Two Reactions - Which Is More Vocation Friendly?

My 5-yr. old has been saying for almost a year now that he wants to be a priest.  When he told our pastor this a few weeks ago, Father just laughed and said something to the effect of "well, there's a long way to go before that can happen."  Today, my little extrovert asked when he could go talk to our former, now retired, pastor who had come over for a daily Mass.  I said go ahead and talk to him now.  So he went up to him and said "I want to be a priest."  Leaning down toward my son, Father said (cue Irish accent) "Well, that's great!!  I can't keep doing this forever!" 

Now which do you suppose is more vocation friendly?  Our current pastor does not encourage vocations at all.  One of our parishioner feels called to the diaconate, and I heard him ask Father about this.  Again, all I heard from Father was the "there's a long way to go before that can happen" talk.  He seems to only see the difficulties, and not the beauty; the long road, and not the passion.  I wonder if this has more to say about him than about anything else.  He seems to be a nice man, but we have no encouragement for vocations, no encouragement to go to confession, no discussion on sin or hell or even heaven.  The handful of times our retired Pastor has come over, I think every time he has mentioned confession, today mentioning the fact that God is always willing to give us another chance but there will come a day when we have no more chances - so be ready, and go to confession!  We have heard of the seven deadly sins, the corporal works of mercy, lots of good history, the occasional recitation of Shakespeare - all from this wonderful, old, Irish priest.

And at night when he says his prayers, my son always asks God to bless our retired, Irish Father.