Catholics: What is your opinion of why we do not have enough Priests?

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amberwin

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Send your kids to Catholic Schools! Ask your parish Priest where he went to High School.
 
Few priests is a sign of bad times, and bad times are a trial for the Church, which, contrary to the opinion of men, makes the Church grow and strengthen. We have few priests because we have poor catechesis, cold love for Christ, different spirits who have entered the hearts of some to rebel against Christ and His Church (I speak of the spirits of disobedience, liturgical abuse, false mysticism, etc.), strong attacks from those who believe things contrary to the Christian Faith, and few examples of saints.

But! God is with us, a flaming pillar in the night, and He has set on fire the hearts of many souls, so that they might burn like candles on the path of faith and on the way of the Cross, leading others to Jesus, even those who profess to be of Christ yet live of the world, even those who’s love has grown cold, and even those for whom hope seems to be a lost cause. He works in secret and in plain sight, as we see His work in different parishes and events, yet do not see His work in hearts and minds. We must never forget that the darkness cannot comprehend the light; Christ, the Light of the world, shall burn forever, and He leads us on!
 
my opinion is that the number of priests, sisters and religious has gone down because the number of children born into Catholics has gone down as most couples contracept. It follows that the number of Catholic doctors, lawyers, teachers and any other profession or job has also gone down for the same reason, so there are fewer good dedicated Catholics living out their faith and being an influence of Christ’s love in the world through those positions as well.
 
We need families with 2 parents who are strong in their faith who will encourage their sons and daughters to see religious vocations as a real option for their future. My parish had a drought of almost 20 years with no seminarians but now we have more than 10 who have accepted the God’s call to study for the priesthood. We also have some young ladies who have taken vows.

Get your whole parish to pray for and support those young people who courageously allow themselves to hear God’s call. I was personally shocked when I worked with teens to find that many parents who seemed very active at church and strong in their faith were not supportive of their child discerning for a religious vocation! 😦 In some cases it took the intervention of other adults in the parish to bring some parents around to even allow their children to enter discernment. It is a sad thing indeed for a young person to be discouraged by loving parents who see a job with a huge salary as a better future for their son than the priesthood. Praise God that there are countries and places in this country where young, faithful men are entering the priesthood.
 
In all honesty, I’ve been hearing about a priest shortage since I was a child, and I never really stopped to question it.

Now, however, how you worded your question got me thinking:

What exactly is “enough” when it comes to the number of priests?

I attend two parishes regularly, and I wish each of them had double the number of priests. Think how much more they could do, how much more “present” they could be in meeting with people, showing up at parish events, etc., not to mention not having the same one or two priests say three masses each Sunday.

But what would be “enough?”

On the topic of why we have fewer priests now than say, in the 1950’s, I think some of the previous posters have covered that nicely. 👍 As long as I’m wishing, I would love to hear a sermon in which the parents at mass were instructed to offer their children up to God’s plan for them, and actually talk with their children about the possibility of becoming a priest or religious. We pray almost every week for God to call men and women to religious life, but I have never once heard a prayer of the faithful for parents to be generous if their children are called to religious life.

Gertie
 
My opinion of why we do not have enough priests:
  1. The parents’ lukewarm practicing of the faith. My bishop once stated that vocations come from holy families. Lukewarm practice impedes holiness.
  2. The pervasive materialism and instant gratification mindset in today’s society – this is the antithesis of a life in Christ. It is difficult to raise children outside of the materialism mindset when it is being bombarded at them from all sides.
 
puzzleannie said:
my opinion is that the number of priests, sisters and religious has gone down because the number of children born into Catholics has gone down as most couples contracept. It follows that the number of Catholic doctors, lawyers, teachers and any other profession or job has also gone down for the same reason, so there are fewer good dedicated Catholics living out their faith and being an influence of Christ’s love in the world through those positions as well.
Click to expand...
There is also the fact that priests lost their pride in their profession. After 1968, many seminarians and priests abandoned their callings and went into the world. Many who stayed were either fanatics who wanted to change the Church or the disheartened who no longer tried to persuaded young people to become priests. Pretty much th sam thing that had happened in Luther’s time. It took the Church until after the Council of Trent to start getting back on track. I feel the church is making the same turn around today. But the counterreformation was not a complete success, and our future church will suffer from even greater limitations. Rform was swallowed up by politics, and in return for the aid of kings, the Church became a department of State in those countries that stayed Catholic, and suppressed if not eliminated in Protestant countries. The moral is" don’t lose hope. "
 
  1. Annie’s note on contraception is spot on. If parents, by design, have only two children, there can be a strong tendency towards steering them towards the parents’ view of the perfect track-- Ivy league, then medical or law school. Seminary or the consecrated life just doesn’t fit into that parent’s mindset, so they never broach, much less encourage the topic with their children.
  2. The widespread down-playing of the special role of the priest in many, many parishes and publications. The priest is reduced to an administrator, an adviser, perhaps a sacramental functionary, but nothing more. I’m not talking about putting priests on a special pedestal-- far from it-- but when young men perceive the priest to be nothing more than a social worker who can’t get married, and don’t understand his immense and unique privilege of acting in persona Christi, of confecting the Eucharist, of lifting the terrible weight of sin from a penitent, etc., the priesthood falls very far down his list of considerations. At least real social workers can get married and have a family…
That’s my two cents, anyway…

Margaret
 
Wow, not even one reply regarding what I hoped to hear…I was hoping to show the connection to the lack of commitment from even good Catholic parents who neglect to send their children to a Catholic High School?
Don’t you see the point.
It’s not just everyone else, it could be us in a more generalized sense.
Priest and Nuns do not come out of a secular education. We need more support for our High Schools. Can I get a yeah??
 
Obviously the lack of Christian living and practicing the faith in families and individuals are the main culprits. The West are not what they were in the early twentieth century. Today the majority are hardly what we can call vibrant practicing Catholics. The churches and cathedrals are empty and some seminaries being sold for lack of maintenance upkeeps.

Obviously we need to find our faith and not just in isolation. We need a revival as the Protestants call it. There needs to be Christian culture inffusing the very fabric of Christians communities across the board. Too much a time our families and our youngs are washed by the tide of materialism, ignorance of the faith and strangers in our own land where Christianity seem to be the exceeption rather than the rule. If Catholics do not sufficiently see the needs for priests there can be no sufficient output of them.

Praying for vocations seems to be for other people’s children rather than for our own.

Having said that not all are lost. The Church is at its strongest when it is weak and so her people too. Beside the Gate of Hell will not prevail against the Church founded by Jesus Christ. In great hope we can only move towards the next century to a transformed Church.

God bless all of us.
 
amberwin said:
Wow, not even one reply regarding what I hoped to hear…I was hoping to show the connection to the lack of commitment from even good Catholic parents who neglect to send their children to a Catholic High School?
Don’t you see the point.
It’s not just everyone else, it could be us in a more generalized sense.
Priest and Nuns do not come out of a secular education. We need more support for our High Schools. Can I get a yeah??
Click to expand...
Some of the best priests I know never set foot in a Catholic high school. In fact, many of them were not encouraged by their parents, but others in their family or influential aquaintances.
 
Joannm said:
Some of the best priests I know never set foot in a Catholic high school. In fact, many of them were not encouraged by their parents, but others in their family or influential aquaintances.
Click to expand...
Right. Catholic school can be a double-edged sword too. If it is run according to the purpose of its objective, good and fine. If not, it may have the opposite effect on students especially if they encounter some bad experience there. I would still call for enrolment in Catholic schools though not because of anything but because that are where our children should go.

As for vocation, it is a calling. That’s why you will find priest among the unlikeliest place and candidate sometimes. There are many priests that we know who actually have to defy their parents in order to go into the priesthood.

It would be much easier if children see role model in priests; and if they grow up well-catechized, practicing and strong in the faith. The rest it the Lord who changes and convicts the hearts.
 
Eucharisted said:
Few priests is a sign of bad times, and bad times are a trial for the Church, which, contrary to the opinion of men, makes the Church grow and strengthen. We have few priests because we have poor catechesis, cold love for Christ, different spirits who have entered the hearts of some to rebel against Christ and His Church (I speak of the spirits of disobedience, liturgical abuse, false mysticism, etc.), strong attacks from those who believe things contrary to the Christian Faith, and few examples of saints.

But! God is with us, a flaming pillar in the night, and He has set on fire the hearts of many souls, so that they might burn like candles on the path of faith and on the way of the Cross, leading others to Jesus, even those who profess to be of Christ yet live of the world, even those who’s love has grown cold, and even those for whom hope seems to be a lost cause. He works in secret and in plain sight, as we see His work in different parishes and events, yet do not see His work in hearts and minds. We must never forget that the darkness cannot comprehend the light; Christ, the Light of the world, shall burn forever, and He leads us on!
Click to expand...
For the same reason many Catholics no longer attend Sunday Mass or fully practice the Catholic Faith. The world is a more inviting place.
 
Attending a Catholic high school may help, but in no way substitutes for the learning and example provided in being raised in a practicing Catholic family who lives a moral, faith-filled life of prayer, sacraments, and good works.
 
Red_Meg said:
  1. The widespread down-playing of the special role of the priest in many, many parishes and publications. The priest is reduced to an administrator, an adviser, perhaps a sacramental functionary, but nothing more.
Click to expand...
What a perceptive comment!!! This is a view of the priesthood, particularly that of sacramental functionary, that is seen right here in some of the posts on this board.
 
amberwin said:
Wow, not even one reply regarding what I hoped to hear…I was hoping to show the connection to the lack of commitment from even good Catholic parents who neglect to send their children to a Catholic High School?
Don’t you see the point.
It’s not just everyone else, it could be us in a more generalized sense.
Priest and Nuns do not come out of a secular education. We need more support for our High Schools. Can I get a yeah??
Click to expand...
Yeah!
 
jpjd said:
Attending a Catholic high school may help, but in no way substitutes for the learning and example provided in being raised in a practicing Catholic family who lives a moral, faith-filled life of prayer, sacraments, and good works.
Click to expand...
This is also true:thumbsup:
 
amberwin said:
Wow, not even one reply regarding what I hoped to hear…I was hoping to show the connection to the lack of commitment from even good Catholic parents who neglect to send their children to a Catholic High School?
Don’t you see the point.
It’s not just everyone else, it could be us in a more generalized sense.
Priest and Nuns do not come out of a secular education. We need more support for our High Schools. Can I get a yeah??
Click to expand...
of course I agree, the bishops knew this over 100 years ago when they mandated parochial education. but the root cause is still IMO contraception and the mentality behind it–children are not gifts and our primary commitment is not to raise up Catholic families in the Faith. The contraceptive mentality is entirely secular and based on worldly values–kids cost too much in time, money and emotional investment to raise, and they interfere with material success, and their purpose for existence is achievement and financial success in the secular world. That mentality, engrained as it is now in Catholic families and parishes, also militates against strong Catholic schools.
 
A young man who has a strong Catholic family that encourages him to discern for the priesthood can be educated in public, private or religious school and answer God’s call. A young man with an unsupportive family that never encourages him to even discern for a possible religious vocation will be less likely to become a priest no matter his education. The family is where faith should be nurtured, not school whether it be Catholic or other. Good catechesis can happen for children outside of their family at a good Catholic school or through regular participation at their parish if they are in public school.

There are plenty of places where Catholic high school is not an option due to distance or cost or lack of places at the school, but that is not the root of the priest shortage in the US. My own pastor has told us many times that when he and one of his brothers answered the call they had to leave home to attend high school at a seminary (typical in his day for those from small farming communities). Clearly he came from a strong and encouraging Catholic family that would have helped him on his way regardless of the option of Catholic high school or Catholic boarding school or whatever.
 
amberwin said:
Wow, not even one reply regarding what I hoped to hear…I was hoping to show the connection to the lack of commitment from even good Catholic parents who neglect to send their children to a Catholic High School?
Don’t you see the point.
Click to expand...
Actually, I have to dispute that point. My son & daughter attend the local public high school. We did apply for them to attend one of the local Catholic high schools, but since they did not attend parochial school, they did not get admitted. (Meanwhile, the Catholic high schools all admit 25% non-Catholics, primarily the ones who attended parochial school. Apparently eight years’ tuition = ticket into high school. Catholics who can’t/won’t pay for eight years parochial are out of luck apparently.)

We’re now looking into it again for my current eighth grader. We’re looking at a different school for him, all boys. The overall climate of the school is great as far as academic and “human” formation goes-- they really do seem to stress personal responsibility, being a man of one’s word, helping out the people around you, etc.

HOWEVER-- the religion department is appalling. Utterly appalling. One of the teachers my husband grilled at Open House admitted that most of the teachers don’t actually believe the Church’s moral teachings. :mad: Social justice matters are apparently non-negotiable-- I don’t think any of the boys would be permitted to argue in class that the homeless could just go starve to death because it wasn’t his problem. Yet one of the teachers admitted to me that after teaching the unit on abortion, 85% of the boys disagreed with Church teaching on the matter, and the teacher didn’t seem to see this as a problem or see it as her responsibility to try and persuade or convince them. She’s just there to present, apparently… 🤷

So please don’t be so quick to judge those of us who don’t send our kids to these schools. My husband and I have eight children, with one more on the way. It is my fervent hope that we will have the full spectrum of vocations from our family-- priests, religious, married, and hopefully a few in Opus Dei, since that is my husbands’ and my vocations. We take our responsibility as the primary educators of our children **most **seriously. My kids’ CCD teachers have consistently told me over the years how impressed they are with how well-versed my children are in the Faith.

My children in public school (all in public at the moment) understand full well that they are walking into “enemy territory” in some sense when they walk into school. I still haven’t written off the Catholic high school (assuming my second-class public school student can even get in the door) but I shouldn’t have to worry that a super-expensive Catholic education could do more damage to my son’s Faith than the free non-religious school down the block.

Margaret
 
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