Posted on 11/13/2022 6:40:42 PM PST by marshmallow
The data, which shows only 2.5% of Irish priests are below the age of 40, has people wondering how the clergy will handle the work load.
A survey taken by Ireland’s Association for Catholic Priests (ACP) has revealed that about a quarter of the nation’s clergymen will reach or surpass the age of 75 within the next 15 years. Furthermore, it was found that only an estimated 2.5% of active Catholic priests in Ireland are below the age of 40. The data was shared at the Annual General Meeting (AGM), in October.
Retirement
While a Catholic diocesan priest is allowed to seek retirement at 70, those who are able and willing to continue are encouraged to maintain their ministries until 75. In Ireland, however, the shortage of priests and seminarians has resulted in a general understanding that all priests will continue their duties until the maximum age. This can be surmised by the ACP’s data, which only referenced 75 as the age of retirement.
In fact, many Irish priests are continuing their ministries beyond the maximum age of retirement. The Tablet reports that ACP members were informed that of the country’s 2,100 working priests, 300 (15%) of them are above the age of 75. In the group aged 61 to 75, who will be reaching the age of retirement within the next 15 years, there are 547 (~26%) active priests.
It is also suggested that those priests who have reached or are approaching retirement age are sorely overworked. The 847 (41%) Irish priests aged from 61 to 75 or above are tending to the flocks of 1,355 parishes and 2,652 churches or Mass centers across Ireland. This suggests that many of the longest serving priests are pulling double duties, and serving in multiple churches per week.
(Excerpt) Read more at aleteia.org ...
In many Catholic areas, look to see the priest population “age out” in the next 10 years.
The Boomer generation will be buried and have their last rites said by a scant few Millennials and Gen Xers
So will a large % of the church members.
Luke 18:8
I tell you that He will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?”
The stats in the headline seem incongruent with the stats in the article.
Assuming priests become priests at 20 and retire at 70 that’s 50 years. 15 years / 50 years is 30%. So 25% aging out over the next 15 years doesn’t sound that bad.
That only 2.5% of priests are under 40 sounds much worse. But at what age do Irish men normally become priests?
At ages 25 to 70 (45 years), baseline would be 33.3% in 15 years (15/45) so having 25% retire in 15 years is below baseline.
At ages 25 to 75 (50 years), baseline would be 30% in 15 years (15/50). Again 25% in 15 years is still below baseline.
At 3.33% per year retirement (15/45) = 69.3 of the 2,100 current priests. Losing 69.3 per year, they'd cycle out all of them by 2053 if they had no replacements:
2023 69
2024 139
2025 208
2026 277
2027 347
2028 416
2029 485
2030 554
2031 624
2032 693
2033 762
2034 832
2035 901
2036 970
2037 1,040
2038 1,109
2039 1,178
2040 1,247
2041 1,317
2042 1,386
2043 1,455
2044 1,525
2045 1,594
2046 1,663
2047 1,733
2048 1,802
2049 1,871
2050 1,940
2051 2,010
2052 2,079
2053 2,148
Ok, bring in the Nigerian, Philippinno , Vietnamese and Indian priests. As Pope Benedict called for, the Re-evangelization of Europe.
The Catholic church is now a minority in Ireland, replaced by secular paganism.
Aging Church of England ‘will be dead in 10 years’ (2032)
The Church of England will cease to exist in 20 years as the current generation of elderly worshippers dies, Anglican leaders warned yesterday.
By Tim Ross
12 July 2011 • 9:02pm
Catholicism is rapidly becoming a Hispanic and African religion.
The Irish, who fought the British for their freedom and won it after hundreds of years have thrown away their Catholic faith to become just like their captors. They are no longer a Catholic country and it only took 100 years for the British Protestants to see their victory.
Please pray for the land of my father and pray for the dwindling number of true Catholics in Ireland.
The Church killed its liturgy with very woke ideas about “peoples active participation,” which some Bishops took to extreme degrees.
The people could not pray because it was all navel gazing worship. So the purpose of their faith became a burden and they left.
Catholicism is rapidly becoming a Hispanic and African religion.
It “ain’t” new in California, Texas and other border states.
In California, Hispanics established the Catholic Missions up the coastal areas and inland areas with 21 missions.
Before the Spanish exploration of Alta California, native peoples known as the Kumeyaay populated the area. By the late 1700s, Spain ventured into their territory in order to expand Spanish land holdings up from the south in modern-day Mexico. A religious mission that sought to bring Catholicism to the thousands of natives who called the western coast their home accompanied this political move.
On July 1, 1769, a Franciscan friar, Father Junípero Serra, and a Spanish Capitan, Don Caspar de Portola, founded the first Spanish colony in Alta California (San Diego). Here on July 16, Father Serra established the Mission San Diego de Alcalá, a crude church meant to serve both the Spanish colonists and begin Catholic outreach to local natives. The San Diego Mission became the first of 21 missions on the west coast of California.
The mission remained at its original site for only five years, after which Father Serra moved it six miles to the east. A strong military presence at the San Diego Presidio seemed to deter the native people Serra was trying to reach, and water supplies were insufficient for the church’s agricultural ventures.
The new, and present, site was an ideal location close to both the San Diego River and many of the native villages along it. A wooden church and outbuildings constructed in 1774 burned to the ground a year later in the native uprising of 1775. The Catholic Church’s Father Luis Jayme was murdered at the time and became California’s first Christian martyr. His remains are buried beneath the altar in the church that is standing today.
By the turn of the 20th Century, the mission church was little more than a ruin.
Public Domain
The second church on the site constructed in 1777 of stronger adobe brick with a thatched roof was replaced in 1780 by an even larger adobe building, as the mission continued to expand.
By the late 1790s, Mission San Diego de Alcalá was at the peak of its success with over 50,000 acres to its name. The mission grew a variety of agricultural crops including corn, wheat, barley, kidney beans, and chickpeas and had some 20,000 sheep, 10,000 head of cattle, and 1,250 horses. A church vineyard produced wine.
The church was rebuilt and expanded once more between 1808 and 1813. Father Jose Bernardo Sanchez designed and planned the new church, which is on the site today. The building is of adobe and white washed brick in a simple, long, rectangular plan.
Unlike its predecessors, its roof is of timber shipped over 60 miles from the interior mountains. The church’s most distinct architectural feature was a single, four-story bell tower containing five bells of three sizes.
After Mexico gained its independence in 1821, the government soon secularized all of the formerly Catholic missions. After the Franciscans stopped administering the church at San Diego in 1834, the mission deteriorated into a ruin. Over the next several decades, the site was used privately for agricultural pursuits and as an American military outpost after California became the 31st State in 1850.
In 1862, the U.S. government returned what remained of the mission buildings and land to the Catholic Church. The church retrofitted and made additions to the building and used it as a school for the native population and, later, a children’s home for boys until the early 1900’s. It was rededicated as a parish church in 1941.
For more detail go to this link:
https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/american_latino_heritage/san_diego_mission_church.html
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.