Career--Take 2

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, "Flocks of people in their 50s and 60s are putting aside thoughts of a comfortable retirement and heading to theological school, where they've become the fastest growing age group in recent years."

Baby boomers, Marc Freedman of Encore.org told the Journal, are "turning to careers in which meaning and purpose are front and center."

On the one hand, I have a problem with this. Medicine, law, business, investment banking, teaching, lawn care, homemaking computer programming, and any other legitimate vocation can be careers where meaning and purpose are front and center. I have friends in all these callings who find great spiritual and emotional fulfillment. And I ministers and others in the "helping professions" for whom meaning and purpose are not front and center. They're just going through the motions.

Meaning and purpose are not inherent in any vocation, but are characteristics we bring--or don't bring--to everything we do.

On the other hand, this is great news. That baby boomers are (1) getting increasingly serious about their faith and (2) putting their gifts and experience into work that will last well past "retirement age" is wonderful.

My friend Fr. Robert Cook is in the midst of just such a second career. He spent his first career as a criminal defense lawyer, seeing to it that those accused of federal crimes were treated as fairly as possible. It was a nobel and good career in which he was respected and successful. Then in his mid-fifties, he discerned a call to the priesthood, went to seminary and was ordained in 2000. He pastored a church until 2005 when he was asked to be the founding president of Wyoming Catholic College. By that time he was in his sixties. Can you imagine founding a college from the ground up in your sixties? Oh, his partner was Dr. Robert Carlson, a long-time college professor who was even older than Fr. Cook.

Now, as Fr. Cook has entered his seventies, he's stepping down as college president, but not retiring. There's more to accomplish and no one begins a second career in mid-life unless he plans to die in the saddle. More power to him and hurray that his tribe is increasing.

(N.B. In the name of full disclosure: my son, Jon, is Dean of Students at Wyoming Catholic College.)