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

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Young_Thinker said:
…If I ever do marry, I do not want to kill my wife!
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At a recent high school reunion, I was talking to a female classmate who noted that she married right out of high school and had 12 kids one right after the other. She seemed pretty healthy.

I didn’t ask whether she provided any priests. But her children will surely help the solvency of the social security system, since it relies on current workers to pay current retirees.
 
JimG said:
At a recent high school reunion, I was talking to a female classmate who noted that she married right out of high school and had 12 kids one right after the other. She seemed pretty healthy.
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Oh, my (good for she and her husband, though)!
 
Historically speaking we do not have a clergy shortage.

With the numbers of practicing Catholics *lower now than at the time of Vatican II, and a relatively unchanged number of clerics (priest +deacons compared to priests), I think we can talk more of a statistical “correction” than of a shortage.

There is the issue of population shifts, since the 1950’s the American population has moved considerably out of the cities and into the suburbs and back into the rural areas. The Catholic population mirrors this as well, with the majority abandoning the cities. The development plans in place before the shift (I have heard characterized as “in the city, a church every mile; outside the city, one every 5 miles”) has become unsustainable just for demographic regions (resulting in the closing and merging of parishes).
  • at least in the US, it seems that Europe and the rest of the Americas follow a similar pattern, Africa and Asia show different trends across the board (growth in the number of practicing Catholics and vocational growth)
**derived from data from CARA research
 
Flopfoot said:
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…
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There either is one, or there will be one in the near future. I have noticed there are certain age groups that aren’t well-represented by the priests in my diocese. There are quite a few over 70, & a good number between about 55 and 70. We have a fair number of priests in their 40’s, I think…but not too many younger than 40.

We got a new bishop 5 years ago or so, and vocations have dramatically increased- but they are still seminarians- it will be another few years before we start to see them become priests. I imagine vocations will go up even more once we start to see more young priests around here. I don’t think teenagers are used to seeing people close enough to their age that they don’t think of them as “old” as priests- they need to see for themselves that the priesthood is for people who were just like them- not so long ago.
 
I answered “no” because while there are some shortages in some Countries, there is an abundance in others.

So to be truthful, I would have preferred an option of “it depends on where you live”.

Brenda V.
 
I have been told that the situation of the Church in France(well, maybe not in Burgundy) is really dire; like a village not having had a priest in 15 years(and “ordering” a priest for weddings and baptisms).
 
The shortage of priests are in areas where there are shortages of practicing Catholics. France is a good example of a country where there are not a lot of people that practice the faith anymore. Places in Pennsylvania and Ohio that used to have large Catholic populations have lost populations to outflow migrations and to a general loss in faith among many people these days. Places in the south that used to be overwhelming protestant, now have growing Catholic populations that are becoming more devout. This is due both to conversions from protestant faiths and from migrations from places like New York and Ohio.
 
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