Father McFarlane, welcome back for another fun episode of vocations talk.

Thanks, Andrew.

Happy to be here.

It's like car talk, except spiritual.

We're not saying to callers either.

No, that's fair.

My vocation is making this noise.

And we don't really have annoxious East Coast accents we could try no we

don't I have a little bit a little bit it's not too bad thanks all right so episode four

we are talking about we're calling this episode at least in theory as we're starting this

we're calling this the, at least in theory as we're starting this, we're calling this the toxic culture of deciding on a state in life. What makes this toxic? What is it about

this whole process that you think is toxic, father, and that you'd like to correct?

What's toxic about it is that the whole mentality is

wrong as we've mentioned numerous times in the course of this. But what should be a process

of making a decision becomes a process of trying to figure something out that we can't figure out.

And so, as you said, there's all sorts of bad advice and ridiculous things

that people say that oftentimes end up preventing someone who is perfectly qualified from pursuing

the priest that or religious life. And that, you know, that we, you know, toxic is a good word in that

sense and that we sort of poison the the

possibility of of this person giving himself completely to to God in the state of consecrated

life okay well we are going to go through some of your more contested ideas or ideas that you don't like a little bit later on

here in this episode.

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