Posted on 04/08/2015 6:35:16 AM PDT by marshmallow
595 men are expected to be ordained to the priesthood in the United States in 2015, an increase of 24.7% over last year’s figure of 477, according to data released by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The number of men ordained to the priesthood in the US fell steadily from 994 in 1965, to 771 in 1975, 533 in 1985, 511 in 1995, and 454 in 2005, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.
We’re getting there, I believe. That’s why I want more details.
There shouldn’t be. Seminarians now must undergo rigid Psyche testing, parents are questioned, parish priests that know them are questioned, numerous personal acquaintance are questioned, and the seminarian has to be approved over and over through this process.
Yes, but 1950s-1970s American Catholicism was an abbheration, a time of de-facto schism and poor quality control for the seminaries. I bet half of those priests expected to be able to get married within a decade.
I hope and pray you’re right.
Yet they included the numbers for 1965 and subsequent years, through to the present, in the article. Although percentages were not given, it's clear from the numbers provided that there was a drastic fall-off in vocations through the last 30-40 years.
They were under no obligation to provide the numbers for previous years. They could have simply supplied this year's figure together with a puff piece about everything being wonderful but they didn't.
They conveniently placed this year's figure in the context of previous years' so that you could then convert it into a percentage, do a victory dance and accuse of them of covering up "anti-Catholic statistics".
Looking at the data:
I have to suspect that a large number of candidates delayed graduation for some reason last year. The number of ordinations fell for no reason I can tease out of the mere numbers I see. If so, this number is somewhat inflated, but part of a more steady improvement.
If we can stabilize the number at about 600 over the next several years, we can achieve a working priest population of over 25,000. That would be roughly sufficient for our parish needs: There are about 17,000 parishes, but because of the uneven distribution of Catholics within the parishes, those 17,000 parishes need about 25,000 working priests.
>> An ability seemingly impossible for Catholic World News. Can’t have any “anti-Catholic” statistics! <<
Actually, the source cherry-picked the highest number of ordinations in history to compare the current data with, specifically to emphasize the magnitude of the former decline. The ultimate source is CARA, whose purpose is not to propagandize the faithful, but to supply the bishops with the data they need to understand what human resources issues they will have in providing for their flocks.
An act which is interpreted as "anti-Catholic" and "damning Catholics to hell" whenever a Protestant does it.
A typical Catholic and Liberal ploy.
I’ve read where Catholic seminaries are a good place for homos to hang out because nobody wonders why they don’t have girlfriends or wives. Makes a good cover for them.
So, you slander Catholic information as presumably deceitful because they’re only reporting news that makes them look good. Then, when people point out that the information is purposely scrutinizing, you complain that Protestant scrutinization is anti-Catholic.
How about this? You get called anti-Catholic because your only use for such information is “how can I use this to defame Catholicism?” as demonstrated, for example, by the preceding paragraph.
In spite of data showing that sexual abuse is no worse among Catholic priests than any other profession that dealt with large numbers of children (teachers, other denominations’ clergy, scout leaders, etc.), I’ve suspected the reason that the nature of such abuse is largely homosexual within the Catholic priesthood is precisely that: heterosexual perverts don’t expect the priesthood to be a good place to find sex, but homosexual perverts found it a good hiding place in the 1950s through 1970s.
But don’t miss the news that very few of these abuse cases occurred after 1990.
When that's all a Protestant does, it's difficult to come to any other conclusion.
On any given day, one can explain away a specific thread or post but over a period of years, clear patterns emerge, which are a little harder to dismiss.
Catholic Culture is written by Catholics for Catholics who make up the vast majority of its readership. It's ridiculous to draw a parallel between a news service for Catholics who are already well aware of the decline in vocations with a contentious, multi-denominational religion forum which is heavy on apologetics.
Pope Benedict sent teams of inspectors to root out the non-believing homosexuals and put these strict guidelines in please. Give him the credit.
The numbers are not really very helpful. 1965 was probably the historic high-water mark, at least for raw numbers of ordinations. A more valuable statistic would be priests ordained per year per N practicing Catholics, going back further than 1965.
My Bishop will not ordain a man if he has homosexual tendencies, even if the man thinks he’s heterosexual. It also has become common practice for priests to travel in pairs when dealing with kids, having another adult along also, and never be one on one alone with a child. The kids learn to go face to face for Reconciliation first so it’s natural to them.
I just hope and pray they haven’t been indoctrinated with modernest apostasies. Good news on the 25% increase though.
In other words, your reply has little to do with what I posted today. Instead, one can only conclude that you wrote your post as a reply to my entire posting history, which is nothing if not the definition of bringing forward disputes from prior threads. Go start your personal flamewars someplace else.
Oh, and don't forget to clip the coupons in post #15.
My reply was in response to this:
An act which is interpreted as "anti-Catholic" and "damning Catholics to hell" whenever a Protestant does it. (Alex Murphy, #28)
The word "whenever" is a clear reference to events outside of the current thread. You've highlighted a general forum trend and it absolutely brings into play the "posting history" of Catholics. I hope my response helped to clarify why posts are sometimes interpreted as anti-Catholic "whenever" they occur.
If you'd like to confine discussion to the current article, that works for me. I'm still waiting for a response to #25.
If you don't want to discuss "posting history", don't go there.
Since it was Alex Murphy who's analysis of the information (which information itself he was accused of "slandering"(!) --- how can information itself be "slandered"?) others went there "focusing upon past posting history" (see post #11) straightaway with him, making mention of other threads, telling him "he missed the point" and how they themselves don't go to particular kind of threads to "give people a hard time" before ending with a "take it someplace else".
And then you yourself entered into discussion of posting history, while continuing to blame it all on Alex.
I've never seen a more thin-skinned and prickly bunch, ever-ready to attack a messenger, other than Mohammedans (and perhaps the Apple fanboys?).
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