[Maximilian]

This article tells the story with both words and pictures. After reading this analysis, the "New Springtime" reminds one an awful lot of the weather in Narnia: "Where it's always winter, but never Christmas." But perhaps the final graph of the seminarians at Our Lady of Guadalupe is kind of like the arrival of Father Christmas in Narnia -- signaling the beginning of a thaw.

[ex-snook]

Downward started with the descent of America - Roe v Wade, Vietnam war, drug culture accepted. Other countries seem to have done better because we were importing priests from Poland, Ireland and Italy in the NJ area.

[SuziQ]

I"m gonna print this out for my Statistician hubby.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

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.

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.

[NYer]

Another one of your 'good news' posts (/sarcasm). Here are some statistics that this author omitted.

Report on Africa

Peter Schineller, S.J.
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

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:

Population (millions)		Catholics (millions)	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.

Reports on Priestly Formation

[Guelph4ever]

I am a convert to Catholicism, and in a very short time have had the opportunity of having both "traditionalist" and "progressive" Catholics group me as being with the opposite team. Since I never knew the pre-Vatican II Church, it is hard for me to comment with any first-hand experience.

What I can say is that I can hardly find anyone who is doing any good for the Church among the extremes of both camps. Many of the traditionalists I have encountered (and am good friends with, especially up in Houston) are making self-fulfilling prophecies. Like complaining about the Church shrinking as they themselves are walking out the door. Schism won't solve the problem, Luther proved that.

The liberal extremists, on the other hand, who caused this crisis, are treating it with a cure that is worse than the disease: people are leaving the Catholic Church, what do we do? I know, let's try to be 'less Catholic'! -yeah, THAT'S a brilliant strategy. I for one did not go through a very difficult conversion, suffer the loss of friends and the rejection of many family members to become a Catholic only to have the Church decide it doesn't want to be Catholic anymore.

So far, my way of looking at this has been in the context of past Church disasters (corruption, schisms, heresies etc). Clearly, there is alot I wish was different, and more like I hear it used to be. However, I prefer reformation to revolution and I trust that, as in the past, God will provide the saints to put His Church back on the right track.

The ferocity of divisions within the Catholic Church is something I was quite unprepared for, and remain somewhat at a loss over.