I think you are missing the point, Bro. I absolutely disagree with your opinion that we are not in the midst of a severe and profound crisis of a dearth of vocations. I am not sure how it is going on the West Coast but on the East Coast, churches are closing and consolidating like mad and single priests are assigned to parish “clusters” or “communities”. This is due to the fact that only a minority of Catholics are attending Sunday Mass in the U.S. (according to Pew) and seeking the sacraments. This is not the formula for a robust stream of priests, brothers, and nuns. Also, the retirement rate of religious is vastly outpacing the ordination and commitment rate. I am sure there are some religious orders that are exceptions.
-snip for space - The fact is that a chapel of 300 Catholics produces almost half of the number of vocations as an archdiocese of 3 million Catholics does is the crisis, regardless of whether the vocations end up as religious or secular.
There are several realities that are affecting this shortage of priests in our dioceses. You mentioned one, the decline in faith in the Catholic family. The other is the rise of materialism and secularism.
As to the religious communities, we must understand that a large amount of the declining numbers of ordinations is not a lack of vocations, but a deliberate attempt on most of the religious communities of men to recover their original charisms ad mandated by Vatican II, Bl. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. A quick glance through the websites of religious orders and religious congregations of men will reveal either the total absence of any recruiting for the priesthood or a decreased effort to recruit for the priesthood.
Many religious communities were not founded to be communities of priests. They became communities of priests at some point between 1800 and 1950. Today, recognizing that their true mission is the religious life, not the priesthood and that the priests in these communities are accidental, not essential to the religious life, the numbers of men being ordained are dropping and the number of priests in the community are dying by attrition. No effort is going to be made to replace these priests in large numbers. It is more important to the community to preserve its religious charism, the vision of the founder, fidelity to the original foundation and to highlight the place of the consecrated life in the Church. Pope Benedict recently spoke to the US Bishops about their lack of effort to promote religious life of men without overshadowing it with the priesthood. We need priests in the dioceses. These were never large numbers. In fact, the numbers are larger today than they ever were. In the past, dioceses depended very heavily on priests from religious communities. Today, religious communities are providing less priests for parishes and moving out into areas of ministry appropriate for religious men.
As a result, thousands of parishes have been left without priests, because of the number of aging priests, decline in the number of men entering and the thousands of religious priest deliberately pulled out of parish work to work consistent with their religious vocation.
It is now becoming a more common sight to see houses of religious being erected with no ties to parishes. Many of them have priests, but these priests are to be found in pregnancy centers as counselors, soup kitchen administrators, street preaching, retreat work, religious education, hospice, nursing, manual labor, caring for the elderly and among the immigrant poor. You are going to see less and less religious in your area, unless you live in an impoverished area or are part of a group with special needs. For example, different Franciscan communities have written it into their constitutions that no friar will serve in parishes. Others have written that no friar will serve the middle class or higher. Pulling out this many Franciscans alone is putting a dent in 10% of parishes that were once staffed by the biggest religious family in the Church. Ten percent is not a small number, especially in the USA.
For almost two centuries, we depended on religious to form priests and staff parishes. But those days are coming to an end. There will always be religious in some parishes, but never again in the large numbers of parishes as in the past.
This places a heavy demand on the diocesan bishops. They now have to promote vocations to the diocesan seminary, but without forgetting their duty to promote vocations to male religious life as well.
We have very good news from diocesan seminaries around the nation. Their numbers are increasing and some are putting men on waiting lists. The numbers came out with the Ad Limina visits. Some dioceses and regions that come to mind off the top of my head are: Boston, Denver, Arlington, Florida, New York, Baltimore and Atlanta. Arlington has only one parish staffed by religious. They don’t need extern priests.
The other problem that is affecting the diocesan seminaries is finances. The economic situation is not good. Many of the young men who come cannot afford the tuition. Unlike religious whose education is paid for by the community, diocesan seminarians pay for part of their education, because they are treated like secular university students, which they are. Dioceses are trying to do their best to give as much financial aid as possible. The truth is that the man in the pew is also suffering from this financial catastrophe and he can give only so much. We have parishes in this country where 2/3 of the parishioners are unemployed and where large numbers of them have homes in foreclosure. Thank God for giving us the Knights of Columbus who have always come up with large amounts of money to subsidize vocations. I’m not sure where we would be without them.
