Do you believe there is a priest shortage in the Catholic church right now?

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There are over 200 public Masses celebrated each week within a 20km radius of where I live, and I only need to go to 1 of them. (For that matter, some of them are celebrated by multiple priests). I believe in a priest shortage like The Abominable Snowman believes in global warming…
 
There is in our diocese! That is one of the main reason for the many church closings in the past several years, with still more forthcoming. I don’t know how to answer the poll, though, because in other areas, like yours apparently, there is no shortage. So, across the board - I have no clue!
 
LindaSK said:
There is in our diocese! That is one of the main reason for the many church closings in the past several years, with still more forthcoming. I don’t know how to answer the poll, though, because in other areas, like yours apparently, there is no shortage. So, across the board - I have no clue!
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Same where I live. A number of parishes are closing or forced to merge. The number of priests under 40 in my diocese is a low percentage.

I did read an article that the number of seminarians at the local seminary is the highest it has been in 10 years, so that is encouraging.
 
I do believe there is a shortage of priests in some diocese. I have spent time in two different dioceses over the past 20 years and they contrast in regards to number of seminarians discerning the priesthood. I believe the correlation you will find is in the dioceses where the Bishop is faithful to the Magisterium of the Catholic Faith, there is a plethora of seminarians. In other dioceses where the Bishop leans to the “left” a bit, they are struggling for seminarians.
 
The vocation crisis is in marriage. Once the marriage crisis is resolved, priestly vocations will take care of themselves.
 
JimG said:
The vocation crisis is in marriage. Once the marriage crisis is resolved, priestly vocations will take care of themselves.
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I’ll risk seeming dense - but, explain, please. Are you talking about allowing priests to marry??
 
I think he means that not enough people are being called to marriage these days? And that if more people were getting married somehow there would be more priests? It seems a bit of a non sequitur to me also.
 
LindaSK said:
I’ll risk seeming dense - but, explain, please. Are you talking about allowing priests to marry??
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I was thinking of this: Something like 50% of marriages now end in divorce.

My wife and I used to teach CCD and PSR classes in grade school.
Many years ago, it was a rarity to have a student with divorced parents. Now, it is almost a rarity to find a student in a stable household with a mom and a dad who live together.

These children will have gone through their entire lives with the implicit knowledge that no sort of permanent commitment is possible. If there’s no permanence possible in marriage, how can it be thinkable to consider a permanent commitment to the priesthood or the religious life? Making lifetime vows must seem an absurdity to them.

That’s why I don’t think that a vocation shortage can be resolved without first resolving the marriage vocation shortage.
 
A comment on marriage and number of children:
Large families tend to produce more vocations than do small ones. Out of necessity, the children of large families have more of an idea of “Service to others”.

Sallwin: your comment about good bishops is spot on.
In a 3-part video series titled: “Come Home! to The Catholic Church”, Father John Corapi tells bishops how to have a vocations crisis:
“Disobey the Church.
Do NOT accept the teaching of the Magisterium of the Church.
Badmouth the Pope, and
Send them to LOUSY seminaries.
You will have no vocations…
…It is absolutely fatal to play fast and loose with Faith and Morals.”.

The increase in the number of seminarians is Sydney since Cardinal Pell`s arrival is living proof of the right way.
 
I also agree on the influence a bishop has in a diocese. We are currently ‘between bishops.’ I keep hearing so much that is positive in Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York and Cardinal Pell in Australia. It can’t be wrong to pray for our diocese to get a bishop like these men. I know there are other awesome bishops, too - Bishop Robert Baker, for starters. We are really hurting for priests here, and have had too many church closings to show for it. Before anyone comments on the financial aspect, we have had churches that were economically self-sufficient that were closed, due to the shortage of priests.

On the topic of marriage and commitment, now that I understand where you are going with that, I must also agree. Just looking at my son’s friends, the overwhelming majority have parents who have been divorced. Sadly the rate of divorce, from all I have read and heard, is about the same for Protestants and Catholics. I think it has to do with the frame of mind going into marriage, and well as not making the distinction between what is morally right as opposed to legally right. I hate to drag abortion into this, but abortion and divorce are legal. As long as people, regardless of their faith, equate legality with Truth, and accept legality as a measure of morality, society will remain in its current ‘rut.’ And it will continue to get deeper. To get back to topic, this mentality affords people an ‘out’ when they go into marriage. Instead of going into marriage and seeing it as a lifelong commitment, they go into it knowing that if things don’t work out, they can legally be divorced. So, I can easily see where the example of failure in the vocation of marriage might well make the commitment required to be a priest seem difficult to achieve - or not even worth the effort. Are more priests choosing to leave the priesthood now than in the past? I have recently heard of a number of such cases, but I’m not sure what that means. I tried to find statistics.

I think the scandals have also hurt. It isn’t that they don’t occur in other areas of society, but the priesthood seems to be a preferred target.
 
You’ve got to be kidding me. If Australia is in such great shape, more power to you. Here in south Louisiana all of our dioceses are closing parishes that have existed for over 100 years or more and clustering rural parishes so that one priest serves three or more parishes.

When I grew up in the 50s we had three or more priests assigned to each parish. My cathedral parish (a cathedral no less) today has one.
 
I would say that worldwide, there’s a shortage of priests in our HRCC. I agree that nontraditional Bishops are hurting vocations and all other sorts of things in the church.
 
I’m gonna have to say… DUH!

Last year our diocese didn’t ordain ONE priest. We did get one new deacon but that’s it(our diocese not our parish). Really sad. We’ve been getting a couple new priests from Nigeria lately. We have one now. He’s really good once you figure out his accent. He serves 3 parishes. :rolleyes:
 
Absolutely. I love our parish priest. He is a good man. But he is alone. How can he be expected to do daily mass, three on Sunday, visit shut in’s, listen to confessions, attend meetings, prepare homily’s, participate at the Catholic School, weddings, funerals, bible studies and so much more… 😦 Having a larger number of priest assigned to each parish would lighten the load of our shepard. I believe having an Associate Pastor would be ideal in any parish. More time would be able to be utilized in establishing study’s or programs that deal with parishiners faith journey, and working more one on one with parishiners needing spiritual direction. Even more Pastor’s would be able to relax a bit more with vacation and have the opportunity to spend a bit of time alone with God in silence.
 
In the military diocese, there is something like 1 priest for every 50,000 service men and women.

Granted, that diocese is spread out, but still . . .
 
JimG said:
I was thinking of this: Something like 50% of marriages now end in divorce.

My wife and I used to teach CCD and PSR classes in grade school.
Many years ago, it was a rarity to have a student with divorced parents. Now, it is almost a rarity to find a student in a stable household with a mom and a dad who live together.

These children will have gone through their entire lives with the implicit knowledge that no sort of permanent commitment is possible. If there’s no permanence possible in marriage, how can it be thinkable to consider a permanent commitment to the priesthood or the religious life? Making lifetime vows must seem an absurdity to them.

That’s why I don’t think that a vocation shortage can be resolved without first resolving the marriage vocation shortage.
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right on 100%
good men are raised in good intact families with good parents and a good father present and practising his faith is essential. the crisis in the priesthood is directly correlated to the crisis in marriage, which has as its foundation acceptance almost across the board by Catholics of the contraceptive mentality.
 
I feel somewhat guilty that I am not intending to become a priest. If only I were not politically ambitious, so interested in medicine, and wanting a wife in the near-future, I would submit to holy orders. But I just cannot do that. It does seem strange, though, I am a Catholic who wants to be a lay theologian or religious philosopher but am not going to end up as possibly a cardinal. Do I seem to be a little selfish?
 
Young_Thinker said:
I feel somewhat guilty that I am not intending to become a priest. If only I were not politically ambitious, so interested in medicine, and wanting a wife in the near-future, I would submit to holy orders. But I just cannot do that. It does seem strange, though, I am a Catholic who wants to be a lay theologian or religious philosopher but am not going to end up as possibly a cardinal. Do I seem to be a little selfish?
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Not if you marry, have 12 kids and two of them become priests!
 
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