Where are the good men?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Shoshana
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
S

Shoshana

Guest
Just wondering what is your take on the lack of vocations within the priesthood in the Western world. I believe most of the people in Catholic.com are devout and love their faith. It concerns me to see vocations depleting slowly but surely…

Blessings,
Shoshana
 
I take it as a chastisement. However, another view has been expressed, that while vocations are down from 30 and 50 and maybe even 60 years ago, in a longer view we are closer to normal. In other words, there was an unusually high number of vocations in about that period of the Church.

Some interesting observations: those diocese that are faithful to the Magisterium seem to have significantly more vocations that those which favor dissent. Those parishes where prayer abounds seem to be producing vocations; where prayer is penurious, little or none (i.e. Eucharistic adoration, among other things).

Much has been said about the increase in vocations in the third world. What has been said also, but not heard well, is that while we have our own house to clean (sexual abuse and homosexuality, and in some areas, no clue about the Magisterium), they, too, have issues which could cause serious problems; they need to be certain that men are not coming forward to be ordained because of prestige, or an anwer to poverty, or a means of education. In the short term, it is going to pinch. In the long term, hopefully the Ark will right itself. The Holy spirit blows where He will.
 
I’ll throw in my views from my expiriences.

A big thing holding young men back is the issue of how parents will react. I think we underestimate how many parents do not want to see their sons become priests. Whether its because they want grandchildren or they don’t think their sons would be happy in the priesthood, alot of parents will do what they can to dissuade a vocation. The last thing someone discerning needs is the idea of their parents disowning them if they enter the seminary. Now how widespread this is, I don’t know, but in my expiriences not too many parents want to hear their sons say they want them to become a priest.

There are alot of other factors, some bigger than others, but I thought I’d trhow this one out because I haven’t seen it mentioned around here much.
 
How about the contraception issue? Even though many priests and religious are firstborn, what effect does growing up in a traditional multi-child family have on vocations compared to growing up an only child or one of a pair? It continues to amaze me that THREE kids is considered a LARGE family nowadays!
 
If you read Goodbye, Good Men you will know where they are. They are being suppressed by the liberal bishops/rectors of the seminaries. There are plenty of men out there who are called to the priesthood, but for some reason or another (usually for having too much of a prayer life…) are not being accepted into formation.

I know a lot of priests. Not one of them has ever been wistful for the secular life. Two of them broke off engagements to become priests. They do not yearn for “what could have been,” rather the priesthood has fulfilled all of their needs.

You know, I just realized that the people screaming for optional celibacy are not priests…
 
I’m reading GOODBYE, GOOD MEN by Michael Rose.

Liberals in the church have prevented good Catholic men from entering the seminary and/or forcing them to leave the seminary.

My experience talking to priests about a priestly vocation was like those described in the book. After talking to these priests, I was disillusioned by their coldness and lack of encouragement.

Some say this coldness is based on the lesson of Ruth chapter one, where Naomi discourages Ruth from following her to Bethlehem. But, the modern discouragement of candidates does not seem to have that Biblical motivation.

Rose’s book scares me, at the extent of corruption (his word) in the church. I live in the Saginaw diocese of Michigan which is one of the recurrent examples in the book of what can go wrong when liberals take over.
 
IMHO, there are several reasons, ranging from the ones you have listed in the poll, and the lack of large families one poster raised, and including the lack of example in Catholic Schools today (how many Catholic schools today are staffed even partially by religious?) and the general secularization of our culture as a whole.
 
I didn’t vote because there wasn’t an option for it.

There are thousands of men wanting to be priest but they are very conservative and want to go back to the way things use to be. Slowly but surely, they are coming back…and when they do, the priest of today who are into modernization and progressiveness are going to be in for quite a suprise.
Yes, the men of today want to go back to the “primitive”…where nothing matters but God.
 
they are still out there, but because of contraception there are not as many & as another person said a lot of parents do not want their children to be priests–
 
Oppotunities have changed. 50 years ago, the only oppotunity to be educated was to become a priest or a nun for the immigrant poor. Now that young people can get student loans to pay for college, you can get the education without a vocation.
 
Many reasons, but none listed.

  1. *]Good bishops bring out more vocations just by strongly advocating the faith in their diocese.
    *]Societal bias against Catholic and priests.
    *]Small families and pressure to have grandchildren.
    *]Lack of Solid teaching from some pulpits.
    *]Some unsuitable seminaries.
    *]Lack of understanding of what priests truly do.
    *]Lack of spiritual development among young people.
    *]Refusal of some dioceses and orders to take older men.
    *]Cafeteria Catholics claiming to be good Catholics and let get away with it.
    *]Insufficient auxiliary bishops to permit the bishop to have more time (his plus his auxiliary bishops’) with his people.

    Many are called, few are hearing the phone ring.
 
Yes, I agree 100% with that list. The Pope and the Bishops need to stop tolerating this. Saint Paul says we are not to judge those outside the Church but we have every right to judge those who claim to be Catholic. (Understand judge not to mean God’s judgment but rather practical judgment.)
 
I own Goodbye, Good Men, and I have to say I am a little disappointed in it simply because Rose paints with too broad of a brush. If he had looked at the mid1980’s rather than the mid1990’s he would have found many problems, but some of the schools and dioceses he critiques were well into reform mode by the time the book was published. His fact-checking seemed a little lax.
 
T.A.Stobie:
Many reasons, but none listed.

  1. *]Good bishops bring out more vocations just by strongly advocating the faith in their diocese.
    *]Societal bias against Catholic and priests.
    *]Small families and pressure to have grandchildren.
    *]Lack of Solid teaching from some pulpits.
    *]Some unsuitable seminaries.
    *]Lack of understanding of what priests truly do.
    *]Lack of spiritual development among young people.
    *]Refusal of some dioceses and orders to take older men.
    *]Cafeteria Catholics claiming to be good Catholics and let get away with it.
    *]Insufficient auxiliary bishops to permit the bishop to have more time (his plus his auxiliary bishops’) with his people.

    Many are called, few are hearing the phone ring.
Click to expand...

  1. Code:
    Thank you so much for this list. Maybe I should’ve called you personnally . It is obvious you are well read and I thank God for it. It is too bad we couldn’t replace mine with yours! God bless you for your help. (PS Would you like to work with me on my research of the effects of communism on society and religion as foretold by Fatima? 😉 )

    Blessings,
    Shoshana
 
40.png
Fortiterinre:
I own Goodbye, Good Men, and I have to say I am a little disappointed in it simply because Rose paints with too broad of a brush. If he had looked at the mid1980’s rather than the mid1990’s he would have found many problems, but some of the schools and dioceses he critiques were well into reform mode by the time the book was published. His fact-checking seemed a little lax.
Click to expand...
Code:
I have also read the book on the request of my spiritual director. He has no time to read. You may be right but he was ordained in 1972 and I asked him (I provided him with 12 pages of quotes from the book as there were many redundant statements throughout the book) whether there was some truth to the book. He replied yes. He said that if it wasn’t for gay men, there would hardly be any priests at all. My stand on this, whether I am right or wrong, is that priests have to take a vow of celibacy anyway. So whether one was heterosecual, homosexual, asexual, etc etc has no bearing for me. I realize there would be more temptation due to the confinement of said priests in a postulancy/novitiate. Nevetherless, there is a vow to uphold. A priest could have difficulties in his own sexuality being heterosexual, he also has to uphold his commitment also. But I have to admit I was shocked to hear that (many priests were gay). I knew there were some but many? In the book, Canada was mentioned a couple of times. Mount Cashel is a prime example.

But we have had only one ordination in 4 years. There is a post that says that she believes it is a chastisement. I tend to agree with her. Our lay people are more educated these days and much more cocky. They may have as much education as the pastor and they let that pastor know it. They may not even have that kind of education and there is still challenges on his authority. The priest does not seem to have the authority they used to have. We are stripping them of it. We think we know better. Thus, why would God send any priests our way? We do not deserve them. We need to learn that the priest is the alter Christus (even with all of their psychological problems). We also need to find the balance and realize they are also humans. They need down time, they need to laugh, cry and be friends. Apart from the fact of teaching and preaching the Faith in its fullness.

Blessings,
Shoshana
 
T.A.Stobie:
Many reasons, but none listed.

  1. *]Good bishops bring out more vocations just by strongly advocating the faith in their diocese.
    *]Societal bias against Catholic and priests.
    *]Small families and pressure to have grandchildren.
    *]Lack of Solid teaching from some pulpits.
    *]Some unsuitable seminaries.
    *]Lack of understanding of what priests truly do.
    *]Lack of spiritual development among young people.
    *]Refusal of some dioceses and orders to take older men.
    *]Cafeteria Catholics claiming to be good Catholics and let get away with it.
    *]Insufficient auxiliary bishops to permit the bishop to have more time (his plus his auxiliary bishops’) with his people.

    Many are called, few are hearing the phone ring.
Click to expand...

  1. Excellent List!! 👍 You are insightful and to be commended. I think you hit the nail on the head!!
    The lack of Family Prayer may also be a factor. Many Priests say that they had a strong family prayer life growing up and felt supported by this. I only have 1 son (3 daughters) so far, but I really hope that he or one of the girls has a vocation. I would feel blessed to be the parent of a priest or nun. That is why I am inviting our priests over for dinner and becoming more and more involved with the parish. Maybe, being around these people often will have an effect on my kids. 😃
 
  1. Misunderstanding of authentic participation of the laity, leading to a lack of appreciation of the unique and irreplaceable role of the priest.
  2. Lack of a Catholic subculture. The celibate priesthood is “a sign of contradiction” to the world. Unfortunately, ever since the assimilation of the 50’s and 60’s, even the most orthodox of Catholics have a much more secularized mindset than before that point, leaving the majority of Catholics living “of” rather than “in” the world.
    3). As previously stated, parents no longer seem open to priestly vocations. This is probably tied into #2, as parents see a celibate son as something aberrant/want more material success for their son/etc.
  3. Something which could hit us later: girl altar servers. The faith has always been female territory, no matter how much modern liberals decry its patriarchal structure. Yes, the priesthood is all male. But think back to childhood: I was educated by nuns, my mother taught me my prayers and led me in nightly prayer. Also, look around at the current Mass-going demographic - lots of women, not too many men. It used to be that serving at the altar was a sort of male-niche. Catholicism has normally been marked by division of labor, which extended to liturgy as well. Boys had their distinctive way of participating/contributing when so much of the Faith was passed on by women. Now, without the distinctiveness, boys have lost interest. They are no longer interested in a service that was often a gateway to the priesthood.
(#4 is controversial, but before anyone tries to call me a chauvinist, let me say it’s just a theory. Still, when I analyze my own past, it seems to jive, and I didn’t come up with it on my own.)
 
A previous post said that the examples of Rose’s book were dated to the period of the 1980’s and that reforms have been implemented in the 1990’s.

Well, that makes his book a good baseline for his next book, to tell us if anything has changed.

The late Bishop Kenneth Untener, or Ken as he introduced himself locally, ran the Saginaw diocese like he ran St. John’s seminary, at least in the broader sense of injecting a lot of liberalism and stirring up a lot of opposition to the Pope among the clergy and laity. That is his legacy for sure. A lot of people locally liked Untener for his pleasant mannerisms, but they don’t even know what hit them. They simply have been lured by his hedonistic modernism.

A previous post raises the perspective of seminary reformers “going back” to a previous discipline. Perhaps it’s more accurate to focus on a return to orthodoxy. Modern orthodoxy is not an oxymoron.

Search the web for “Untener” and you will find notes about his address in November, 2003. He said “there is no golden age of ecclesiology that we want to go back to” instead he wanted to reach forward to a new model of the Church (see Rose’s book). That is a Church model with minimal numbers not of priests but of “sacramental ministers” which is what they call our priests now in the Saginaw Diocese. Many of the parishes have lay, female parish administrators.

You know, if you subscribe to Untener’s logic, then there’s no golden age to return to, and then there must be no golden age at any stage of Church ecclesiology present or future. Great. In honor of Untener, let’s keep throwing out those models of ecclesiology. What’s left is orthodoxy and – shhh!! – the Bible.
 
I have to wonder if God is waiting to call young men until the liberal graybeards all have met God on their judgement day. They are the one’s that would be “teaching” these young men.

Also, the noise of society is deafening. Young men may not be hearing the call, and when they do they do not want to be called gay. It takes quite a young man to overcome all of this.
 
I read a magazine about Bl. Michael Twiza, a priest from Uganda. He was a misionary in his native Uganda, but thought it best to serve his people as a Trappist priest in England.

The Trappistine nuns opened a convent in Uganda a couple of years ago. It was built to accomodate 20 girls. The day it opened 200 girls came to apply!!

The reason why we lack vocations in the US is the Church. They don’t encourage vocations. They point to “selfish” reasons by lay people. What a cop-out!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top