Father Z looks at the demographic winter of the priesthood:
But remember… the problem is the Traditional Latin Mass! If only we could shut it down, the seminaries would fill up again.
Right?
Time, the inexorable “biological solution” is going to grind our presbyterates into the dust to which we all return. It is happening fast now, dear readers.
In 2016 I wrote that a priest friend, during my trip to his southern US diocese, said that they were going to lose 50% of their priests to retirement or death in five years. It will only get worse there and elsewhere.
Ah, the Church of Rahner’s dreams! It’s a new Pentecost!
Snark aside, unleash the TLM and every other aspect of the Vetus Ordo and you’ll soon find that there isn’t room enough in seminaries.
Dire numbers.
Loss of 50% in 5 years.
38 dioceses ordained ZERO.
Delere reprimere fallere falsis nominibus unitatem ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
A priest friend told me that this year there would be NO priests ordained for the Archdiocese of New York.
That didn’t just “happen”, unforeseen out of the blue. “Wow! Look what happened to us!” No.
It was engineered. This is what the Church of Rahner and Co. wanted all along. That, and THIS: From LifeSite – “Austrian bishop hangs banner of nude trans activist over main altar for Lent“. Really. Get it?
Undermine the priesthood from within and you accomplish so much more than the Protestant Revolt could ever, and that was, at heart, an attack on the priesthood.
I saw a video from the “live Mass stream” of a regular diocesan parish. It was for a morning TLM. Interesting detail: there were a bunch of (I’m told) seminarians present in choir dress. After Mass there was Exposition of a goodly length. Checking the parish’s bulletin, I found that, during Exposition, the priest was “in the box” hearing confessions. This was followed by Benediction. The number of seminarians for that diocese that chose to be at that Mass was, if the diocesan webpage is any indication, more than half of their total seminarians for the diocese.
Go here to read the rest. The Vatican II cult has been weighed in the balance and found wanting. Time to return to real Catholicism and end Catholic Lite.
Well, with the lack of marriage, the socially approved existence of the pill and abortion, the death of the traditional family, the loss of Catholic schools (and homilies) that actually taught the faith (sin, suffering, last things) and those empty pews holding but frail old people–will we need many priests?
When the faith merely mimics the social justice chants of the secular left, there really isn’t perceived much need for young people to embrace it.
Maybe when the left gets through with its present planned destruction of all that is of God, and all that is good, it will again rise from the ashes. Only God knows.
Layperson: Is contraception a sin?
Priest: It’s just a little sin.
Layperson: Doesn’t NFP work?
Priest: Abstinence during fertility? That is impossible.
Layperson: Shouldn’t we believe what the Church Teaches?
Priest: Nah.
Layperson: Shouldn’t we be open to Life? Really think about another?
Priest: Breed like rabbits?
Layperson: We can’t afford the 15K per child per year for Catholic School. Many aren’t Catholic. We believe in what the Church Teaches, use NFP and have 4 children.
Diocese: We’re Catholic because we teach. Catholic schools are our future. NFP people are weird. Nobody believes in what the Church Teaches.
Diocese/Priest: Why do so few believe in the Real Presence?
Why are there so few seminarians?
No ordinations in NYC. If that’s not an indictment of Dolan’s job in NYC nothing is. NYC desperately needs another Bishop like “Dagger” John Hughes or least O’Connor.
Statistics on the numbers of marriages, ordinations, conversions and baptisms are still scrupulously kept at both the parish and diocesean levels. What would it look like if that information played a part in determining which priest became a bishop, and which bishoup became an archbishop, and who got a red hat?
As it is now, it seems that a man could let his parish quietly implode demographically, but as long as he sits on the right committees, is friends with the right churchmen, and plays a good game of golf, he stands a solid chance of being being tapped for a mitre.
Fabian Bruskewitz was bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska from 1992 to 2012, and in that time he so reversed the demographic trend in his diocese that he had to do that rarest of all things in the Church today— he had to build a seminary.
Were his brother bishops clamoring for his secrets to attracting and retaining Catholic faithful, converts, and priestly vocations? No, they were not— mostly because he made no secret that it was all about the forthright and uncompromising proclamation and defense of unchanging Catholic truths.
Bishop Bruskewitz was retired without ever being seriously considered for a metropolitan see or a leadership role in the USCCB. He was politely ignored until he was no longer around to shame his fellow bishops with his show of competence.
The mindset of our bishops seems to be less centered on growing the Church and proclaiming Her eternal truths, and more about managing Her supposedly inevitable decline and not rocking the boat for one’s superiors. Reversing the Church’s oncoming demographic winter is not a priority.
Great summary, David WS.
Contradictions piled on contradictions.
“See, and see again, but they do not see.” Mk. 4:12