Why is there a shortage of priests?

[distracted]

i enjoyed reading your post, especiall this part, which i think may be the #1 reason we don’t have enough priests:

We need to rediscover the Catholic faith which many discarded about 40 or so years ago,
God Bless
Scylla

it seems a lot of homilies are just… protestantized or worded so as not to offend any Protestants who might be there… What a bunch of @&^%… Protestants who attend Mass are looking for something… they are not looking for more of the same or they wouldn’t be there… but even if that weren’t the case… Why should priests or anyone be afraid to be fully (publicly) Catholic? It almost makes me suspect that they haven’t studied things well enoguh… their formaiton wasn’t completel somehow… Or maybe they just don’t know what i know… How horrible one’s life can be without Catholicism!!

 

[JReducation]

i enjoyed reading your post, especiall this part, which i think may be the #1 reason we don’t have enough priests:

it seems a lot of homilies are just… protestantized or worded so as not to offend any Protestants who might be there… What a bunch of @&^%… Protestants who attend Mass are looking for something… they are not looking for more of the same or they wouldn’t be there… but even if that weren’t the case… Why should priests or anyone be afraid to be fully (publicly) Catholic? It almost makes me suspect that they haven’t studied things well enoguh… their formaiton wasn’t completel somehow… Or maybe they just don’t know what i know… How horrible one’s life can be without Catholicism!!

I believe you also need to consider Perfectae Caritatis more closely. There are many priests out there who are no longer involved in traditional parish ministry, because it presents a conflict with the charism of their religious community. This meant that several thousand priests around the world were pulled our of parishes little by little. What was done was that the older ones were not replaced by younger ones. The parishes were surrendered back to the bishops.

In the past, bishops depended on religious orders to supply priests for parishes. They can no longer do that, because of the mandate of Perfectae Caritatis and the Constitutions of the new religious communities that have been founded since Vatican II. Those communities that have priests, are not parish priests. There are hundreds of those priests around who live the life of a religious brother, because they joined their respective community to do just that.

Don’t leave out this important factor or you may end up misunderstanding a significant key in the situation. Religious communities have to return to their sources. That’s a mandate of the Church, even if it means sacrificing parishes. The religious life takes precedence.

JR