Let's be real about the shortage of priests

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jas31784
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
I agree. Our seminary has a lot of young men joining the priesthood, or it seems a lot to me.
I never counted but by the looks of things it makes me happy.
 
I agree with this. The real vocation crisis is in the vocation of marriage.
 
This is very nice and all, but…why exactly is this a reply to me?
 
I think if parishes are being shut down due to a lack of priests then that is a very serious problem for those at that parish.
 
Combine a culture where pornography is rampant with a priesthood where a priest could be dismissed for being found to look at pornography, and you get very few men who want to run that gauntlet. Not to mention the way priests are stereotyped, and the lack of honor they are often afforded.
 
ConfusedLucy said:
I think if parishes are being shut down due to a lack of priests then that is a very serious problem for those at that parish.
Click to expand...
True.
As Deacon Jeff wrote, there is a larger vocations problem. Catholics are so focused on the priest shortage that we forget the shortage people ready and willing and prepared to make any kind of lifetime commitment.

It takes a certain critical mass of strong marriages to build a strong parish. I don’t mean that we should not give attention and love to the large number of single parents, widowed persons, persons living together without marriage, persons with same sex attractions, divorcees, and single persons in general.

But it is the strong marriages that produce the vocations, that do most of the volunteer work in the parish, that pay most of the bills, that lend stability to the parish over decades, whether there are 3 priests or one part time priest. They also are the backbone for Catholic schools, prayer groups, and other Catholic ministries, even though those serve many others as well.

A few decades ago we heard (perhaps too often) about the evils of “broken homes”. Today it is politically incorrect to even hint anything like that.
 
I see this as a question of faith.
Do you believe that the Catholic church is God’s church or do you not?

If you do, then you know God will provide what is necessary for it to continue and grow.

We must simply be the good Catholics we are called to be and let God, and our example, handle the rest.
 
If people are not sure what is true/false, or right/wrong, then they are not really free to become priests (or religious, or deacons, or mature husbands or wives). So what can the average poster on CAF do about it?

Pray
Communicate a little solid doctrine wherever you can in conversation with relatives, friends, and parishioners. Rely only on information in public revelation.
Teach your children some doctrine; set aside a little time each week, explain just one point of belief.
If your children are in parochial school or CCD, look at their textbook. Some are good, some are empty of any specific doctrinal content. If theirs is weak, try to influence selection of a better one.

We have to overcome the culture of relativism. Right now many put all their faith in FAITH, but with no specific content. The people you influence may, in a lot of little ways, help restore Catholic understanding of actual Truths, and some may then follow the One Who is Truth, to the priesthood.
 
Jas31784 said:
In the 1960’s, at the time of the Second Vatican Council, there were hopes for a new springtime in the Church; exactly the opposite had come to pass.
Click to expand...
Now this needs a little more unpacking than perhaps you’ve done here.
Imagine what state the Church would be in had VII not happened…

Do you really believe the situation would have been any better?
I don’t. It would likely have been many times worse because in fact, like stuck tectonic plates, a huge dissonance and pressure had built up that needed to be released.

Church structures and thinking was so unreal and at odds with the changing world that it took huge discipline in laity and clergy to keep the two continental shelfs artificially linked.
It was an impossible task.
It is a wonder that more men and women did not leave the priesthood and religious life. At that time the lifestyle and thinking was olde worlde and hopelessly inadequate for facing the new theological and secular challenges. They were hopelessly trained and prepared for apostolic life and the medieval community life was not adequately nourishing. Their own teachers largely taught them past solutions that no longer worked in a less authoritarian,post WWII world. The authoritarian and impersonal way with set piece apostolates that they were expected to live would cause mental breakdowns in most persons.
VII likely should have happened a generation or two earlier.

You seem to harken back to a day where the Church had for some time stopped reading the signs of the times. Had smaller changes been instituted much earlier we may just as likely not seen the huge earthquakes that happened post VII.

I get it you will disagree, your comments above indicate the olde ways suit your personality and temperament. Unfortunately most people no longer share that temperament so things have to change.

The Church is still finding its feet in 1st world countries. There is no priest shortage in 3rd world countries where the olde worlde ways still have a grip due to poverty. I do not know the answer, in 1st world countries, we are still rebounding from the too late changes and a new formula hasn’t been found yet. We will, it will just take time.
 
Last edited:
I know 3 men who applied to the local seminary and were turned away because they expressed a love of the Traditional Latin Mass. One probably stated he would only be interested in saying the old Rite and was flatly refused. The other two left to find assignments elsewhere and I believe they “toned down” their interest in the Old mass so that they wouldn’t be sent away.
 
Dioceses with orthodox vocations directors and Bishops have a good number of vocations.

Dioceses with hetrodox or very liberal vocations directors have terrible vocations. Reason: the men who would normally want to be a priest from that diocese are either:
  • not getting accepted by the hetrodox vocations director / bishop
    ----------- if they get accepted, they quit because they are being sent to a hetrodox / liberal seminary or are “fail” out due to their conservative views.
  • they are joining a religious order
  • things in their diocese are so bad, they move to a different diocese before joining the priesthood
  • or things in their diocese are so bad that they never decide to become a priest (perhaps they become a deacon later)
There are a number of studies that show this. But, there is little acknowledgment from the Church because orthodox Bishops don’t like to throw stones at other dioceses.

God bless
 
Last edited:
Jas31784 said:
In the 1960’s, at the time of the Second Vatican Council, there were hopes for a new springtime in the Church; exactly the opposite had come to pass.
Click to expand...
You are right that at the time of VII there were hopes of a new springtime in the Catholic Church, but there were hopes for a new springtime in Protestant churches, synagogues, in government, in society in general. A lot of churches that never went through VII lost most of their members, and/or lost most of their doctrinal compass. VII did not cause, nor prevent, the larger decline in Judeo-Christianity, nor the loss of vocations.

The collapse of doctrine in the RCC, as well as Protestant churches, was well underway in the 1950s. A network was quietly at work in some seminaries and religious orders.

The attack on doctrine that happened openly after VII was well coordinated, way in advance, by people who of course were trained well before VII, and tolerated by bishops trained and appointed before VII.

At this point we have pick up the pieces, wasting no time applauding or attacking VII. The devil likes it when Christians prepare for the struggles of decades or centuries ago rather than the struggles of the next few years.

At this point, we should look to and expand the current source of vocations:
Home school families; orthodox orders; the new, traditional classical based Catholic schools, such as Chesterton Academy schools; the prolife movement.
 
Last edited:
Really? I’ve thought of priesthood before. You’re saying if I went to the vocations office and said I really prefer the EF they would tell me to forget it? Haha that’s funny.
Especially seeing as young adults are increasingly drawn to the Tridentine Mass.
It even boggles the Popes mind as to why but there’s a pretty good explanation I think.
Young people live in a world which is really crazy. Whereas the last generation wanted change and flexibility , people in their 20s and 30s want the rigidness of liturgy. If you ever go to an EF Mass, it’s really quite amazing the demographics. It’s really only young people and old people. Baby boomers seem to want nothing to do with it. It just shows even generational gaps in the Liturgy preference.
I think the EF will become much more of the normal in the next 20 years to be honest.
 
Could you say a little more about what “doctrine” began collapsing in the 1950’s? Such as, the Jews being solely responsible for Jesus’ crucifixion? That a single Friday hot dog would send you to Hell? That if you should be unfortunate enough to marry a Protestant, you’d have to marry in the rectory living room? That you best not socialize with any Protestant neighbors, or certainly not attend a wedding in a Protestant church, even if between two Protestants? That the Easter Vigil should begin in the daylight, in the afternoon, because that’s how it was always done until Pius XII changed it?
 
BlackFriar said:
Imagine what state the Church would be in has VII not happened…

Do you really believe the situation would have been any better?
Click to expand...
Agreed.

So… what’s the solution?

We’re not going to change doctrine (if we believe it is what we say it is)…

We’re not going to cease being counter-cultural ('cause that’s what we’ve been for 2000 years – even during the heyday of ‘Christendom’)…

What’s happened is that people, having been poorly catechized in what we really believe, have accepted what others say we believe… and as a result, have simply chosen to walk away.

So, our solution is… ???
 
Costly sacrifice is generally not top of mind when someone today thinks of love.

But it’s the definition of love, as taught to us by Jesus Christ.

So I think the priestly shortage is one symptom of a loss of our understanding of both love and sin.

Other symptoms…small families, divorces, shacking up, greed, delaying of getting married, “self-fulfillment”.

The Church needs to take the lead in rehabilitating the definition and example cases of love, pointing principally to the love that the Cross demands.

Family lived well, lived heroically tends to be happier, more joyful, more generous…sacrifice is viewed as a happy path to holiness. Heroism isn’t avoided.
 
Last edited:
Look at who I replied to & why he thought the Jesuits were the worst of them all. It’s like high school clique where the single nerd get left out & he says all of them are bad.

I think it’s a product of hyper Catholic online culture where CatholicConnect, Church Militant & many more pit every Catholics against each other.

Don’t worry… I know they like Fake News 😉
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top