(RNS) — Tuan Anh Nguyen’s journey to religious life began with a stint as a youth minister, a proposed bargain with God and a (possibly) divine sign in a video game.
Though wagering a vocation on his mad video game skills is a little unusual, the data suggests Nguyen is increasingly typical of aspiring Catholic religious in other ways: ethnically diverse, educated and influenced by positive experiences in Catholic youth or campus ministry.
This changing class of Generation Z and millennial aspirants like Nguyen is prompting religious communities — often anchored in decades if not centuries of tradition — to rethink what it means to mentor and walk alongside these young men as they discern their calling.
The fact that those considering religious vocations are more diverse reflects changes in the U.S. Catholic population itself, according to the Rev. Thomas Gaunt, executive director of Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. More than a quarter of U.S. Catholics are now foreign-born, he said, a change that has been gradually occurring since the 1970s. “We’re not always cognizant, day to day, of how notable that change has been.”
The son of Vietnamese immigrants, Nguyen, who goes by “TA,” had originally planned on being a doctor, pursuing a pre-med curriculum in college. He even went so far as to take the Medical College Admission Test.
But his experience in youth ministry in his home parish, as well as working side by side with a Jesuit on a young adult retreat post-college, and a growing attraction to Ignatian spirituality caused him to wonder if he was on the right path.
Looking back, he thinks a seed was planted then, said Nguyen, a cradle Catholic. Since then, that sense of dissonance and a longing for something more have only grown.
Several years later, while attending a prayer vigil for a friend who had become seriously ill while teaching overseas, Nguyen said, he tried to make a bargain with God.
“God, if he survives, I will consider becoming a priest,” he recalls thinking.
His friend, who had been in a coma, awoke the next day.
Just a coincidence, decided Nguyen. But the idea of becoming a priest stuck with him.
A few months after his prayer vigil experience, he was in his room with the same friend, safely returned home. While playing the video game Counter-Strike, he found himself in a map called Monastery.
