Great Source for Stats

[DavidGonzalez]

Wow. If you’re wondering about how vocations are doing around the world, country by country, diocese by diocese, this is a great source. I actually found information about my mom and dad’s home diocese in Spain. The numbers aren’t as bad as I thought. Now… if only I knew for sure that I could trust it! It is the internet, after all!

catholic-hierarchy.org/country/sc1.html

 

[Dale_M]

davidc2 manages the site. If you have questions about it, perhaps you could ask him.

 

[DavidGonzalez]

Cool. It seems trustworthy, then. Poland’s doing amazing! Over two diocean priests per parish plus almost 6000 religious priests! Irealnd’s doing good too. Thanks!

 

[m134e5]

It is interesting to see that countries that seem to be less worldly generally have more priests- and fewer (much fewer!) permanent deacons. I think am inclined to think the permanent deaconate detracts from the concept that the priest is called to sacrifice himself for the congregation- along with Jesus. Sometimes I wonder if it sends the message that even though priests usually cannot be married, deacons can do almost as much. It seems to send the message that you don’t have to choose one good thing over another- that you can have both- but that doesn’t do much good when someone needs to go to confession, or needs the last rites, and the guy in the collar (permanent deacons also wear collars) can’t do much more than a layman can do for them.

 

[otjm]

It is interesting to see that countries that seem to be less worldly generally have more priests- and fewer (much fewer!) permanent deacons. I think am inclined to think the permanent deaconate detracts from the concept that the priest is called to sacrifice himself for the congregation- along with Jesus. Sometimes I wonder if it sends the message that even though priests usually cannot be married, deacons can do almost as much. It seems to send the message that you don’t have to choose one good thing over another- that you can have both- but that doesn’t do much good when someone needs to go to confession, or needs the last rites, and the guy in the collar (permanent deacons also wear collars) can’t do much more than a layman can do for them.

Then perhaps you need to learn more about the diaconite.

It would be hard to draw a correlation between countries that “seem less worldly” what ever that means, and the number of deacons. The revival of the permanent deacon position is so new that it hardly ahs enough history to make much, if any comparisons that really have validity.

As to “Deacons doing almost as much”, again, perhaps you might want to look more than superficially at the program.