How to deal with the North Country’s priest shortage?
Richard Cardinal Cushing, Archbishop of Boston, performs ordinations at Catholic of the Holy Cross and other churches in the archdiocese in February, 1960. Fewer new priests are new being ordained to replace those who are retiring. Photo: Archives of the Archdiocese of Boston via George Martell, Creative Commons, some rights reserved
It’s often said that the population of the North Country is dropping (census numbers from 2010-2012 show it’s actually shifting, with some areas dramatically losing population, others gaining, and still others remaining pretty much stable.) One group of people whose numbers are dropping, it seems, is Catholics — at least those in the Diocese of Ogdensburg, which covers most of the North Country. In that diocese, there were about 108,000 Catholics in 2012. Now there are about 93,000 (these numbers from diocese Chancellor Sister Jennifer Voltraw via parish counts.)
But more rapidly than the number of Catholics, the number of priests in the diocese is decreasing. Last year, Brian Mann reported the shortage. In that story Odgensburg diocese Bishop Terry LaValley said he expected the shortage to worsen, as priests age and fewer seminarians come up to replace them, with the result that in a decade the diocese would have only about 40 priests.
As Sister Voltraw said to me when I spoke to her on the phone this morning, “[the population of Catholics is] down, but the needs are ever as great, the acreage is the same, and we’re having fewer and fewer priests taking care of the population.” And older priests as well, who may be past retirement age and not be able to travel as much as they used to.
In a story on the steps the diocese is taking to address the problem, WWNY-TV mentions it’s considering increasing responsibility for deacons and lay people, and continuing to consolidate parishes. “We’ve really been trying to be creative”, Bishop LaValley says in the article, “in trying to assure that the pastoral care of the people remains even if they don’t have a resident pastor.”
A note on the numbers: You may notice that some of the numbers in the WWNY-TV piece don’t match those here. I’m not quite sure why that is, but the numbers quoted in this post are from the best source I could find, Sister Voltraw. Also, if you’re interested in more numbers and analysis about Catholics in the United States and around the world, check out this report from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
Why should we care about bolstering the leadership of a private organization of little consequence to most of us that owns enormous wealth, pays no taxes, practically ignores science and free will, is anti-women, anti-gay, and has a well-established local history of pedophilia and child abuse?
Why would we want to do that?
Excellent points, John.
Here we go.
Let priests marry and be of any gender. It’d improve the numbers over the long term and move the church into the 21st century (somewhat anyway) at the same time.
For the time being, there probably is not any way to deal with the problem.
I wouldn’t hold my breath for two possible solutions.
One, allow priests to marry and two, allow women to become priests.
Those are the only possible solutions I can see.
It’s very simple. Ordain women.
It will be solved one way or the other. The obvious solution is to give already ordained Deacons more authority, and this likely will be the solution. We have many wonderful deacons and this is the direction the Church is going anyway. But this is a Catholic issue that will be handle successfully as the many other issues faced over the past 2000 years have been. I am not sure it is news? In that respect I agree with the two haters in the first two posts.
I certainly hope the Catholic Church handles the problem successfully, though I’m not sure the past performance of the Church is relevant to future success. After all, the decision to only ordain men as priests could be part of the problem in retaining practicing Catholics today. From the outside it seems that the dogmatic approach to issues within the faith might be softened by the voice of Eve. I understand that Catholics don’t want a Faith that blows with the wind but it always seemd to me that Jesus was part iconoclast and iconoclasm is the last thing the church wants, at least not under the last few Popes. Let’s see what the new guy does.
Response to the woefully ignorant John Warren;
First, the CC isn’t anti-women simply because women cannot be ordained as priests. Women in the CC hold many positions of importance and lest you forget, the mother of Christ is venerated more in the CC than in any other christian faith. Second, the CC teaches that sexual relations -straight or not- outside the confines of marriage is a sin. The church dislikes the sin but not the sinner. Third, it’s the CC – see the writings of John Paul (for example) – that acknowledges the fossil record and thus science. There are plenty of non-Catholic Christians that teach otherwise but you’re wrong (again) on the “denial of science” comment. Or, do you simply like to trot out 16th century issues about Galileo? If so, I suggest you update the grounding for your animus against the church. Fifth, to suggest that the church is deterministic has no foundation whatsoever. There’s no truth to your claim of the CC denying free will. You might want to glance at the Catholic Catechism to improve your understanding on this point. Sixth, when you mention that the church pays no taxes, I can only assume that you’re referring to taxes paid on property; here, you’re partially correct. But, this is privilege extended to other groups too. Are you equally intolerant (and dare I say ignorant about them too)? If you have a problem with it I suggest you seek a change to local, state, & fed laws. To suggest no taxes are paid by the church is simply false – most churches or other houses of worship – pay various fees for government & private services – water, utilities, and so forth. This is no small amount. Moreover, what your tax comment suggests is that the CC (& by extension all other churches & tax exempt organizations) is free-riding on the hardworking taxpayers of our communities. Religious institutions provide a myriad of benefits to communities for which they’re granted a privilege. Are these not valuable to a society in other ways than taxes? Seven, to first suggest that the church is of little consequence to society denies the significance of it to the hundreds and thousands of individuals that practice the faith and or receive other tangible benefits from the church. I dare say that the families – Catholic or not – that receive food or $ to pay their heating bill (or otherwise) don’t think the church is inconsequential. Lastly, as for the sexual scandal, abusive priests have been rooted out – thankfully. BTW – the scandal didn’t involve children—less than 5% of victims were prepubescent. [One’s too many but this goes to your pedophile comment.] Typical offenses involved “inappropriate touching” of postpubescent males. It was largely a homosexual scandal that ended a quarter century ago: the number of credibly accused priests over the last decade has averaged in the single digits, among a population of over 40K.