Too Few Priests as Catholic Ranks Surge

Charlotte Observer ^ | 3/21/10 | Tim Funk

[marshmallow]

Charlotte's parishes add overflow Masses, think creatively to accommodate attendance boom

The pews are packed at many Charlotte-area Catholic churches, but a scarcity of priests is leaving even some of the biggest parishes short-staffed and scrambling for help from retired and visiting clergy.

Recent examples aren't hard to find:

Just one full-time priest for months at 13,000-member St. Gabriel in Cotswold.

A pastor's heart bypass operation, with complications, that left 14,000-member St. Mark in Huntersville struggling to find substitutes to celebrate Mass.

A sanctuary so crowded on Ash Wednesday that a parishioner at St. Matthew in Ballantyne, where two priests serve a flock of 28,000, called the fire marshal.

Why not just build more churches? Not enough priests to staff them.

And while four newly ordained priests will be assigned to Charlotte diocesan churches this summer, some of the busiest Catholic pastors in town are just a few years shy of retirement age.

The graying of the priesthood and the shortage of priests are old news in parts of the country that have long had large Catholic populations. But the crisis is starting to touch the Charlotte area, where Catholics - once a tiny minority - have surged in the last few decades. They now make up the largest denomination in Mecklenburg County if you count children, which Catholics do.

To help replenish the clergy ranks, a few veteran local pastors are even calling for the Vatican to consider allowing the ordination of married men - a suggestion that virtually no one expects Pope Benedict XVI to seriously entertain.

"I wouldn't say the problem is down the road. It's already here," says the Rev. Frank O'Rourke, pastor at St. Gabriel, where his solo stint lasted for three months last year. "If you can't open parishes because of a lack of priests.............

[trisham]

I think that's a pretty categorical statement that perhaps doesn't entirely reflect the reality on the ground. The seminaries *are being* cleaned up, but you don't evict a couple of generations of looney-tunes in one swell foop, especially if there are religious-order jurisdictions involved.

Anyway, as vladimir-with-some-numbers points out, the real change has to come from the laity's overcoming their addiction to contraception.

**********************

Good points.

[SevenofNine]

OH Yeah my childhood parish has better priest than that

The Pastor not only post AOL Yahoo addy also Facebook, Twitter, and cell phone number

[AliVeritas]

Just think if we got rid of the dissident ones./s

God forgive me scandal.

Thanks once again for the pre-meetings with the Council of Churches and the invites of non-Catholic clergy to Vat II.

Thanks to our infiltrators with the aprons who pushed the changes in the US years before Vat. II and spread misinformation through the mainstream and other clerical press. Example, moving the tabernacle over and other ‘we can’t wait and we’re gonna do our on thing before it comes out’.

Thanks for the altar girls, way to encourge vocations and to those who still refuse to preach the gospel but Marx wrapped in baby Jesus’ blanket under the ‘world’s view’ of social justice.

Thanks for no leadership from the USCCB who sometimes act like the Southern Baptist Leadership Conference and forgetting they’re under obedience. Oh, and working with Open Society Institute and other socialist groups and using our money to do it.

Thanks for all the emails and phone calls from nine years of former RCIA candidates in tears or confusion, as I tried to explain... after my struggles to fight against this in my parish with no help.

Thanks that the biggest discussions I have are not with my protestant brothers and sisters or those who don’t attend church, but fellow Catholics.

My Lord sits alone over in a corner... with no one to spend time with him; with those who spit in his face, sell him for silver and whip him anew, and no one speaks out, except to say ‘proportional’, throwing 2000 years of teaching out the ‘open window’.

Praise be to God many of my friends are young, faithful and have become priests and sisters... and they’re fighting for the faith daily.

I pray for the reform of the reform.

We now see the devil’s smoke Paul VI spoke of and the apostasy spoken in the scriptures, telling the end before the beginning.

May God have mercy on us... even though we don’t deserve it.

God’s will be done. The devil’s time is short.

[AliVeritas]

We are the mission now.

[PatriotGirl827]

In addition to excellent points brought up earlier in the thread, prayer and sacrifice are needed by every single faithful member of the laity, every day.

[Tax-chick]

It’s not the first time. And until the whole world is converted or Jesus comes in glory, everywhere is mission territory.

[Tax-chick]

We have always encouraged our children to think of having two general choices: religious life or married life. Any specific occupations - doctor, lawyer, typist - can be part of either of the overarching vocations.

My seminarian in Ethiopia, who is supposed to be ordained in June!, is praying for at least one of my sons to be a priest, and I’m sure it will work.

[SuziQ]

One reason we have the problem of too few priests is that the most recent two generations of Catholics have been poorly catechized, and many have become 'nominal Catholics' at best. It's harder to raise faithful young men from such uninterested and ill-informed ranks. But even when some young men who were interested presented themselves to seminaries, the liberals who made up the Admissions Committees rejected them in favor of the young men they felt were more 'mature'; which they meant more 'flexible' on moral issues.

Thankfully, the younger Bishops are beginning to clean out those seminaries, and make them welcoming places for young men who truly want to serve the Church.

[SuziQ]

Seminaries in Nigeria and Vietnam turn out scores of priests every year. They’ll be happy to come serve in America.

They already are! We had a Vietnamese deacon ordained last year, and a Ugandan man ordained a priest. We also have several young men who came from Colombia to finish their seminary studies, and to learn English, so they can be ordained for our diocese, in MA.

[SuziQ]

Thankfully, many of those ‘loony-tunes’ in the seminaries are graying, as are many liberal Catholics, which means they’re getting old and will be retiring soon!

[SuziQ]

Are there seminaries in South America that can provide the US with Spanish-speaking priests, like we seem to be getting from Africa?

There are quite a few Latin American priests coming to the US. We had a wonderful Assoc. Pastor a few years ago, who is originally from Colombia. There are now several more Colombian men here in the Diocese, learning English, so they can do better in their studies at the seminary.

On the MS Gulf Coast, there are a few young Mexican men who are preparing to study for the priesthood. Both the Dioceses of Biloxi, and of Jackson, MS have supported a Catholic mission in Mexico for over 40 years, and we're beginning to see some young men from it who want to be priests, and who are planning to complete their studies in the US.

[Hoosier Catholic Momma]

I am happy to report that we have 30 seminarians here in the Diocese of Little Rock (which includes the whole state of Arkansas). Three of those seminarians are from our parish, Immaculate Conception here in Fort Smith.

Thirty may not sound like much, but hey, we Catholics aren’t in the majority around these parts!

We are also blessed with two wonderful priests, Father Greg (who was orignally assigned here as an associate pastor back in the late 90s and returned last summer as the top dog, LOL), and Father Eddie, who was just ordained last year. Fr. Eddie is very ‘old school’ as one parishoner told me, and the kids at the school just love him. Deacon Greg reminds me of Father Corapi in his demeanor and his life story, but with a strong Southern drawl.