The Good Shepherd

April 29, 2015

Today is traditionally called “Good Shepherd Sunday” because of the Gospel. It’s also traditionally a time to talk about vocations to the priesthood. Here are some data to get us started:

U.S. Data[1]	1965	1970	1975	1980	1985	1990	1995	2000	2005	2010	2014
Total priests	58,632	59,192	58,909	58,398	57,317	52,124	49,054	45,699	41,399	39,993	38,275
Diocesan priests	35,925	37,272	36,005	35,627	35,052	34,114	32,349	30,607	28,094	27,182	26,265
Religious priests	22,707	21,920	22,904	22,771	22,265	18,010	16,705	15,092	13,305	12,811	12,010
Priestly ordinations	994	805	771	593	533	595	511	442	454	459	494
Parishes	17,637	18,224	18,515	18,794	19,244	19,620	19,331	19,236	18,891	17,958	17,483
Parishes without a resident priest pastor	549	571	702	791	1,051	1,812	2,161	2,843	3,251	3,353	3,496
Catholic population	48.5m	51.0m	54.5m	56.8m	59.5m	62.4m	65.7m	71.7m	74.0m	74.6m	79.7m
Former Catholic adults:	—	—	7.5m	8.6m	8.0m	10.3m	17.3m	17.9m	19.1m	26.8m	28.9m

I was ordained in 1972. Forty-three years later there are 20,000 fewer priests in the U.S. and about 25 million more Catholics (plus about twenty million more former Catholics). The ratio of diocesan priests to Catholics has gone from a 1970 figure of 1 priest per 862 Catholics to a 2014 ratio of 1 priest to 2,818. But those aren’t the most worrisome numbers.

Any professional group has to replace itself each generation. So a key thing to look at is the age-distribution of practitioners. If you look at the nearest comparable professions, medicine and law, over the past forty years the ratio of young practitioners to older ones does something amazing: in 1970 priests, doctors, and lawyers had roughly similar age-distributions; but by 2010 doctors’ and lawyers’ age-distributions looked about like they did in 1970 (median age rose 3%); but priests were widely-different: the median age of priests rose 31%, from 45 to 59. In 1970, fewer than 10% of priests were over age 65; now, 40% are.[2]

Simply put, the church in the U.S. is not replacing its priests at nearly the rate it needs to. Why? Well, it seems that a major factor in young people pursuing a religious vocation (priest or sister) is whether or not they receive encouragement from family and friends. Now look at the chart on the right: 69% of adult Catholics would not encourage a young person to pursue priesthood or religious life.[3] What would happen to the health of a society that discouraged its young people from becoming physicians?

So there are the data. More, from a more personal angle, next week. Until next week, peace.

A request: If you’ve been using the notebook to record what you hear from God at Mass and would like to help others to get started, I invite you to send me your jottings; I’ll publish some as examples (without names attached, of course). You can drop off notes to me at the parish office, or e-mail to frvin@ourladyofgrace.net.

[1] Source: Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA): http://cara.georgetown.edu/CARAServices/requestedchurchstats.html

[2] Source: Gaultier, Peri, and Ficter, Same Call, Different Men. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012.

[3] Source: CARA research blog: 2011/04/spotlight-on-vocations-interested-and.html