You decry “ceding any territory…to the Great Adversary,” but how is that to be accomplished – send in the troops? And what troops? The drain of priests from the developing world to priest-deprived parishes in the U.S. and Europe is a problem both on the giving end (developing countries need priests even more badly than the wealthier countries that are recruiting them) and on the receiving end (priests who don’t speak the local language well and don’t understand its culture). In the past year I’ve attended Sunday masses in California led by young priests from India, the Philippines and India who couldn’t speak English well. The sermons were really awful, which wasn’t their fault really. And I couldn’t help but wonder how their home dioceses felt about their coming to the U.S. to minister. They have too many priests in India, the Philippines and Vietnam? Do affluent parishes in the U.S. need them more? That’s hard to believe.
Many European countries have empty churches and few vocations to the priesthood and religious life, a problem that predated the clergy sex abuse scandals. The Catholic message just isn’t attractive to young people in affluent countries, where the Church is concentrating its resources. Christ’s message has its greatest appeal among the truly poor in India, Africa, etc. While the clergy sex abuse scandal has certainly had a tremendous impact on vocations, the erosion in vocations in Ireland probably had more to do with economic improvement than anything else.
I don’t have any ready solutions, but I don’t think rants about secularism, homosexuality and abortion have any real bearing on the problem. The fact is that the gospel has always been welcomed most by the poor. To my mind the Church should refocus its efforts on the developing world. My heart goes out to the Irish, who are suffering right now. But the vocation crisis there, and here, and in Europe, is a function of affluence more than sexual sin and abysmal leadership.
