The Eleventh Hour

...He would be a confident prophet who would presume to answer this question by either yes or no...

...In France, within the last few weeks, the cause for beatification of Pere de Foucauld, the soldier-priest and martyr missionary of the Sahara, has been officially opened through a message by the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris...

...Nevertheless, the tale of late vocations has its own edifying place...

...Joseph, Missouri, revives the interest expressed from time to time on the subject of what are known as "late vocations...

...The experience of life carried over by such aspirants cannot but be helpful in the final effort of their life service, and it is to be hoped the story of Father Dempsey is significant of a welcome that awaits the aspirants, tried and not found wanting, who have ripened their characters in the outer world and who submit the harvesting at our seminary gates...

...After the completion of his military service, he became connected with the fire department, and later, the police department, of St...

...A few months ago, in chronicling the death of Padre Fosco of the Dominican Order in Rome, The Commonweal had occasion to refer to an even more extraordinary instance of a late vocation...

...Will it, as life grows more complex and as the nostalgia for simpler and holier values so noticeable in the contemporary world keeps pace with its complexity and godlessness, become a more and more common story...

...On coming to America, he entered the United States army, retiring with the rank of captain...

...The mere outline of such a career offers interesting suggestions to many men in mature life, persuaded of a religious calling, yet deterred by the consciousness of advancing years from entering a religious seminary...

...Father Dempsey began his studies more than thirty years ago at Carlow College, Ireland...

...In England, France and Italy, the story of belated and even "eleventh-hour" vocations would fill a weighty volume, and it is noticeable that many of them have a military or naval background...

...M. A. Boucher, a well-known French writer, says of him in a recent issue of La Vie Catholique: "The reputation for sanctity of 'the Hermit of the Sahara' is by now world-wide...

...Although the call to Foucauld did not come quite as late in life as in other instances we have mentioned, it came under dramatic circumstances which his heroic death later intensified...

...The most indifferent and sceptical are struck by the contrast offered in the life of a brilliant soldier, worldly and amusement-loving for years, who became a positive model of ardent faith and almost superhuman austerity...

...Padre Fosco did not enter a seminary until retired from the army upon age limit and with the rank of general...

...There is little danger that these late and picturesque vocations will ever be anything but an exception in the Church, or that the traditional path to Holy Orders— early piety, love of the altar and what might be called a happy instinct in youth of the supreme importance of things eternal—will ever be superseded as a motive for entering the priesthood...

...Father Casgrain's attainments and knowledge of languages marked him out for high and responsible employment, and he finished the war as a member of the General Staff at the British War Office, covered with decorations of Popes and foreign governments as well as medals won on the field...

...It is an interesting fact not without its bearing upon the whole question of late calls to the priesthood, that the ministry of the venerable Dominican was spent "largely in the confessional...

...In Montreal there is one very distinguished example in the person of the Reverend Philippe Duperron Casgrain, born of an old family of Quebec, who retired after long service in the dominion and imperial forces, which had included several periods of active service in the field, and who reentered military life after his ordination in Rome in 1911 at the age of forty-seven, as chaplain to the forces...

...Not only is Father Casgrain's story a remarkable record of service under the banners of both world and cross, but he is highly esteemed in his diocese and the religious world at large as the author of the Examen Conscientiae, the Examen Baptismi et Matrimoniae, and other works of authority...

...Louis...

...At the end of a long, honorable career of civic service, he entered Saint Thomas Seminary in Denver, and has finally fulfilled the wish of his heart...

...His belated studies were made with the Benedictines of Sant' Ambrogio, and we are told by a lifelong friend that "It was a moving sight to see this man, already old, seated among youthful aspirants to the sanctuary to whom his rank and career were unknown...

...There is something in the picture of this brilliant and worldly French cavalry officer, stricken with grace almost as suddenly as Saul of Tarsus, and perhaps, like him, in the saddle, and devoting to the service of God, with a simpleness of heart that saw no discrepancy in the sudden shift of loyalties, the fighting temperament and soldierly habits that had made him one of the most promising leaders in France's colonial forces...