Idea to increase vocations?

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silentstar

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Hello,

I hope this is the right place for this thread. If not please move it.

Today I went to brunch and a distant family relative who is a 65 year old priest was there. We started talking to him about his life. He called himself a “lifer” having gone to seminary in high school and then in college and being ordained in his 20s and having been an active priest ever since.

He is pastor at a parish in the Midwest and is also responsible for 2 other parishes. Every weekend involves saying Mass at each of the churches at least once, and maybe twice. It is an over 100-mile trip. b/c of this, he thinks about the issues of priest scarcity a lot.

He mentioned married priests but was not sure that would really help (leaving aside theological objections; he was talking from a practical point of view) b/c Protestant ministers can be married and they are also facing a vocation crunch, he said. He also brought up women priests but didn’t seem to think that would help much either.

Then he mentioned an idea that I had not heard before: limited time serving as a priest. He said that the issue of lifetime commitment was becoming a problem for many people, whether they were married, or religious. And since that was a problem, maybe priests could be ordained and serve for 10 or 20 years or so and then leave.

I’m curious about your thoughts on this. It was an idea I had never heard before. One possible downside is that the Church invests in priests by funding their education and if they don’t stay as long, that might not be as solid an investment. But also, I think it’s basic to the Church that once you are a priest you stay that way unless - is it the Vatican? - laicises you, so I think it would take a major change in practice and maybe in theology as well to accept the idea of priests who serve for a limited time.

Any reactions?
 
Even a “change in theology” woudn’t change the reality that ordination to the priesthood imparts an indelible character on the soul. That’s the way Christ made the Sacrament of Holy Orders work.

Betsy
 
Ugh… that couldn’t work. That makes being a priest just another career, not a life decision. To me that just sounds awful!
 
Bad idea…

The problem is mostly with getting parents of men to be open to God’s call. It’s the same for the men themselves.

Prayer and solid catholic teaching also help. 🙂
 
That is an interesting idea, and I have never heard it proposed before. And I think there is a reason for this:

A priest is a priest for life. A member of the Order of Melchizedek.

Catholicism revolves around ideas of eternity. The linchpin to the sacrament of matrimony, for instance, is that it lasts forever. [Same with Holy Orders.] Without this, true matrimony is impossible: it would simply be a contract entered into upon the free consent of both parties, and left when it is no longer profitable.

If we haven’t noticed, the priesthood started taking a real hit after V2. Making further radical changes–in the manner of V2–will not do anything except completely drag the rug out from under the priesthood.

I recommend a book, ‘Married to the Church’, by a former seminarian who conducts an amateur sociological study of his former classmates (now priests and ex-priests) in Wisconsin/Minnesota. The overwhelming complaints are:

-Priestly prerogatives are nil.
-The parish-centric community is disappearing. No longer is a parish necessarily an extended family.
-The post-V2 position of the priest is ill-defined–all of the priest’s current functions have corresponding lay positions, practically.
-Diocesan lay employees who are not necessarily grade-‘A’ Catholic faithful earn more than priests and can–in some cases–boss them around.
-The culture clash between each generation of priest (due to the flip-flopping of seminary standards) leads to liberal curators being lodged with conservative rectors, a generation later leading liberal rectors being lodged with conservative/reactionary curators.
-Priests are sent abroad and trained so that their level of sophistication can match an increasingly sophisticated laity: but after this period, they are dumped into their parish and left to stagnate. Their talents aren’t developed, and innovation is discouraged. [Lesson: priests should wear cassocks and be forced to tow the line theologically, and if they can manage to do this, they should have a little leeway in terms of pastoral/evangelical projects; if Modern Martin Luther is snubbed, he’ll just leave the Church and become a heresiarch]

Now I am not an anti-V2 crazy, and I agree with our Holy Father (duh) that the essential Spirit of the Council needs to be properly interpreted… not entirely abrogated.

Another commonly overlooked factor is that the days of Cardinal Spellman and his successors is over. People look at the immigrant Church of the 1950s and its decadent expansion, and deem this as the norm. It isn’t. The Church must evolve, but it can’t lose its moorings.

The obvious solution is restore the priest to his rightful place–seat him firmly at the head of his parish, reign in the conciliatory principle at the parish level, and make sure he is in a place of authority–he is fulfilling a sacred mission. With these rights, the priest now has an obligation to clean up his parish, look after his flock, and make sure that its proceedings are of unparalleled morality.
 
Minor seminary is a great idea.

Getting a priest like your uncle a driver is a great idea.

Having priestly ‘term limits’ is not.
 
Thanks for the thoughtful and flame-free responses. I’d never heard this idea advanced before and was curious about what other people would think.
 
well, the fssp is thriving, they don’t even have enough openings for everyone who wants in, they just built a new seminary in Nebraska, so as for ideas to increase vocations, they must be doing something very right.
maybe you’d be interested in checking them out -
fssp.com/press/
fsspolgs.org/index.html
 
I think perhaps a better idea would be to recruit older married men who already have grown children. Men in their 50s and 60s for example who for some reason can retire from their jobs. This way the Church would not be burdened with paying for their families expenses.

I don’t think there is actually a shortage of Catholic priests. There is a shortage of Catholic fathers.
 
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