The priest shortage is man made, and not a God ordained calamity.
Kicking the Can Down the Road is Rarely a Good Strategy
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
I’ve thought about writing a letter to my Bishop on how girl altar servers, women lectors, an army of “extra-“ ordinary lay ministers and offering high school theology knowledges to only those who can afford it -are all discouraging vocations to the priesthood.
But then I thought: “why bother?” He probably likes things this way. And he probably wouldn’t have the nerve to correct things even if he didn’t.
So, while I still attend NO Mass, I try to attend TLM.
I think a significant part of priest shortage can be laid at the foot of the Lavender Mafia. They did everything they could to turn it into a “Boys Club” and turned good men away that might have otherwise become priests because they had wanted to have nothing to do with it. I do see change coming. We have no female altar servers. It’s encouraging to watch a five or six year old boy struggle to hold up the Sunday missal while Father does various prayers during Mass. God will provide.
My parents’ parish in PA is a less geographically extreme version of this. The priest is Indian. He’s great, no disrespect to him, but it’s a sign of being mission territory. My brother saw this life and instead of joining the diocesan seminary, he’s in formation with the Benedictines.
IMO, the primary driver of the shortage among the diocesan priesthood has been the decline of Catholic practice. The bishops made it worse by having their vocations directors screen out orthodox Catholics and by refusing to remove sexual deviants from formation programs. I’ll wager the female acolytes, the mobs of redundant eucharistic ministers, and making use of a lectrix routinely rather than occasionally exacerbated the issues as well. If we had a well-ordered service, you’d see in the sanctuary a priest, one or two (male) acolytes, a lector, perhaps a deacon, and a cantor or schola; in the balcony, you’d see a (woman’s) choir.
==
My impression has been that the religious orders undertook intramural ‘reforms’ which wrecked them as social organisms. Some time ago, I saw an account of a one time postulant of the breakdown of a community of IHM sisters in Los Angeles. Pretty distressing. My wager would be that the men’s orders saw rapid degradation when a critical mass of homosexuals was made manifest.
We could start a wave of restoration by simply assigning every as-yet-living orthodox priest, who was exiled to the infamous “St. Luke’s” in the past 20 years or so, as pastor of a parish where vocations are few. These men have effectively been “disappeared” by the Useless CCB, but they must still be around somewhere. We had a traditionally-oriented priest disappeared from our small parish in NW Illinois about ten years ago, and the diocese won’t tell anyone where he is, although he is still listed as a Diocesan priest on their website. Curious, indeed. 🤔
Diocesan clergy ad:
Serve the people of God, in this vital spiritual role. Good job security. Salary, pension.
Irregular hours, but many days and evenings free.
Reality:
Serve people of God, as administrative chores and paperwork allow.
Job security, unless you prioritize the spiritual over the administrative. Expect to be moved randomly and often at the cost of any progress or relationships established.
Pension subject to whether it has been mismanaged (or stolen) by diocese.
Administrative shenanigans means position is actually full time, plus overtime. Bosses are lousy and their weakness make the cranky and bossy of the parish your de facto bosses.
For the live of God! Who would apply??
Only for the love of God.
Kindly,
Yes, it’s unlikely a healthy normal masculine man will have a desire to join a gay club.. and if he does join… he’s likely to find himself alone, without friends nor support from his Bishop.
We really need, “how we need!”, to support good Priests.
Bruised is right, we overwork our priests. Anecdotally, we’re losing a lot of vocations in their first decade of the priesthood. This means some combination of: people being ordained who shouldn’t be, seminarians not being properly prepared for the priestly life, young priests not being supported.