An ability seemingly impossible for Catholic World News. Can't have any "anti-Catholic" statistics!
The Church in the U.S. has gone through a rough patch created by trendy 60s/70s bishops who didn't adhere to the faith and thought they could create a "new church" that would be basically Unitarians with fancy vestments and do all the cool social justice stuff. They used VCII as an excuse to do this. The result was not the howling success they hoped for - it resulted in a huge drop in Mass attendance and vocations. A certain notoriously liberal diocese didn't have a seminarian for 10 years. After all, if the Church is only about fellowship and social justice, that's more easily done without getting involved in the Church.
The good news is that the trend is turning around with a return to the core beliefs of Catholicism (amazing - be what you are with all your might, don't try to be something else, and they will come.)
Now: a word to the wise.
I don't hang around on the Calvinist or Dispensational or Evangelical threads just to give people a hard time.
Being unable to live and let live is the province of the rabid 'progressive' busybodies (see, Memories Pizza, Hugo Awards, etc. etc.)
We understand that you dislike the Catholic faith and apparently believe its adherents to be hell-bound. Good for you. Take it someplace else.
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".
>> 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.