As grim news continues to emanate from other parts of the country, it’s good to focus on positive developments. Bishop Paul S. Loverde is preparing to ordain one man to the diaconate on June 1 and four men to the diocesan priesthood on June 8, both at the Cathedral of St. Thomas More in Arlington.

The following unsigned editorial appeared in a recent issue of The Catholic Register, a Toronto-based Canadian Catholic newspaper.

In recent weeks North Americans have seen a face of the Catholic Church that they've come to associate with all of us. It is one of priests in handcuffs, dragged off to jail by police. Or it is a face of a distraught bishop trying to explain past mistakes and sharing the pain of his flock.

But this is not the true face of the church. It is but one facet of our all-too-human nature -- our fallen nature. Yet the scandal of sexual abuse that has once again preoccupied the media across Canada and the United States -- and finally capturing the attention of the Vatican -- presents a wildly distorted image of who we are.

There was another face of the church present in Montreal April 18-21. It was the collective face of more than 1,100 Catholics from across our two countries who came together to confront the crisis of religious vocations and do something serious about it during the Third Continental Congress on Vocations. It was also a host of individual faces: for instance, of Melissa Noel, a 27-year-old university researcher from Spokane, Wash., who led the congress' youth delegates in describing their desire to renew and re-energize the church, and a host of others like her. These young adults shared with the others their infectious enthusiasm and optimism. They were a picture of joy that we all need to be reminded exists in spades in our church.

All the older adults who were there as well, the priests, brothers, sisters, permanent deacons and lay professionals of all types, demonstrated a side of the church that is rarely portrayed in the mainstream media. Yet it is there. Working in parishes, schools, seminaries, universities, in soup kitchens, counseling centers, hospitals, newspapers, women's shelters, hostels for the homeless, in countless ministries, there are Catholics devoted to the church, living lives of quiet integrity, seeking holiness through prayer, worship and service to their communities.

The witness of those gathered in Montreal, and of all those devoted to lives of holiness, should bring joy to us all. Passionist Father Donald Senior, president of Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, told the congress that the North American church is going through its own Passion in this Easter season. "The Easter lesson we must not forget at this time is that, paradoxically, from death can come new life," he said.

Father Senior also offered another worthy reminder for us all: "Christian vocation is inherently missionary in nature, with the transformation of the world as its purpose."

That means there is plenty of work for all. We need more priests and men and women in consecrated religious life. We need to pray for those vocations and encourage those around us whom we see are called to religious life. And we also need to fulfill the vocation created by our own baptism, that of living lives of holiness in the world, wherever we are.