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Posted on 01/20/2004 7:24:59 AM PST by Maximilian
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As soon as I heard of Ken Jones' Index of Leading Catholic Indicators,1 I had an intense desire to purchase a copy. The 113-page paperback book contains statistics relating to all aspects of Catholic life: Catholic education, religious orders, Catholic practice and belief, seminarians, nuns, and diocesan priests. Having read the Index, my compliments go out to Mr. Jones. Like myself, Mr. Jones is the father of seven young children, so I understand the sacrifice it was for him to take the time to bring this important information together. He has done an excellent job of presenting clear, irrefutable, unbiased, and undeniable raw data pertaining to the crisis in the Church, and he also provides some important analysis of that data. It is important work, and it is solid evidence supporting what many of us have known for a long time.
Poring over page after page of bar charts, graphs, and tables in the Index, one cannot help but be overwhelmed by the sense of loss. In every category — religious orders, diocesan priests, religious priests, teaching orders, you name it — the decline is sharp, obvious and undeniable.
Being a mathematician, however, I was not content to just read his book cover to cover. Mr. Jones' analysis was good, but he did not view his data the same way a mathematician does. Instantly I saw linear functions, exponential functions, and patterns that we can use to model and make predictions. The numbers, bar charts, figures and statistics gave me a level of excitement and an adrenalin rush that most would have to turn to bungee jumping to achieve.
At the sight of the tables of data, I reached for my computational tools: Maple 8.0, Sigma Plot, SPSS for Windows, and my trusty old Texas Instruments TI-85. Initially I was not sure where to begin, but after careful consideration, I concluded that the most important statistics are those having to do with seminarians. Seminarians are the future of the Church; without priests we will become a different Church. Godfried Cardinal Danneels of Belgium stated in an interview with the Catholic Times in May 2000 that "Without priests the sacramental life of the Church will disappear. We will become a Protestant Church without sacraments. We will be another type of Church, not Catholic." Already we can see this bleak prediction coming to pass as one parish after another is turned over to "Lay Administrators." So the chart having to do with the total number of seminarians2 throughout the better part of the last century is the most significant to us as Catholics.
Now, an initial glance at the bar chart titled "Total Seminarians" seems to indicate that there are essentially two functions: one linear and one exponential. The period prior to 1965 shows a linear increase and the period from 1965 to the present shows an exponential decrease.
We begin our analysis by plotting the graph for the period prior to 1965. This period was one of steady growth, so I found that we could roughly match it with a line of slope 829.331. This means that each year that passed there were approximately 829.3 seminarians more than there had been the previous year. So every ten years there were approximately 8,293 seminarians more than there had been the previous decade.
The growth rate over this period can be expressed as P (for "Preconciliar Growth Rate") as a function of time t, where t is in years and t = 0 in 1920:
Or, expressed as a function of the year:
Where the value of year can range from 1920 to the year 1965.
The growth was actually not perfectly linear, as we can see; in fact it was beginning to accelerate into what appears an exponential growth in the final years from 1940 to 1965. However, let's assume the worst — that the growth had just continued at the linear rate described by P(year). Then the number of seminarians we could have had in the year 2003 would have been approximately:
So, had this growth rate continued, by the year 2003 we would have a total of approximately 73,927 seminarians instead of the current figure of less than 5,000. Below you will see the actual data, and superimposed on it is a projection of P(year), the Preconciliar Growth Function, extending through the year 2002.
It is clear that the period from 1965 onward is nonlinear, so a different technique is required for modeling this period. The exponential decrease from 1965 onward appears similar to a graph of radioactive decay; as it turns out, this period can be modeled by what is commonly called an exponential decay function. Since this period of the Church is commonly called the "Springtime," we shall refer to this function as the Springtime Decay Function S(t), where S, the Springtime Decay, is a function of time t. We begin by taking the log of each of the data points. This gives us an essentially linear data set, to which we can match a line as we did previously for the Preconciliar Growth Function. Now we exponentiate both sides of our equation obtaining the following function:
Or, expressed as a function of the year:
Applying this model we can see that by the year 2065, 100 years from the beginning of the Springtime Decay process, there will be a total of 10 seminarians in the United States. The half-life of this process is 8.19 years, the approximate period of time it takes for the number of seminarians to diminish by ½.
There are some who will argue that this model does not apply. The last two actual data points are higher than the exponential decay function; certainly, according to some, this means that the decline is over, and that all will be back to normal soon. This is wishful thinking, but to accommodate them we turn to the modified exponential decay model. The Modified Springtime Decay Function is not as simple, but it is more accurate:
Or, expressed as a function of the year:
According to this modified decay function there will be 779 seminarians in the year 2065 instead of the 10 predicted using the previous model.
We can obtain a rough estimate of the number of lost vocations by taking the sum from 1965 to the present, in five year increments, of the difference between P(year) and S(actual), where the values for S come from the actual data in Mr. Jones' Total Seminarians table.
This estimate makes two assumptions:
We obtain the following values for each year:
| Year | P(year) | S(actual) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1970 | 46,560 | 28,819 | 17,741 |
| 1975 | 50,706 | 17,802 | 32,904 |
| 1980 | 54,853 | 13,226 | 41,627 |
| 1985 | 59,000 | 11,028 | 47,972 |
| 1990 | 63,146 | 6,233 | 56,913 |
| 1995 | 69,293 | 5,083 | 62,210 |
| 2002 | 73,098 | 4,719 | 68,379 |
| TOTAL: 327,746 | |||
According to this rough estimate, approximately 17,741 vocations were lost over the first five-year period, 32,904 were lost over the second five-year period, etc., for a total of 327,746 since 1965.
There is no formula available for the calculation of the number of souls lost as a result of this loss of vocations.
There is one additional set of data that was not included in the Index, and that is data relating to the increasing number of vocations found through the "Traditional" Catholic seminaries, or those seminaries in which the 1962 rite is followed and priests are formed according to preconciliar standards. At the moment these seminaries are relatively new, but the growth is impressive. I was unable to obtain any statistics on the Institute of Christ the King, Sovereign Priest, which has a small presence in our country, but the figures for the graph below were provided courtesy of Fr. James Jackson, rector of Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary in Denton, Nebraska. Our Lady of Guadalupe, where priests of the FSSP (Fraternitas Sacerdotalis Sancti Petri, or Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter) receive their formation, is now in its twelfth year. Since their move from Pennsylvania to Nebraska four years ago they have been operating at maximum capacity. This fall, Academic Year 2003-2004, as in previous years, they had to turn away a large number of candidates due to lack of room in the partially completed seminary.
The noticeable gap at year eight was during their move from Pennsylvania to Nebraska.
Many have asserted that the sudden decline in all aspects of Catholic life that began in 1965 was due to "other factors," such as the influence of "the sixties." But Mr. Jones soundly refutes that argument by including a simple chart3 which shows a marked decline in Church attendance among Catholics from the 1960s to the present while it remained virtually level, with a slight increase, for Protestants. To more fully understand the nature of the crisis we find ourselves in, I highly recommend that every Catholic capable of reading beyond an eighth grade level purchase a copy of the Index and study it.
It is clear from this brief analysis of the data relating to the number of seminarians over the past eighty years that several things are true:
Although we cannot know the will of God, we can ponder the significance of the following:
The author, a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army, teaches Computer Science and Mathematics at Lyon College in Batesville, Arkansas where he resides with his wife and seven children.
Oh Dr. Brain! You are scaring me! Let me yield to your almighty knowledge now!
Quick! If you start with 59,800 priests ('67-'69 peak), and we now have 50% less (sez you), how do we have 48,300 now (official 2003 number last I checked)?
Last time I checked, 48,300/59,800 = 0.808 or 80.8%, and 80.8% is definitely not equal to 50%. Not even close in fact.
Also, if 70% of 47,000,000 Catholics were regular practioners of the faith in that period, and 35% of 65,000,000 Catholics are regular practioners today, how is there a decline per practioner?
Lets run the math 70% of 47 million is 32,900,000. 35% of 65 million is 22,750,000.
59,800 priests for 32,900,000 practioners is 1 priest per 558 practicing Catholics. 48,300 priests for 22,750,000 practioners is 1 priest per 471 Catholics.
WHERE IS THE DECLINE DR. BRAIN? WHERE IS THE CRISIS?
Isn't the real decline a decline of the practice of the faith, which has been seen universally across the west in all religions since the 60's, including those not affected by Vatican II - like say, even the Greek Orthodox in Greece?
Hey Max - look at the company you are attracting! Lovely, isn't it? Piled Higher and Deeper and all that.
Max, you know where to find the data - the annual Catholic Directory at your nearest decent library or seminary. Must I look up everything for you?
However, conveniently, the numbers are online for the period since 1969. Look at them yourself.
http://www.clerus.org/statistica/3.htm
http://www.clerus.org/statistica/4.htm
http://www.clerus.org/statistica/5.htm
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."
The problem is the Catholic Church USA is going bankrupt in terms of attendance. Mass goers are dropping but parishes aren't, which leads to a staffing shortage. If parishes were reduced to a more realistic level given the numbers who actually avail themselves of what the Church offers, this wouldn't be a problem. America has about 7,000 parishes too many, since the number of practicing Catholics is off by about 1/3.
That wasn't the purpose of his article. Write your own article if you think you could do better.
No, we know the purpose - bash Pope, Bishops, and Vatican II for all evils. And I think I've written enough here in a much better and more thorough fashion to explain the numbers.
His purpose was to analyze the existing numbers for demonstrable trends within the data sets. This he has done admirably.
The sort of analysis is as falacious as projecting out the current Italian birthrate for 200 years are declaring 2300 will see a grand total of 600 Italians left in the world, or similar nonesense. Obviously, something will change along the way prior to that point.
Since the numbers he is using are not meaningful data sets, the conclusions are errant.
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.
Max, the data is widely available. Its probably in Jones book, waiting to be crunched out, aside from being available in the Annual Catholic Directory at any good library. Must I always do all your homework? If you want to discuss a subject as some sort of an expert, you could at least familiarize yourself with the raw data. Compare a 10 year set of seminary numbers with a 10 year set of ordinations over a 3 year lag, starting in say, 1955.
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."
Just look at where all these ex-seminarians are now. And look at how many of these supposed wondrous vocations defected in the end. Clearly not real vocations, were they?
1969, for example saw defections occurring at a rate nearly 60% of ordaintions. Today its about 25%. Look at the charts referenced above for your precious numbers, since you are too lazy to look it up yourself.
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.
There isn't a problem of "no seminarians". There are fewer seminarians, but vastly more of them are persevering than the miraculous 50's and 60's vocations you are waxing nostalgic about.
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.
There is only one fundemental cause. People voluntarily giving up their faith. No one has held a gun to anyone's head and said "leave the Church". No one has bolted up the door and refused entry. No one has said anyone is not allowed to buy books or teach their children. If people have left the Church or failed to teach their children the faith - ITS THEIR OWN FAULT! Not the Bishops, not the Parishes, not the Liberals, and not Vatican II. NO ONE DID IT BUT THEM! The same means that have always been available are still available. If people don't avail themselves of it, its not the fault of the Church, but their own fault.
The crisis in the Church is a crisis of the faithful leaving the Church for supposed greener pastures in Protestantism and Atheism.
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.
Stasticial massaging is what he is doing. Its worse than meaningless.
To call the data set "wrong" is just a presumptuous opinion with no factual basis.
Not so. If not all seminarians are ordained and the ratio ordained varies, obviously its useless to look at the number of seminarians to guage the future prospects of the Church.
A much more useful statistic is net annual gains of priests before natural deaths - ordaintions minus defections. 1969 saw 909 ordaintions and 541 defections for a net gain of 368. 1978 saw 635 ordainations and 254 defections for a net gain of 381. 1988 saw 491 ordinations and 186 defections for a net gain of 305. 1998 saw 417 ordinations and 119 defections for a net gain of 298.
That doesn't look like much of a crisis. Which is of course why your favorite Chicken-Little "Sky Is Falling" authors are not discussing it.
The reduction in force currently occuring in the numbers of priests is due to an excess priestly mortality over the net annual ordaintions currently occuring. Once this passes in perhaps a decade or so, we will see things level out and rebuilding occur. Until then, you can either squawk like an old biddy or keep your cool and your powder dry. The phenomena is no different than what might be expected from my smaller "Baby Bust" generation following the larger "Baby Boom" generation.
'48-'68 saw 25,000,000 newly baptized Catholics. '69-'89 saw 20,000,000. Obviously, we can expect fewer priests out of a smaller generation, especially one whose elders failed to rear in the Catholic faith in many persons. The obvious comparison is also to Marriages. Whereas about 100% of baptied Catholics married in the Church in the 1960's, only about 50% do today. Given that, and the decline in population, its rather remarkable that net annual ordainations have only gone from 370 to 300.
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.
What is a "neo-Catholic"? Isn't that a form of schismatic integrist character assassination? Pot, kettle, black, and all that Max? How am I a "neo-Catholic" whatever the hell that is. (I guess its someone who does not kiss the ass of Ferrara, Woods, Williamson, Fellay, Horvat, Matt, etc.?)
And how is it "dishonest" to point out the obvious flaws in the analysis, and the clear agenda you forthrightly express in ignoring the meaningful statistics? You complain, but have no real rebuttal. I doubt you'll do any better against this post.
I hope that regular posters and lurkers will reflect on what you said and recognize that to continue this war within is not Christlike nor Catholic and is very damaging to the Church in many ways.
I am sorry all of this is happening but I welcome you to the Catholic Church and am happy you are here. I believe you will find that despite the bickering and worse,there are great graces and blessings to be found that will strengthen you and bring great joy to you in the midst of these very troubled times for man in the world.
A defender of the regime of novelty.
God, on the other hand, says, "The hot and the cold I will take in, but the lukewarm I will spit out of my mouth."
The ferocity of divisions within the Catholic Church is something I was quite unprepared for, and remain somewhat at a loss over.
You must not have realized that you were entering a Church suffering through the throes of revolution. Didn't you notice that the Church you joined had just recently instituted an entirely new liturgy, new doctrines, new practices? And even if you hadn't joined during this turbulent time, I hope you were aware that you were becoming part of the "Chruch militant." Remember that "Heaven is only won by force and the violent shall bear it away."
So Christ was a milk-toast nice guy? Not in my Bible! Which one are you reading? Every time He opened His mouth He was denouncing people as "hypocrites, vipers, whitewashed sepulchres." His message was, "How will you save yourselves from your fate in Hell?" And he specifically said, "I have come to bring not peace, but division and the sword. Brother will be divided against brother, parents against children."
This is the reality of Christianity. Anyone who is not ready to participate in the "Church militant" can please step aside and get out of the way.
I (cradle Catholic and revert) wasn't aware of the "push and pull" in the Church until I started to lurk on FR. As a pew warmer for years I was aware that something wasn't right in a lot of parishes... changes in catechism, missing traditions and watered down homilies - very different from when I received First Communion in 1967 while on my knees at an altar rail. However, when I started to post here I came across the "sky is falling" Catholics who pin all the blame on Vatican II. Reading the docs of Vatican II, I can't see the reason for believing that... the Church did have to interact with the "modern" world and go out in it... we were pretty insular before that.
I have great hope for the future when I look at some of the wonderfully faithful and devoted young priests being ordained even in my own archdiocese - Boston.
One of the few lucid observations of Solange Hertz was that the factionalism in the Church is indicative of a fall from grace of those who place themselves within it. Just as the Jews have Orthodox, Conservative, and Liberal, we have Traditionalist, Conservative, and Progressive.
Oh for a handful of plain old Orthodox Catholics!
Simple. You obviously can't be pigeonholed into the "progressive" category and you don't agree with those who trash Vatican II, so you must of course be a "neo-conservative." I had to think about this for a while because before you got categorized (easier to file) I just thought you were a practicing Catholic, loyal to the Magisterium. Whadda I know!
This is a fundamentally non-Catholic point of view. We do not have a radical individualist Church. We have a flock that is led by shepherds. The state of the flock indicates the quality of the leadership by the shepherds. Jesus said, "When the shepherd is struck, the flock is scattered." He also warned against hirelings who pretend to be shepherds but who are only in it for their own advancement and who flee when the flock faces danger.
This is the reality of the Catholic Church. You cannot explain away the reality of tens of millions of Catholics falling away from the practice of the faith by so many individual decisions.
Take any set of statistics you want, you'll see the same trend. You seem to prefer church attendance over seminarians. Fine. Take a look at the recent Gallup poll which showed a steady decline in Church attendance by Catholics from 1962 to today, recently reaching its nadir at a point lower than the protestants for the first time ever. There has to be some cause for this trend. Blame it on sunspots if you like. But it's simply disingenuous to pretend that there is no cause, and it is nothing more than tens of millions of individual decisions that share no commonality.
You are desperately seeking to find any explanation except the plain and obvious one that is staring you right in the face. Why? Why won't you just admit that every one of these problems can be traced back directly to Vatican II?
Many many people were told to leave the Church. Anyone who refused to go along with the new program was told in no uncertain terms that they were not welcome.
No one has bolted up the door and refused entry.
Many, many Catholics found the doors of their churches bolted, prior to the arrival of the wrecking crew, so that some new modern monstrosity could take its place.
No one has said anyone is not allowed to buy books or teach their children.
Millions upon millions of Catholics have sent their children to Catholic schools, often at great personal sacrifice, believing that they were being taught the faith, only to find out that the faith of their children was destroyed through the teaching of insidious heresies using catechism materials that are outright denials of the Catholic faith.
If people have left the Church or failed to teach their children the faith - ITS THEIR OWN FAULT!
The Church is here to save souls, not condemn them. To say that the tens of millions of souls who have fallen away from the faith deserved to go to Hell is callousness of a high order. The shepherds had a divine obligation to protect their sheep. "The good shepherd give his life for his sheep." You cannot reconcile the statement above with a genuine Catholic concern for souls.
Not the Bishops, not the Parishes, not the Liberals, and not Vatican II. NO ONE DID IT BUT THEM!
Not true. Lay Catholics never asked or wanted any of this. They never asked for a new Mass. They never asked for a new morality. They never asked for new catechisms. They wanted to continue practicing the Catholic faith, but they were denied that opportunity by the bishops and the parishes and the liberals all acting in the name of Vatican II.
The same means that have always been available are still available. If people don't avail themselves of it, its not the fault of the Church, but their own fault.
Only the despised traditionalists are publishing any of the materials that used to be available. The major publishing houses have gone out of business. The mainstream Church publishes absolutely nothing of Catholic tradition. An ordinary Catholic attending a New Mass parish has no clue that anything ever existed prior to 1962. They deliberately suppress all knowledge of everything that happened before the revolution, just like Orwell described.
The crisis in the Church is a crisis of the faithful leaving the Church for supposed greener pastures in Protestantism and Atheism.
If you have true faith in the Catholic Church, then you know that souls will not voluntarily leave the true Church and the true Faith for greener pastures. If they are given the true Faith, if they are served by true shepherds, if the reality of grace is communicated to them, they will never leave for protestantism or atheism or any other -ism. A few will always fall away, but the mass defections we are currently witnessing can only be a sign that the faithful are being unlawfully denied their rightful heritage which is the fullnes of the Catholic Faith.
I know personally two priests,one now an ex-priest,from different orders,who entered the priesthood prior to 1960. Both said they were offered the oppurtunity to leave without dishonor after Vat II. The reason this was offered was because they had been told prior to their ordination that the oppurtunity to marry was imminent.
They had been told that the Church would soon change it's position on celibacy.When it became clear,after Vat II, that that was not to be,the offer to leave without consequence was extended. One took the Order up and left,is married and seems happy. The other did not leave and is also content though disturbed with the current state of things.
I believe Vat II exacerbated the disease process in the Church,the disease was already pretty entrenched.To deny that just delays the healing because it ignores the cause and focuses on symtoms.
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