The lack of a condemnation of this letter from Cardinal Pell is very telling.
Yawn... You might think the traddies have one issue, but you are really a one-issue pony, aren't you?
Yawn...
Dear sinkspur,
"Even 'orthodox dioceses' are not recruiting sufficient numbers of men to replace those who leave, retire, and die."
We are in Washington. Since the coming of Cardinal McCarrick, vocations have doubled here in Washington, going from about 5 per year (which would lead to an overall decline of priests of perhaps 20% or more) to 9 and 10 per year. Interestingly, seminary entries have increased beyond that, but the full effect hasn't shown up yet, because we appear to still be in the upswing. Even at 10 per year, we will eventually see about a 15% increase in the number of diocesan priests in the archdiocese. However, if ordinations increase proportionately with entries to the seminary, we will, in a few years, be ordaining about 15 priests per year, which will eventually result in an increase of about 50% in the numbers of diocesan priests in our archdiocese.
In the short term, though, the number of diocesan priests will fall, as we have a big bulge of folks who are approaching retirement age (or who have even exceeded it, and have not yet retired).
At least at the present time, the Archdiocese of Washington appears to be moving out of a vocations dearth.
As a side note, there were about 800 seminarians at the Mass at the MCI Center prior to the March for Life in Washington, DC. This must account, I'm guessing, for about 1 out of every 5 or 6 seminiarians in the United States. This, to me, is evidence of the growing orthodoxy of our newer priests.
Blessed be God forever.
sitetest
It tells me that he didn't make a rash response. The very Catholic Cardinal Pell will never go for axing the celibacy rule.