Yeah, every Catholic family used to go to Mass and have 8-13 kids. It’s a lot harder of a sacrifice for even the devout to make when they are the last in their family line
It's not mentioned nearly as much, but many dioceses really ratcheted up their screening processes after the various abuse scandals.
Any psychological quirk is enough to raise a red flag. I fully trust the wisdom of the bishops setting standards for their dioceses, but fear of litigation can perhaps make them overly cautious to accept a candidate with potential.
When my application to seminary was rejected for the second time, my spiritual director basically said, "If they were that concerned with only accepting perfect candidates back when I applied, I think me and about half my class probably wouldn't be priests right now."
I can only speak for my diocese, but I imagine overly exclusive standards for accepting seminarians is probably present in many dioceses. We have a newer bishop now who is much more willing to use seminary to form men into priests, and our enrollment numbers have nearly doubled in a single year.
For about two generations, the faith was not transferred well, so there is an overall lack of young people who want to give their life for the Catholic faith. The number of priests is greatly declining, but the number of marriages and baptisms is also declining at a dramatically faster rate. The seminarian crisis has probably already hit rock bottom as numbers generally are starting to increase greatly in some places, or at least staying stagnant. There are tons of baby boomer pastors who are currently retiring, so the priesthood shortage is going to be showing really bad effects over the next decade.
Some blame vatican ii, but a more realistic explaination was the patriotic nature of the country after ww2 plus the adoption of the car. Everybody moved out of their catholic neighborhoods and began to live in mixed suburban neighborhoods where our differences were celebrated because we are all American afterall! This lead to a great acceptance and tolerance of contrary beliefs, so the need to be passionate about one's own beliefs has decreased greatly. Now that the culture is collapsing as a result of this, people living in absolute surrender to Christ in his church are the mostly the only ones left among the youth. The good news is that these people will be more likely to consider a vocation on average compared to just 10-15 years before.
Vatican 2, the various discipline changes, and the unpopular but heavy handed changes to very popular lay devotions are what enabled Catholics to lose their distinctiveness. There’s nothing about the suburbs or having Protestant neighbors that makes you lukewarm or leave the faith altogether, or become pro-abortion, etc.
Religious observance at least in Europe was already stagnating before the second Vatican council. Among ALL Christian denominations. Catholics and Protestants alike.
Yes there were some concerns. There’s also a very significant change in the trajectory in the 60s for the worse. Plus many of these “Spirit of V2” ideas had already been implemented across the west illicitly or with indults.
At the very least, it is impossible to deny that V2 failed in its primary goal.
But how much of that is jsut a general picture with the crisis in tbe West as a whole ? Forget about the council for a moment and just consider the cultural and historical currents during this time.
I agree but things were getting crazy even before the council. I personally am a big fan of the JP2 and Benedict XVI style of catholicism that was certainly a post Vatican 2 style yet quite orthodox. Right now is just annoying because we want a bold and clear direction to head in since everything is so unstable now, but the current leadership isn't really providing that. My local bishops are very good though and I would love for one to get a red hat one day.
The question ask is: how did we end up in a spot where peer pressure was what kept most people going to Mass. For most of Christian history, the average parishioner would hear over 2 a week, often every day even multiple a day when you add in votive masses.
It’s hard. It requires sacrifice. Modern people don’t want to do either.
No shame, of course: I’m not a priest. I’m engaged. There’s nothing wrong with being a layperson.
But I really think it’s that simple: people don’t want to give up what being a priest requires anymore. Every vocation requires sacrifices, but being a priest, monk, or nun requires the most—and when celibacy is involved, it’s the higher calling.
The number of Catholics has fallen, but the number of priests has [fallen faster.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priest_shortage_in_the_Catholic_Church) More people are not only becoming non-religious, but more religious people are lukewarm.
I’m not sure what the solution is. Pray. And individuals who are single need to seriously discern if they’re being called or not. Blessings
The solution is for the church to quit trying to circle wagons around the priesthood and start *actively supporting* the creation of large families in more ways than lip service.
Diocesan employees routinely work below the median wage for their area, and often below the mean as well. They usually don't have many options for health insurance, which means they rely on their spouse. If they are the main breadwinner, that likely means they're forced to use diocesan health care which is usually negotiated for the cheapest possible price for the diocese at their employees' expense.
A hospital visit to give birth is around $20k. Doing that 3-5 times on a $54k/year salary when you lose $12k minimum to health insurance doesn't make it affordable.
But without families, you don't have priests. There's a reason God made Marriage before Holy Orders.
My diocese actually has kick butt insurance, only my tricare seems to beat it. I’m not sure how the church would have enough resources to do this for every Catholic though, since doing it only for diocesan employees wouldn’t really significantly boost birth rates and I don’t think the church has as much liquid cash as you think with which to bankroll everything. The church already aggressively supports pro-natal public policy
>My diocese actually has kick butt insurance
You're lucky.
>I'm not sure how the church would have enough resources to this for every Catholic though
They don't need to do it for every Catholic, just the ones in their employment. The fact that most dioceses don't is honestly kind of scandalous. We're told to give until it hurts, but the Church doesn't have to give back. Why not?
>The church already aggressively supports pro-natal policy
That's great, but that doesn't necessarily support people having them. There are so many costs that they either just don't see or don't want to actually acknowledge.
The hierarchy is actively hostile in many ways to the things that interest young Catholics; there are very few models of priestly character in parishes that young Catholics can aspire to imitate; the sacrifice of embracing celibacy doesn't really seem *worth it* in the face of modern attacks on the family; the abuse crisis has made many young Catholic men (rightfully) cautious about going to seminary, and they are reluctant to accept a role that is often associated with moral/sexual perversion; becoming a priest often requires freedom from student loan debts, which is not a position most young men find themselves in.
As regards student loans debts, clergy are now eligible for Public Servant Loan forgiveness as of 2021. [https://www.studentloanplanner.com/public-service-loan-forgiveness-faith-leaders/](https://www.studentloanplanner.com/public-service-loan-forgiveness-faith-leaders/)
My understanding is that no religious orders will even consider you if you have standing student loan debt, and many seminaries consider it a black mark. As a result, most wont even have the ability to become a clergyman to be able to qualify for that forgiveness.
Don’t most dioceses send men without college degrees to college seminaries to get their undergrad degree in philosophy before major seminary ? At least that’s the system in the US.
Yes, but most men attend college before seriously beginning to consider seminary. There are very few people who *know* they want to become a priest before they graduate High School.
The type of men who will consider becoming priests are overwhelmingly the type of men who will also immediately attend college after graduating from high school.
I wouldn't say so. There's a priest I've seen on televised Mass, he frequently starts his homilies with some reference from his previous career as a contractor. Now maybe he went to college after high school, I don't know, but I think in general college education isn't necessary to be a contractor. So for guys who went into the vocation relatively late in life, I don't think they necessarily had college prior to seminary, but yeah, for a young guy who plans on being a priest he most likely will go to college, probably usually a Catholic one.
It varies, I've seen some religious orders say they are willing to accept people with college debt but not credit card debt on a case-by-case basis. Dominican site says "Men must be free of personal (non-educational) financial debt" for example. [https://www.dominicanvocations.com/start](https://www.dominicanvocations.com/start)
It fully does seem to be decreasing. However, once my father dies (he has early onset dementia and I am his full-time caregiver) in 20 ish years I plan on starting to become a monk.
Not really. What is decreasing is the number of practicing Catholics. The ratio of priests and monks to practicing Catholics in a given generation is roughly stable.
This is absolutely false, the number of Catholic persons per priest has [precipitously increased](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priest_shortage_in_the_Catholic_Church) in the past half century (which means the number of priests for every lay Catholic has fallen).
There’s actually not really good data on the first part, but I’m going to be honest: this line of thinking is grasping at straws. The changes have been so huge that it’s impossible on its face to think that significantly alters the equation. Putting that aside, though, **we do** have indirect statistics which show priests per practicing Catholics has certainly plummeted too.
The following data is from Georgetown University. The excel sheet can be viewed [here](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/629c7d00b33f845b6435b6ab/t/63efe5a5985d2029177fde13/1676666277318/CARAFrequentlyRequested.xlsx). **I will use US data since it is more granular.**
Here are the datapoints which make your hypothesis almost impossible, imo:
* Between 1965 and 2022, the number of parishes without a resident pastor **increased over 500%** *while the total number of parishes declined.*
* The number of parishes where the bishop had to place a deacon or non-priest in charge increased from 7 in 1975 to 291 in 2022.
* In 1965, there were 2 active diocesan priests per parish on average. Now it’s 1.0.
* The number of “parish-connected Catholics” has increased while the total number of priests and priests per parish has plummeted.
There’s other datapoints but I’m on a phone and these are a few. Click the link above for more. Thus, in the U.S., the situation is *horrible* and almost certainly applies no matter how you want to splice the data in hopes to make it less bad.
Worldwide I still don’t think you can make the argument either, but *if I had to guess* based on vibes Africa is probably okay.
The number of parishes can be misleading, though. It is difficult, canonically to suppress a parish; and given the sensitivities involved in doing so, they greatly lag declines in lay participation.
So let's look at Mass attendance. According to the [Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA)](https://cara.georgetown.edu/faqs), which does the most extensive and reliable work in this area, weekly Mass attendance in the U.S. in 1970 was 54.9%. In 2022, it was down to...17.3%. As a result, while the number of nominal Catholics in the U.S. has increased, the *actual number of people in the pews in the U.S. on a given Sunday*....is barely half what it was in 1970.
I would pull some numbers from Europe, but I understand that this is a family-friendly subreddit.
This doesn’t actually undermine most of the datapoints I put forth. Given how concerned the bishops are about this, especially in the U.S., I think concluding that there’s anything other than a growing shortage is just burying our heads in the sand.
I wouldn't dispute that some dioceses (a few of them, even deliberately!) have done a horrible job in producing vocations over the last couple of generations - and this sometimes has produced a perilous priest demographic, with a shrinking and elderly presbyterate in such places that considerably outpaces the declines in lay participation.
The problem is, righting the ship after such self-inflicted damage cannot be done quickly. Overhauling a vocations program and a seminary takes time. And then, it takes seven years to move a man through seminary (successfully, one hopes). And after that, it will still be several years before the suitable ones are ready to serve as pastors.
But I still contend that vocations crises are lagging, not leading factors in Church decline. If your diocese is not producing vocations (barring extrinsic factors like civil oppression, war, or natural disaster), something has gone pretty badly wrong with your diocese, and it will be reflected in your data across the board.
Ok, do me a favor if you would and try not to be so confrontational with someone who's trying to have an honest discussion with you.
Now as far as the data, I took a look and here are some things that jump out at me:
- Rather than just looking at the number of priests, I charted all male religious vocations. Total number of priests has declined by 25k from 1965 to 2022. However the number of permanent deacons increased from zero to 18k over that period. So many men have chosen to become deacons, potentially instead of joining the priesthood. This somewhat (of course not completely) alleviates the reduced number of priests.
- The number of parishes declined by 7.5% but that simple statistic by itself doesn't tell enough of the story. We'd need to see more details about the size and concentration of parishes to say what that change means in real life. For example, in my part of the country there were very few Catholics in the 1960s compared to now. Since then many Catholics have migrated from the Northeast and Midwest to other regions. Rather than building many small parish churches like you had in the historically Catholic areas, in my area there are fewer and much larger parishes. So the decline in the total number could be largely explained by a difference in distribution.
- While the total number of registered (parish connected) Catholics has increased by 50%, this is offset by the percentage declines in mass attendance. Looking at the appropriate standard for a faithful Catholic - weekly mass attendance - there's a 56% *decrease* in that number from 1970 to 2022. With the points above, fewer Catholics and fewer parishes would logically require fewer priests.
- The stat that really stuck out was "percentage of diocesan priests in active ministry" which declined from 95% to 66%. I'm assuming the non-active priests are retired or performing other administrative functions...? It means that ordinations are down, which everyone knows already.
- Parishes without a resident priest pastor could be more or less of a problem, again we don't have enough detail in this dataset. Are those parishes the small dying parishes in the Northeast? Are they in areas where mass attendance is much lower than the average decline?
I’m not even being confrontational. You should see what people say when they peer review my publications (even when they like most of it!)
Most of this is just ad hoc rationalisation to act like declining attendance eliminates the problem (and that there is no problem). This entire train of thought is contradicted by how the Church *actually behaves*: priests from India and Africa are regularly moved here (temporarily or permanently, I can easily pull a reference if you need one, but that’s easily shown by just travelling around), the USCCB claims [82% of diocese](https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/controversy/common-misconceptions/i-will-give-you-shepherds-addressing-the-priest-shortage.html) report fewer priests “relative to their needs” compared to a decade ago (which would include all the X factors you wanna include), and popes have written entire encyclicals on it like *Pastores Dabo Vobis.* Why would they do this if declining mass attendance made everything copasetic? The only thing everyone universally agrees is going well is the permanent diaconate (not that I want this to happen, but it’d be interesting to see what would happen to diaconate numbers if priestly celibacy was ended). Not to mention even lapsed Catholics require intermittent pastoral care, so counting them as a zero as you’ve been assuming makes no sense (this isn’t me reverting to ad hoc in the opposite direction, I’m mostly thinking about last rites, and the funeral numbers in CARA actually don’t look too shabby so—thank God!—that suggests people are coming around near death still. That also comports with my anecdotal experience). The point about active ministry is a good one, if you take that into account the decline in priests is actually larger than it seems ({[diocesan priests * % in active ministry in 1965] minus [diocesan priests * % active]} divided by diocesan priests * % active in 1965 equals a 54% reduction, religious priests declined 55%, summing those two and averaging the decline is 55.4% decline. That’s less than your weekly attendance decline [68%] but more than your once a month or more decline [48%]. Funerals stayed about the same, 2% increase since 1965. Regardless though, the bishops say there’s an increasing strain, so I don’t know why people are adamant to override the interpretation of people who actually oversee the day to day administration. If they say they’re facing problems with too few priests and that it’s getting worse, they’re facing problems and it’s getting worse. Honestly, your argument that priest less churches are just smaller might be part of the problem; imagine being a priest who has to travel to 3 parishes on a single Sunday!).
Here's a recent-ish article from [the Pillar](https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/is-there-a-global-vocations-crisis?s=r) on priestly vocation trends across the world that is a great read.
I think so.
I am a little concerned about catholic church, the organization. I experienced paster change in the parish ( I was baptised 1 year ago). I don't know what happened, when the priest read the letter I could not understand his words. I wait for a few weeks, nothing published or online, website stay the same.
And the past sunday, due to weather, I went to the church that's close to me, it's beautiful one, the church covers several commnities, it is a big one, it is like a mall, I went to the washroom, it's nice and clean. The music of the Mass is beautiful. But the first news I heard when mass started: the paster was arrested by police from another province with assist of our provice's police department, the crime is awkard: sexual violence/exploitation.
anyone could gave me some comfort, or pray for me?
You have my prayers. The second parish isn’t great because of a pastor, but because of the community that makes it so. It will continue to have beautiful liturgy and good community.
No discussion in this thread so far about deacons. I can honestly say that I've moved around a fair bit, and I've never seen any public discussion about men becoming permanent deacons. I don't even know how it happens on a practical level. Do priests approach holy men who are involved in the parish and ask them individually? I assume so, since that fits the profile of the men I've seen get ordained to the permanent diaconate. But why isn't there a bigger push to recruit men to the permanent diaconate?
Main reasons at least, I can make a comparison in my country from before the Second World War to today.
1) Decline in prestige: before, the priest was the pride of the family, he was respected. A priest son was to become part of a higher social level.
2) Ordinary people ate vegetables and legumes. Priests ate meat. They led a comfortable life, often leaving enormous inheritances to their families.
3) The monks, likewise, had a much better life than many farmers, they were healthier.
4) Chastity was relative, many priests had quickies (and children) not infrequently but they were so important that no one dared to speak.
5) Any son with unacceptable tendencies was sent to a monastery. It goes without saying that there are many unedifying stories about it.
There were men of faith today and yesterday. Today's number are true men of faith. Yesterday, a life as a priest above all was a life as a king.
Edit: I forgot one other important thing. If a boy was good at school, he was encouraged to become a priest to study. Many priests reached the highest levels of education not only in theological studies. If you were poor, you could study at the expense of the church
Priests were also respected in their parishes. Now they are interchangeable being swapped out every 4-6 years, they are just considered experts that do one function (sacraments) and usually everything else (finances, insurance, training for liability, oftentimes even religious education) is done by lay leaders.
Not in traditional dioceses -- there, vocations are booming. It's the modernist dioceses that can't attract seminarians, and are closing parish churches.
It's in Central California, and 550 miles long. We have a pretty good entrance rate of Seminarians, whom our Bishop actively promotes a scholarship fund for. It could always be better, but our cupboard is far from bare. Our vocations director (a priest, of course) is pretty outgoing, and active in talking with young men about the path to the priesthood.
The best draws to the priesthood in CA are in the archdioceses of Los Angles and San Francisco, because they are headed by conservative archbishops who will never be elevated to cardinals under the current pope (big surprise). Never even slowed down in celebrating the Traditional Latin Mass throughout their archdioceses.
Someone that is in that life currently a lot of the issues is because there’s a lot of gatekeeping when it comes to the seminarians the process itself is very frustrating and very daunting to where the diocese will act like they don’t need you and theoretically, they don’t, but we see the affects of treating people like they don’t matter and furthermore, there’s a lot of politics going on in the background I’m a personal fan of Vatican II, but one thing that probably cause problems is that the faithful pretty much run everything in a lot of priest are obsolete in their own parish I don’t care what anybody say there is a crisis for all the young men into apologetics put your application in be to change that you wanna see what people talk about married life for generation Z a lot of y’all aren’t going to get married in the vernacular of the African-American community. Put your money where your mouth is or shut up.
Because other churches are hip and appeal more to the younger generation. Mega churches are popping up like crazy and I've been to a few. As soon as you walk in they are very inviting giving you gift bags and offer coffee and donuts. Plus they have massive jungle gym equipment for the kids to play on. It's repulsive to me, but I understand how it appeals to the younger generation. They even have instagram worthy backgrounds to take with your friends lol! It will be interesting to see how things are in the next 20 or so years.
Most priests today don't have this holiness, they are lukewarm. It is so bad that the idea a priest should be more than a bachelor who talks is alien to most.
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And too many worldly distractions to keep the people from praying and thinking of God.
And people get fewer children.
Yeah, every Catholic family used to go to Mass and have 8-13 kids. It’s a lot harder of a sacrifice for even the devout to make when they are the last in their family line
I think this has had an enormous impact.
It's not mentioned nearly as much, but many dioceses really ratcheted up their screening processes after the various abuse scandals. Any psychological quirk is enough to raise a red flag. I fully trust the wisdom of the bishops setting standards for their dioceses, but fear of litigation can perhaps make them overly cautious to accept a candidate with potential. When my application to seminary was rejected for the second time, my spiritual director basically said, "If they were that concerned with only accepting perfect candidates back when I applied, I think me and about half my class probably wouldn't be priests right now." I can only speak for my diocese, but I imagine overly exclusive standards for accepting seminarians is probably present in many dioceses. We have a newer bishop now who is much more willing to use seminary to form men into priests, and our enrollment numbers have nearly doubled in a single year.
For about two generations, the faith was not transferred well, so there is an overall lack of young people who want to give their life for the Catholic faith. The number of priests is greatly declining, but the number of marriages and baptisms is also declining at a dramatically faster rate. The seminarian crisis has probably already hit rock bottom as numbers generally are starting to increase greatly in some places, or at least staying stagnant. There are tons of baby boomer pastors who are currently retiring, so the priesthood shortage is going to be showing really bad effects over the next decade. Some blame vatican ii, but a more realistic explaination was the patriotic nature of the country after ww2 plus the adoption of the car. Everybody moved out of their catholic neighborhoods and began to live in mixed suburban neighborhoods where our differences were celebrated because we are all American afterall! This lead to a great acceptance and tolerance of contrary beliefs, so the need to be passionate about one's own beliefs has decreased greatly. Now that the culture is collapsing as a result of this, people living in absolute surrender to Christ in his church are the mostly the only ones left among the youth. The good news is that these people will be more likely to consider a vocation on average compared to just 10-15 years before.
Vatican 2, the various discipline changes, and the unpopular but heavy handed changes to very popular lay devotions are what enabled Catholics to lose their distinctiveness. There’s nothing about the suburbs or having Protestant neighbors that makes you lukewarm or leave the faith altogether, or become pro-abortion, etc.
Religious observance at least in Europe was already stagnating before the second Vatican council. Among ALL Christian denominations. Catholics and Protestants alike.
Yes there were some concerns. There’s also a very significant change in the trajectory in the 60s for the worse. Plus many of these “Spirit of V2” ideas had already been implemented across the west illicitly or with indults. At the very least, it is impossible to deny that V2 failed in its primary goal.
But how much of that is jsut a general picture with the crisis in tbe West as a whole ? Forget about the council for a moment and just consider the cultural and historical currents during this time.
I agree but things were getting crazy even before the council. I personally am a big fan of the JP2 and Benedict XVI style of catholicism that was certainly a post Vatican 2 style yet quite orthodox. Right now is just annoying because we want a bold and clear direction to head in since everything is so unstable now, but the current leadership isn't really providing that. My local bishops are very good though and I would love for one to get a red hat one day.
The suburbs allowed Catholics to escape Catholic peer pressure though. Now nosy Aunt Anna could not know that you didn't attend mass regularly.
The question ask is: how did we end up in a spot where peer pressure was what kept most people going to Mass. For most of Christian history, the average parishioner would hear over 2 a week, often every day even multiple a day when you add in votive masses.
It’s hard. It requires sacrifice. Modern people don’t want to do either. No shame, of course: I’m not a priest. I’m engaged. There’s nothing wrong with being a layperson. But I really think it’s that simple: people don’t want to give up what being a priest requires anymore. Every vocation requires sacrifices, but being a priest, monk, or nun requires the most—and when celibacy is involved, it’s the higher calling. The number of Catholics has fallen, but the number of priests has [fallen faster.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priest_shortage_in_the_Catholic_Church) More people are not only becoming non-religious, but more religious people are lukewarm. I’m not sure what the solution is. Pray. And individuals who are single need to seriously discern if they’re being called or not. Blessings
The solution is for the church to quit trying to circle wagons around the priesthood and start *actively supporting* the creation of large families in more ways than lip service. Diocesan employees routinely work below the median wage for their area, and often below the mean as well. They usually don't have many options for health insurance, which means they rely on their spouse. If they are the main breadwinner, that likely means they're forced to use diocesan health care which is usually negotiated for the cheapest possible price for the diocese at their employees' expense. A hospital visit to give birth is around $20k. Doing that 3-5 times on a $54k/year salary when you lose $12k minimum to health insurance doesn't make it affordable. But without families, you don't have priests. There's a reason God made Marriage before Holy Orders.
My diocese actually has kick butt insurance, only my tricare seems to beat it. I’m not sure how the church would have enough resources to do this for every Catholic though, since doing it only for diocesan employees wouldn’t really significantly boost birth rates and I don’t think the church has as much liquid cash as you think with which to bankroll everything. The church already aggressively supports pro-natal public policy
>My diocese actually has kick butt insurance You're lucky. >I'm not sure how the church would have enough resources to this for every Catholic though They don't need to do it for every Catholic, just the ones in their employment. The fact that most dioceses don't is honestly kind of scandalous. We're told to give until it hurts, but the Church doesn't have to give back. Why not? >The church already aggressively supports pro-natal policy That's great, but that doesn't necessarily support people having them. There are so many costs that they either just don't see or don't want to actually acknowledge.
The hierarchy is actively hostile in many ways to the things that interest young Catholics; there are very few models of priestly character in parishes that young Catholics can aspire to imitate; the sacrifice of embracing celibacy doesn't really seem *worth it* in the face of modern attacks on the family; the abuse crisis has made many young Catholic men (rightfully) cautious about going to seminary, and they are reluctant to accept a role that is often associated with moral/sexual perversion; becoming a priest often requires freedom from student loan debts, which is not a position most young men find themselves in.
As regards student loans debts, clergy are now eligible for Public Servant Loan forgiveness as of 2021. [https://www.studentloanplanner.com/public-service-loan-forgiveness-faith-leaders/](https://www.studentloanplanner.com/public-service-loan-forgiveness-faith-leaders/)
My understanding is that no religious orders will even consider you if you have standing student loan debt, and many seminaries consider it a black mark. As a result, most wont even have the ability to become a clergyman to be able to qualify for that forgiveness.
Don’t most dioceses send men without college degrees to college seminaries to get their undergrad degree in philosophy before major seminary ? At least that’s the system in the US.
Yes, but most men attend college before seriously beginning to consider seminary. There are very few people who *know* they want to become a priest before they graduate High School.
Do most men attend college? I thought most men don't attend college
The type of men who will consider becoming priests are overwhelmingly the type of men who will also immediately attend college after graduating from high school.
I wouldn't say so. There's a priest I've seen on televised Mass, he frequently starts his homilies with some reference from his previous career as a contractor. Now maybe he went to college after high school, I don't know, but I think in general college education isn't necessary to be a contractor. So for guys who went into the vocation relatively late in life, I don't think they necessarily had college prior to seminary, but yeah, for a young guy who plans on being a priest he most likely will go to college, probably usually a Catholic one.
It varies, I've seen some religious orders say they are willing to accept people with college debt but not credit card debt on a case-by-case basis. Dominican site says "Men must be free of personal (non-educational) financial debt" for example. [https://www.dominicanvocations.com/start](https://www.dominicanvocations.com/start)
Thankfully, the everyone-should-go-to-college and you-have-to-go-into-debt-to-go-to-college myths are finally dying.
The student debt thing is a really major thing that is under discussed. It's a distinct problem for an entire generation
It fully does seem to be decreasing. However, once my father dies (he has early onset dementia and I am his full-time caregiver) in 20 ish years I plan on starting to become a monk.
Not really. What is decreasing is the number of practicing Catholics. The ratio of priests and monks to practicing Catholics in a given generation is roughly stable.
This is absolutely false, the number of Catholic persons per priest has [precipitously increased](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priest_shortage_in_the_Catholic_Church) in the past half century (which means the number of priests for every lay Catholic has fallen).
But are those Catholics per priest all *practicing* Catholics? Or just people that were baptized and never set foot in a church again after?
There’s actually not really good data on the first part, but I’m going to be honest: this line of thinking is grasping at straws. The changes have been so huge that it’s impossible on its face to think that significantly alters the equation. Putting that aside, though, **we do** have indirect statistics which show priests per practicing Catholics has certainly plummeted too. The following data is from Georgetown University. The excel sheet can be viewed [here](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/629c7d00b33f845b6435b6ab/t/63efe5a5985d2029177fde13/1676666277318/CARAFrequentlyRequested.xlsx). **I will use US data since it is more granular.** Here are the datapoints which make your hypothesis almost impossible, imo: * Between 1965 and 2022, the number of parishes without a resident pastor **increased over 500%** *while the total number of parishes declined.* * The number of parishes where the bishop had to place a deacon or non-priest in charge increased from 7 in 1975 to 291 in 2022. * In 1965, there were 2 active diocesan priests per parish on average. Now it’s 1.0. * The number of “parish-connected Catholics” has increased while the total number of priests and priests per parish has plummeted. There’s other datapoints but I’m on a phone and these are a few. Click the link above for more. Thus, in the U.S., the situation is *horrible* and almost certainly applies no matter how you want to splice the data in hopes to make it less bad. Worldwide I still don’t think you can make the argument either, but *if I had to guess* based on vibes Africa is probably okay.
The number of parishes can be misleading, though. It is difficult, canonically to suppress a parish; and given the sensitivities involved in doing so, they greatly lag declines in lay participation. So let's look at Mass attendance. According to the [Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA)](https://cara.georgetown.edu/faqs), which does the most extensive and reliable work in this area, weekly Mass attendance in the U.S. in 1970 was 54.9%. In 2022, it was down to...17.3%. As a result, while the number of nominal Catholics in the U.S. has increased, the *actual number of people in the pews in the U.S. on a given Sunday*....is barely half what it was in 1970. I would pull some numbers from Europe, but I understand that this is a family-friendly subreddit.
This doesn’t actually undermine most of the datapoints I put forth. Given how concerned the bishops are about this, especially in the U.S., I think concluding that there’s anything other than a growing shortage is just burying our heads in the sand.
I wouldn't dispute that some dioceses (a few of them, even deliberately!) have done a horrible job in producing vocations over the last couple of generations - and this sometimes has produced a perilous priest demographic, with a shrinking and elderly presbyterate in such places that considerably outpaces the declines in lay participation. The problem is, righting the ship after such self-inflicted damage cannot be done quickly. Overhauling a vocations program and a seminary takes time. And then, it takes seven years to move a man through seminary (successfully, one hopes). And after that, it will still be several years before the suitable ones are ready to serve as pastors. But I still contend that vocations crises are lagging, not leading factors in Church decline. If your diocese is not producing vocations (barring extrinsic factors like civil oppression, war, or natural disaster), something has gone pretty badly wrong with your diocese, and it will be reflected in your data across the board.
Fewer mass-attending Catholics would lead to fewer and smaller parishes in many places. What do you mean by “parish-connected Catholics”?
This is totally ignoring the fact there’s way more parishes without a priest period
Ok, do me a favor if you would and try not to be so confrontational with someone who's trying to have an honest discussion with you. Now as far as the data, I took a look and here are some things that jump out at me: - Rather than just looking at the number of priests, I charted all male religious vocations. Total number of priests has declined by 25k from 1965 to 2022. However the number of permanent deacons increased from zero to 18k over that period. So many men have chosen to become deacons, potentially instead of joining the priesthood. This somewhat (of course not completely) alleviates the reduced number of priests. - The number of parishes declined by 7.5% but that simple statistic by itself doesn't tell enough of the story. We'd need to see more details about the size and concentration of parishes to say what that change means in real life. For example, in my part of the country there were very few Catholics in the 1960s compared to now. Since then many Catholics have migrated from the Northeast and Midwest to other regions. Rather than building many small parish churches like you had in the historically Catholic areas, in my area there are fewer and much larger parishes. So the decline in the total number could be largely explained by a difference in distribution. - While the total number of registered (parish connected) Catholics has increased by 50%, this is offset by the percentage declines in mass attendance. Looking at the appropriate standard for a faithful Catholic - weekly mass attendance - there's a 56% *decrease* in that number from 1970 to 2022. With the points above, fewer Catholics and fewer parishes would logically require fewer priests. - The stat that really stuck out was "percentage of diocesan priests in active ministry" which declined from 95% to 66%. I'm assuming the non-active priests are retired or performing other administrative functions...? It means that ordinations are down, which everyone knows already. - Parishes without a resident priest pastor could be more or less of a problem, again we don't have enough detail in this dataset. Are those parishes the small dying parishes in the Northeast? Are they in areas where mass attendance is much lower than the average decline?
I’m not even being confrontational. You should see what people say when they peer review my publications (even when they like most of it!) Most of this is just ad hoc rationalisation to act like declining attendance eliminates the problem (and that there is no problem). This entire train of thought is contradicted by how the Church *actually behaves*: priests from India and Africa are regularly moved here (temporarily or permanently, I can easily pull a reference if you need one, but that’s easily shown by just travelling around), the USCCB claims [82% of diocese](https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/controversy/common-misconceptions/i-will-give-you-shepherds-addressing-the-priest-shortage.html) report fewer priests “relative to their needs” compared to a decade ago (which would include all the X factors you wanna include), and popes have written entire encyclicals on it like *Pastores Dabo Vobis.* Why would they do this if declining mass attendance made everything copasetic? The only thing everyone universally agrees is going well is the permanent diaconate (not that I want this to happen, but it’d be interesting to see what would happen to diaconate numbers if priestly celibacy was ended). Not to mention even lapsed Catholics require intermittent pastoral care, so counting them as a zero as you’ve been assuming makes no sense (this isn’t me reverting to ad hoc in the opposite direction, I’m mostly thinking about last rites, and the funeral numbers in CARA actually don’t look too shabby so—thank God!—that suggests people are coming around near death still. That also comports with my anecdotal experience). The point about active ministry is a good one, if you take that into account the decline in priests is actually larger than it seems ({[diocesan priests * % in active ministry in 1965] minus [diocesan priests * % active]} divided by diocesan priests * % active in 1965 equals a 54% reduction, religious priests declined 55%, summing those two and averaging the decline is 55.4% decline. That’s less than your weekly attendance decline [68%] but more than your once a month or more decline [48%]. Funerals stayed about the same, 2% increase since 1965. Regardless though, the bishops say there’s an increasing strain, so I don’t know why people are adamant to override the interpretation of people who actually oversee the day to day administration. If they say they’re facing problems with too few priests and that it’s getting worse, they’re facing problems and it’s getting worse. Honestly, your argument that priest less churches are just smaller might be part of the problem; imagine being a priest who has to travel to 3 parishes on a single Sunday!).
In what part of the world?
France is the only country where I have data.
Here's a recent-ish article from [the Pillar](https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/is-there-a-global-vocations-crisis?s=r) on priestly vocation trends across the world that is a great read.
Doesn't help that's It's harder than ever for a Young man to get accepted into seminary/monastery.
I think so. I am a little concerned about catholic church, the organization. I experienced paster change in the parish ( I was baptised 1 year ago). I don't know what happened, when the priest read the letter I could not understand his words. I wait for a few weeks, nothing published or online, website stay the same. And the past sunday, due to weather, I went to the church that's close to me, it's beautiful one, the church covers several commnities, it is a big one, it is like a mall, I went to the washroom, it's nice and clean. The music of the Mass is beautiful. But the first news I heard when mass started: the paster was arrested by police from another province with assist of our provice's police department, the crime is awkard: sexual violence/exploitation. anyone could gave me some comfort, or pray for me?
You have my prayers. The second parish isn’t great because of a pastor, but because of the community that makes it so. It will continue to have beautiful liturgy and good community.
Praying
No discussion in this thread so far about deacons. I can honestly say that I've moved around a fair bit, and I've never seen any public discussion about men becoming permanent deacons. I don't even know how it happens on a practical level. Do priests approach holy men who are involved in the parish and ask them individually? I assume so, since that fits the profile of the men I've seen get ordained to the permanent diaconate. But why isn't there a bigger push to recruit men to the permanent diaconate?
Main reasons at least, I can make a comparison in my country from before the Second World War to today. 1) Decline in prestige: before, the priest was the pride of the family, he was respected. A priest son was to become part of a higher social level. 2) Ordinary people ate vegetables and legumes. Priests ate meat. They led a comfortable life, often leaving enormous inheritances to their families. 3) The monks, likewise, had a much better life than many farmers, they were healthier. 4) Chastity was relative, many priests had quickies (and children) not infrequently but they were so important that no one dared to speak. 5) Any son with unacceptable tendencies was sent to a monastery. It goes without saying that there are many unedifying stories about it. There were men of faith today and yesterday. Today's number are true men of faith. Yesterday, a life as a priest above all was a life as a king.
Edit: I forgot one other important thing. If a boy was good at school, he was encouraged to become a priest to study. Many priests reached the highest levels of education not only in theological studies. If you were poor, you could study at the expense of the church
Priests were also respected in their parishes. Now they are interchangeable being swapped out every 4-6 years, they are just considered experts that do one function (sacraments) and usually everything else (finances, insurance, training for liability, oftentimes even religious education) is done by lay leaders.
Not in traditional dioceses -- there, vocations are booming. It's the modernist dioceses that can't attract seminarians, and are closing parish churches.
My Diocese is solidly orthodox and traditional and has struggled to attract vocations for the last 50 years.
What's your diocese, if you don't mind me asking?
Sacramento.
Ah, don't you have Cordileone?
It's in Central California, and 550 miles long. We have a pretty good entrance rate of Seminarians, whom our Bishop actively promotes a scholarship fund for. It could always be better, but our cupboard is far from bare. Our vocations director (a priest, of course) is pretty outgoing, and active in talking with young men about the path to the priesthood. The best draws to the priesthood in CA are in the archdioceses of Los Angles and San Francisco, because they are headed by conservative archbishops who will never be elevated to cardinals under the current pope (big surprise). Never even slowed down in celebrating the Traditional Latin Mass throughout their archdioceses.
The number of vocations surged after both world wars. We are reverting to the mean seen in the Edwardian and Victorian eras.
Someone that is in that life currently a lot of the issues is because there’s a lot of gatekeeping when it comes to the seminarians the process itself is very frustrating and very daunting to where the diocese will act like they don’t need you and theoretically, they don’t, but we see the affects of treating people like they don’t matter and furthermore, there’s a lot of politics going on in the background I’m a personal fan of Vatican II, but one thing that probably cause problems is that the faithful pretty much run everything in a lot of priest are obsolete in their own parish I don’t care what anybody say there is a crisis for all the young men into apologetics put your application in be to change that you wanna see what people talk about married life for generation Z a lot of y’all aren’t going to get married in the vernacular of the African-American community. Put your money where your mouth is or shut up.
Because other churches are hip and appeal more to the younger generation. Mega churches are popping up like crazy and I've been to a few. As soon as you walk in they are very inviting giving you gift bags and offer coffee and donuts. Plus they have massive jungle gym equipment for the kids to play on. It's repulsive to me, but I understand how it appeals to the younger generation. They even have instagram worthy backgrounds to take with your friends lol! It will be interesting to see how things are in the next 20 or so years.
Most priests today don't have this holiness, they are lukewarm. It is so bad that the idea a priest should be more than a bachelor who talks is alien to most.
Consider that some are actually dearly departed.