“Quem queris? Whom do you seek?” No words pierce more deeply than those of Christ, spoken personally and uniquely to each soul, but in our noisy streets and noisy minds, it’s easy not to hear or notice. It is not as though Christ climbs a stage amid flag-waving fanfare, picks up a microphone, and calls to us in a rich, sonorous voice. It’s not as though his speech is projected on a jumbo-tron and recorded on YouTube. Christ may not directly address us this way–but, as the participants at the recent St. Jospeph’s Seminary youth rally know, Pope Benedict XVI does:

Have courage! You too can make your life a gift of self for the love of the Lord Jesus and, in him, of every member of the human family. Friends, again I ask you, what about today? What are you seeking? What is God whispering to you? The hope which never disappoints is Jesus Christ. The saints show us the selfless love of his way. As disciples of Christ, their extraordinary journeys unfolded within the community of hope, which is the Church. It is from within the Church that you too will find the courage and support to walk the way of the Lord. Nourished by personal prayer, prompted in silence, shaped by the Church’s liturgy, you will discover the particular vocation God has for you. Embrace it with joy. You are Christ’s disciples today. Shine his light upon this great city and beyond.

The youth–some twenty-five thousand students, young professionals, seminarians, and religious–crowded around the electric-blue stage in rapt attention. “Have we perhaps lost something of the art of listening?” the pope asked, and no doubt the answer is yes. But that afternoon, no matter about claustrophobic crowds and beating sun and a five-hours’ wait. They were listening, and listening eagerly. “Do you leave space to hear God’s whisper, calling you forth into goodness?” the pope gently prodded. “What about today?”

What indeed about today? Judging from the response Fr. Luke Sweeney, Vocations Director for the New York Archdiocese, has received, the pope’s message has had rapid effect. As the New York Daily News reported, within just three days he’d received dozens of queries and application requests, a seminarian tsunami after an unprecedented drought:

For the first time in 108 years, St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers was preparing for a year with no new students. But, after the Holy Father’s whirlwind city tour, dozens have heard the call. “It’s been like a tsunami, a good tsunami of interest,” said the archdiocese’s vocations director, the Rev. Luke Sweeney. “I’ve been meeting people all week and have a lot of e-mails I haven’t had the chance yet to respond to. It has been incredible. . . . One said he came, saw the crowd, heard what the Pope said and then called us,” said Sweeney. “He said his questions and concerns were answered when he heard him speak.”

“The world needs heroes,” Fr. Sweeney tells young men; “You have to be a real man if you want to become a priest.” The response to his challenge–the pope’s challenge–Christ’s challenge–certainly gives the Church reason to hope. Reason to hope, and reason to pray for the future fathers and shepherds of the Faith.

The blogosphere and op/ed pages have been abuzz the past few days discussing Obama and the Catholics, especially after Hilary Clinton took 70% of the Catholic voters in the Pennsylvania Democratic Primary. One of the key issues that has come up again and again has been abortion, on the assumption that abortion is a Catholic issue.

Well. What about Obama and the atheists—-the pro-life atheists? Consider the recent Washington Times op/ed (which has gone surprisingly unnoticed in the blogosphere) by Nat Hentoff (who, you’ll remember, wrote for us on the 2008 election here).

Here’s a taste of the Hentoff column:

My initial inclination to support Sen. Barack Obama’s road to the White House came from his work as a Chicago community organizer and his record in the Illinois legislature. He actually worked to rescue school dropouts from a lifetime dead end as well as provide job training for the unemployed. Later, in the Illinois state Senate, he was able to get a law passed requiring police to electronically record interrogations and confessions in homicide cases. But my view of him changed as I learned his record on abortion.

I am a nonreligious pro-lifer, my only religion being the Constitution. And I am not a single-issue voter, having often supported candidates who are pro-choice because I knew their civil liberties and civil-rights records. For one example, I was a great admirer of the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. (New York, where I live, has had no senators of his quality and principles since.) Although Mr. Moynihan was pro-abortion, he strongly opposed partial-birth abortion, which he described as “only minutes away from infanticide,” since the fetus (whom I regard as a human being) was already clearly among us.

I oppose extremists on all sides of issues, having, for instance, argued for hours with and against some so-called pro-lifers who considered part of their mission to commit violence, even homicide, where abortions were performed.

I admire much of Mr. Obama’s record, including what he wrote in “The Audacity of Hope” about the Founders’ “rejection of all forms of absolute authority, whether the king, the theocrat, the general, the oligarch, the dictator, the majority… George Washington declined the crown because of this impulse.” But on abortion, Mr. Obama is an extremist. He has opposed the Supreme Court decision that finally upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act against that form of infanticide. Most startlingly, for a professed humanist, Mr. Obama in the Illinois Senate also voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. I have reported on several of those cases, when, before the abortion was completed, an alive infant was suddenly in the room. It was disposed of as a horrified nurse who was not necessarily pro-life followed the doctors’ orders to put the baby in a pail or otherwise get rid of the child. (emphasis added)