Catholic "LDS-style" missions?

A Florida Catholic paper has reported that Catholic Volunteers in Florida examining the LDS Church model of missionary work for possible emulation in the Catholic Church. Soon, young Catholics will be singing, "I hope they call me on a mission". Good luck to them, but I think finding people willing to give up two years' of their life is one thing; getting them to pay for it themselves is another. Mormon missionaries are truly unique. Anyway, here are excerpts from the article: Richard Galentino has a dream - for every Catholic young adult to spend a year or two as a full-time missioner. Taking a page from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the executive director of Catholic Volunteers in Florida is on a mission to change and expand the concept of volunteerism within the Catholic Church. "When you see two men in nice white dress shirts riding on bicycles through neighborhoods - you almost always think of the Mormons," he said. "In their faith tradition every male is expected to give a couple of years to do mission work here or overseas. We'd like to see that idea fostered among young men and women in the Catholic Church." Galentino knows he and his staff have their work cut out for them but he has gained the support of the state's seven diocesan bishops to pursue the effort. The bishops recently awarded the Catholic Volunteers seed money to research the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and learn more about their missionary and volunteer concept. Galentino is in the process of selecting two or three philanthropists from Florida's Catholic community to visit the Church of the Latter-day Saints' Utah-based headquarters to conduct a feasibility study on its missionary process. Galentino said statistics on volunteering with long-term missionary programs shows that in the 1960s Mormons and Catholics were nearly even with approximately 6,000 volunteers each within their respective missionary programs. Today, the increase in volunteers among the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has reached 60,000, while the number of Catholic volunteers remains virtually the same as it did in 1960. "The problem is, right now, most Catholic volunteer groups recruit from the same pool - mostly out of college," said Galentino. "We should be planting the seed of expectation much earlier in elementary and high school so that by the time they graduate from college, long-term missionary service is virtually automatic."