like a, we always know Holy Week is like the great, don't ask a priest to do anything in Holy Week. Sure, sure. But we asked you, we didn't give you very much of a break. Is that okay? Oh, no, it's
1:44.9	fine. It's fine. It's not a big deal. My Holy Week was a little weird for me this year because I'm not out of parish. So I'm doing vocation work full time. So Holy Week is a little different. Do you get asked by the other priest though to come do their communion, not communion, are their penance services?
2:01.1	Oh, yes. Penance services are big during Lent. There's so many, so many. Yeah. Yeah. And everybody wants to go to the priest that's not their priest, not everybody, but... Most people. A lot of people are like, hey, I don't know that guy. Yeah, exactly. So you're meeting a lot of new people before Christmas, I mean before Easter.
2:17.6	Yeah.
2:17.9	There's a priest that I know who is both. Yeah, exactly. So you're meeting a lot of new people before Christmas, I mean before Easter.
2:17.7	Yeah.
2:24.3	There's a priest that I know who is both blind and he's blind.
2:26.2	And so everyone wants to go to confession to him.
	...

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