The Catholic Church will have who it decides to have as priests. Meanwhile, Catholic Churches all over America, and all over the world, figure out how to maintain a Christian community without a resident priest.
Once that happens, young men and women will be inspired to become lay leaders of parishes, canonically deputized to do everything but hear confessions and celebrate the Eucharist, as deacons currently do. In fact, some will become deacons.
If the hierarchy decides that it wants circuit rider priests, ala South America, then laymen will assume Church leadership. The Catholic community WILL thrive, with or without resident priests.
It seems to me that the vocation "crisis" is precipitated by people who want to change the Church's agenda, by people who do not support orthodox candidates loyal to magisterial teaching of the Pope and the bishops, and by people who actually discourage viable candidates from seeking priesthood and vowed religious life as the Church defines these ministries.
Archbishop Eldon Curtiss, foreward to Goodbye, Good Men.
In my book Goodbye, Good Men (Regnery, 2002), I investigated an intriguing thesis put forth by Archbishop Elden Curtiss. In 1995 he wrote in the pages of the Social Justice Review that orthodoxy breeds vocations, claiming that religious orders and dioceses that supported orthodox candidates to the priesthood and did not tolerate dissent from the Magisterium had documented increases in the number of candidates. My years of research on this and related topics led me to conclude that the Archbishop’s remarks were sound.
Michael Rose