Why? The Pope put the issue in front of the synod of bishops this year for discussion. The bishops decided they weren't even going to address the issue, except to reaffirm the current practice.
Hey, that's fine. But, priests are dying off in the West and not being replaced in the same numbers and that situation is not going to improve over the next decade. So, eventually, those in rural and some city parishes will have deacons or lay administrators of their parishes. And, except for a Sunday Mass or two, everything else will be done by non-priests.
The Africans have made clear that they need every priest they are ordaining (plus they don't want their guys to come to the West and get a taste of our decadent lifestyle because they will likely want to stay).
I don't know about you, but I predict that, sooner or later, American Catholics, who are the financial backbone of the Church at large, will tire of supporting parishes with no resident priest.
Or, they may decide that having circuit rider priests are just fine, with laymen running everything else.
Whatever happens, the face of the Church is going to change, and change dramatically in the next generation.
So, according to you, inviting back those who broke their vows is the solution? Get over it already! First you chose to be a priest and entered the diaconate. Then you met a woman, fell in love, gave up your vows and married her. Celibrate that love!
Why do you harbor such resentment against an institution that simply asked if you were ready to make a vow and you said 'yes' but then changed your mind. The seminary is a time of discernment. Obviously, that discernment was towards marriage. Why can't you simply drop to your knees in gratitude to our Lord for the beautiful wife He gave you and accept that this is your calling in life?
Or maybe they'll get more serious about their faith and raise up priests from their parishes like they used to. The lack of priests today is a direct result of the floundering of the Church in America just following Vatican II, up until the mid 90's. When the most recent crop of old Bishops began to be replaced, the Church pendulum started swinging back from the silliness of the 70's and 80's, when change was sought simply because some folks thought the old practices were outdated and unnecessary. They didn't have anything to replace them, and folks just lost their footing. And since the catechisis since the mid 60's has been SO bad, we have two generations of Catholics who are ignorant of their Faith, and are ripe for and searching for the Truth.
Many seminarians in the 70's and 80's were sold a bill of goods by their liberal professors when they were told that they didn't have to worry about having to deal with celibacy because the Church was surely going to change her mind about it. So these men were ordained without any instruction or preparation for this new life. There have been quite a few men who left the priesthood and got married because they thought the grass was greener on the other side of the fence. I'd be curious to see just how many of those men realized that wasn't true for them, and have since divorced.
"I don't know about you, but I predict that, sooner or later, American Catholics, who are the financial backbone of the Church at large, will tire of supporting parishes with no resident priest."
So wealthy American parishes are somehow 'entitled' to the priests that they can't or won't generate themselves?
In my view, parishes that can't or won't find even one inspired man to become a priest have a whole lot more wrong with them than a lack of vocations.
Many of us posting FR go to tiny parishes that seem to have a wealth of vocations. In spite of the relative economic poverty of those parishes. In spite of the celibacy requirements.
Dear sinkspur,
"Hey, that's fine. But, priests are dying off in the West and not being replaced in the same numbers..."
That's a bit of a misconstruction of how things really are.
In places like Los Angeles, where the ordinary seems unconcerned with trivial matters like Catholic orthodoxy, there are nearly no vocations at all. In the Archdiocese of Washington, on the other hand, although our numbers of priests will decline modestly over the next decade or two as the boomers all retire and die, the longer term prospects, at current rates of ordination, are for the numbers of priests to grow in proportion with the Catholic population.
Of course, sinkspur, your entire argument is based on an entirely false premise, which is that overall, the United States is woefully short of Catholic priests, and places like Africa have more priests than they can handle.
Actually, the ratio of priests to Catholics in the United States is higher than most other countries of the world, including most countries in Africa.
Here are a few statistics that belie your premise (all derived from www.catholic-hierarchy.com - kudos to David M. Cheney):
Country - Catholics - Priests - Catholics:Priests
European/European Heritage Countries
United States - 64,621,000 - 44,906 - 1,439:1
Italy - 57,665,000 - 50,148 - 1,150:1
France - 44,499,000 - 21,930 - 2,029:1
Latin America - Largest Catholic Populations
Brazil - 145,446,000 - 16,853 - 8,630:1
Mexico - 123,393,000 - 14,618 - 8,441:1
Columbia - 38,406,000 - 7,920 - 4,849:1
Oceania - Largest Catholic Population
Phillipines - 69,630,000 - 7,335 - 9,493:1
African Countries - Largest Catholic Populations
Congo - 29,500,000 - 4,306 - 6,851:1
Nigeria - 17,906,000 - 4,437 - 4,036:1
Uganda - 11,219,000 - 1,584 - 7,083:1
Asian Countries - Largest Catholic Populations
India - 17,005,000 - 19,946 - 853:1
Indonesia - 6,439,000 - 3,038 - 2119:1
Vietnam - 5,658,000 - 2,668 - 2121:1
As you can see, among countries with large Catholic populations, the United States is near the top in terms of the ratio of Catholics to priests.
sitetest