Posted on 01/20/2004 7:24:59 AM PST by Maximilian
False. Start with faulty data and end with false conclusions.
Item. In the period 1950-1965, the vast majority of men entering the seminary were not ordained. All were pre-Vatican II ephemeral vocations.
Item. In the period 1985-2000, the majority of men entering the seminary were ordained.
Item. The article does not investigate the really meaningful numbers - annual priestly ordainations and defections. Perhaps because the decline in these numbers is not nearly so marked as the decline in seminarians, and thus does not make good copy?
Item. The numbers are not compared against other meaningful indicators as a ratio - Catholic male population age 20-25, percentage of Catholics counted attending Mass in annual October counts, etc.
Conclusion 1. The decline in seminarians was mostly a decline in the number of epehemeral vocations. The Catholic Church is now no longer wasting vast resources on the education of men for 1-3 years only for most of them to leave the seminary system.
Conclusion 2. The decline in ordinations mirrors the decline in Mass attendance - it is not as sharp as the decline in seminarians. Failing to lay out the facts along these lines provides a distorted message.
Conclusion 3. The Seminarian population is an outlier data set in the general malaise affecting the Church in America.
Concluson 4. The failure to take into account obvious factors and using the wrong data set shows an intention to promote an agenda rather than diagnose a problem.
Conclusion 5. The author and his source are dishonest at best.
Report on Africa
Peter Schineller, S.J. Introduction About 12% of the world's population reside in Africa, second only to Asia. In Africa we are witnessing the fastest growth ever in the 2000 year history of Christianity. Here are a few statistics to illustrate this point:
Former Dean and Professor of Theology, former Regional
Superior of the Jesuits of Nigeria-Ghana, and future Dean
and Professor of Theology at Hekima College, Nairobi
Population |
Catholics |
Seminarians |
|
| 1900 | 118 | 2.3 | ? |
| 1970 | 320 | 32 | 3,470 |
| 1997 | 720 | 95 | 19,000 |
Africa is large, containing 22% of the land of this good earth. Europe, the USA, India, China, and Argentina all fit within Africa. Africa is complex, with over 2000 languages and ethnic groups. For the purpose of this presentation, I am focusing on subSaharan Africa, and thus not speaking of North Africa or Egypt.
True. All of the data used in the article is accurate, so your comment doesn't apply here, however.
In the period 1950-1965, the vast majority of men entering the seminary were not ordained. All were pre-Vatican II ephemeral vocations.
Proof? Data? Numbers? Doesn't it seem ironic that you are attacking the reliability of hard numbers while providing no data of your own?
The article does not investigate the really meaningful numbers - annual priestly ordainations and defections. Perhaps because the decline in these numbers is not nearly so marked as the decline in seminarians, and thus does not make good copy?
What evidence do you have for that assertion? Here in our diocese the Catholic newspaper gives us a weekly dose of "reality" with statistics about the plummeting number of priests and the future of "priestless parishes." They have stopped putting on the happy-face pretense (that was phase 1 which is now over), and they have moved into the next phase in which they create a "new model of the Church" that includes only a handful of priests for the diocese. The reality right here on the ground is exactly what is demonstrated by these numbers.
The numbers are not compared against other meaningful indicators as a ratio - Catholic male population age 20-25, percentage of Catholics counted attending Mass in annual October counts, etc.
That wasn't the purpose of his article. Write your own article if you think you could do better. His purpose was to analyze the existing numbers for demonstrable trends within the data sets. This he has done admirably.
Conclusion 1. The decline in seminarians was mostly a decline in the number of epehemeral vocations.
Only a conclusion if you are the type to jump to conclusions without any evidence. You haven't demonstrated one shred of evidence for this assertion.
The Catholic Church is now no longer wasting vast resources on the education of men for 1-3 years only for most of them to leave the seminary system.
I don't consider that "wasting" at all. In fact, this was probably one of the best and most encouraging trends of the time period which was leading to a much more educated, involved, and spiritually active laity. Too bad this trend was hijacked by the revolutionaries in favor of false "involvement" and "activity."
The decline in ordinations mirrors the decline in Mass attendance - it is not as sharp as the decline in seminarians. Failing to lay out the facts along these lines provides a distorted message.
It's true that every data set is declining together. It's true that you could do the same sort of data analysis on all the different "leading indicators." But you are trying to create an implication of cause and effect where there is no evidence that it exists. Perhaps the decline in Mass attendance mirrors the fall of ordinations, not the other way around. Clearly all these indicators mirror the same fundamental causes.
The Seminarian population is an outlier data set in the general malaise affecting the Church in America.
Evidence? At least you admit the "general malaise." To what extent are the numbers for seminarians any different than all the other indicators? And which indicator will have the biggest domino effect? With no seminarians there are no priests and no holy sacrifice of the Mass, no matter how many people want to attend one on Sunday.
The failure to take into account obvious factors and using the wrong data set shows an intention to promote an agenda rather than diagnose a problem.
There are no "factors" to take into account. He is not proving a correlation. He is analyzing the trends that exist within the existing set of data. To call the data set "wrong" is just a presumptuous opinion with no factual basis.
Conclusion 5. The author and his source are dishonest at best.
If "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel," then character assassination is the first refuge of the neo-Catholic apologist. You have no arguments so you attack the author. Someone is being dishonest here, but it is not the author of the original piece.
He didn't "omit any statistics." He analyzed the data that already exists regarding America, which is the country where he happens to live . By coincidence, I too live in America, and so does Kenneth Jones the author of the original book, and so do you, judging by your screen name. So why try to change the subject to a land far away where we have so little hard evidence? How about if we deal with the situation right here in our own country where we actually live?
And before we look to Africa to save the Church, perhaps we should consider a few facts. It's difficult to get hard data from Africa, but all the evidence that we do see indicates a continent returning to barbarity and chaos. A land where the most Catholic countries engaged in wholesale mass slaughter and genocide of millions within the past decade. A place which was the subject of a recent report called "New Springtime for Voodoo."
And if we want to look at the causes of the evangelization of Africa which was beginning to take root, who was the number 1 representative of the Catholic Church in Africa at the time of Vatican II? It was Archbishop Lefbvre. He was bishop of Gabon, Apostolic Nuncio from the Vatican for all of French-speaking West Africa (which is where the Catholics would live), and also Superior General of the Holy Ghost fathers who were the ones that evangelized the continent.
Evidence? The data all indicate otherwise. Roe vs Wade occurred in the seventies, a decade after the trend in the Church changed from positive to negative. The Vietnam War was barely a blip on the radar screen at the time of Vatican II. Drugs were relegated to the "beatniks" and other isolated elements of the population. All these changes to society happened after Vatican II, and the data indicates that the "decay" in the Church started sooner than 1968.
Other countries seem to have done better because we were importing priests from Poland, Ireland and Italy in the NJ area.
Other countries have done much worse. The United States is one of the most conservative Catholic countries. The faith in Europe is virtually non-existent today. France has many empty churches. They don't need priests anymore, because there's no one attending anyway. Holland and Belgium are a complete and total wasteland for the faith. Italy and Spain have the world's lowest birth rates, towns are being emptied as they fail to have a new generation.
Poland and Ireland were certainly some of the last holdouts, but they are catching up rapidly to the rest of the world. The faith in Ireland which seemed as though it would be like an island in the midst of the deluge is now in a freefall. Ironically, the faith was strong in Poland as long as it was a communist country, but it is being tossed aside now that they are adopting western consumerism.
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