It is important to keep everything in perspective. The Church is not dying and will never die, especially because of a shortage of priess. A shortage of priests makes the sacramental life of the Church more challenging. This cannot be denied. However, the Churhc has a promise from Christ itself. She will survive until he comes again.
We must be very careful not to be prophets of doom, because we see less priests. I understand that fear that this impresses upon people. But we should also believe in the promise of Jesus.
We must work toward a reform of society, especially the family, where the seeds for the priesthood are planted. It is very difficult to raise children who understand the value of a life-time commitment when parents marry and divorce more often than they change the oil in their cars. It is very difficult for young people to value chastity and celibacy when their parents don’t value it. Any married couple with two children and using artificial birth control have no room to talk about chastity to their children, because they do not practice chastity. If they want two children and be chaste, they should practrice the same abstinence that priests and religious do.
Are the people who want to ordain married men also practicing natural family planning? Are they living with the same spouse whom they married, despite the fact that he or she is a jerk?
Then comes the issue of materialism. Let’s not talk about expecting our children to become priests when their parents have never said, NO, in their life. A young person who has every gadget that money can buy, a car at age 16, freedom to come and go before they can pay for their own rent, is not about to submit to a promise of obedience to any bishop. This young person has been trained that obedience is something you owe a cop or for childrena and parents, not for them.
I love it when in the USA children are rude, lazy in school, cannot be punished after age 15 or younger and parents say that their rudeness, laziness and lack of family ties is part of being an adolescent… Adolescence has existed since the creation of Adam. Suddenlty, adolescents control the economic market, the world of entertainment, run the school system, and even their homes. But we want more priests and we think that if we let our children marry they may enter the priesthood. Our children do not have the kind of discipline to enter the priesthood, unless we give it to them at home.
Even if we allowed the ordination of married men, many would be lousy priests, lousy husbands and lousy fathers, because that’s what we’re producing today. Let’s count the number of young adults that stay married and are good parents. How many are there? From that small pool is where we have to get our married men to ordain. That’s not a very large number. I’m assuming that we’re not going to ordain a married man who wears a condom to bed every night or has a wife on the pill or believes that when authority makes unreasonable demands he can fight back or walk away from the job or when his wife and children give him a rough time he can hide at the office. I’m assuming that we don’t want to ordain a man who can’t raise children because he can’t discipline them. Or are we going to ordain a married man whose wife is a cafeteria Catholic?
The pool gets even smaller. Do you see what I mean? Therefore this is not a solution that’s going to bring great numbers, because you have to filter these people.
In addition, right now there is an increase in men responding to the life of a consecrated brother. The Church is not dying. The number of men who are called to be priests is not responding. This is true. But there is a growing number of men who are responding to the call to religious life. The percentages of religious communities of brothers is increasing and new communities are founded at least one a year in the USA alone.
There are also new communities of religious priests in Europe, USA, Latin America and Africa. But these men do not want to serve in parishes. That’s why they become religious. They want to spend their lives in a religious community, usually working among the very poor, preaching, doing retreat work, teaching, in mission fields or as contemplatives.
As I have often said. The laity has to take responsibility for what it has cultivated. One thing that I often fail to see on CAF is that responsibility. If the family of today is not prime cut Catholicism, don’t expect to get many young men who want to live this life of discipline and material limitations. Religious priests make no money and Secular priests get paid about $20,000 a year, if they’re lucky. You can’t buy everything you want on that salary.
In addition, one reason that many religious priests have asked their major superiors to pull them out of parish ministry is because of the way that they laity treats them. The common complaint is that the laity does not respect their religious vows. The laity in the parish thinks that Father is just a priest. Father, on the other hand, is a Carmelite, Dominican, Franciscan, Salesian, Benedictine or some other kind of religious. He wants to live like a religiosu and be part of his community. But the laity believe that he has to be on-call 24/7. Well, Hellooooooo, Father is married to his community. It woiuld be the same thing as if Father were married to a wife with seven children. If priests who are religious are saying that they can’t tolerate the laity in parishes, because of the lack of undestanding for their religious vocation, what makes us believe that a married priest will be treated any better?
Until the laity admits that we drive priests away from our parishes, because we are critical, we are passenger seat liturgists, back seat preachers, and the dogma police, don’t expect too many religioius to want to serve in parishes. I don’t think that a married man who is a priest finds it any more enjoyable. Secular priests have no choice in the matter. They are ordained for the diocese. They have to do parish work. Religious do not. They can pull out without notice. Married priests can also pull out. Their wife and kids are their first duty. That’s why most married priests in the Latin Rite usually work in non parish ministries. Because they can go home at night. I don’t know too many wives who want to be married to a 24/7 clergy-man. It’s like the religious community that says to their religious, “you can be a parish priest, but make sure that you’re home for supper, community prayers, community recreation and don’t forget the community meeting and retreat.”
We have to change our families to produce the kind of married men who would qualify for the priesthood. That’s the place to begin. It’s useless to ask the Church to reopen this discussion, unless we have children to offer the Church.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
, I just wanted to recognize these posts and agree that praying for vocations is something we all need to do more of.