Culture Of Life 101 . . . “A Statistical Look At The Alleged ‘Priest Shortage’”

By BRIAN CLOWES

(Editor’s Note: Brian Clowes has been director of research and training at Human Life International since 1995. For an electronic copy of the book Call to Action or Call to Apostasy, consisting of a detailed description of the current forms of dissent and how to fight them, e-mail him at bclowes@hli.org.)

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Dissenting groups often claim that there is a critical shortage of Roman Catholic priests in the United States, and so they must agitate for married, women, and homosexual priests for the good of the Church. This is in keeping with the liberal strategy of “Never waste a crisis; and when there is no crisis, manufacture one.”
In order to get at the truth regarding the alleged priest shortage in the United States, I compiled more than 32,000 statistics from the 1956 to 2015 issues of The Official Catholic Directory in order to chart historical trends. These statistics included year by year figures for every (arch)diocese in the United States.
Then I compared these numbers to the statistics presented by dissenting groups, and found — not surprisingly — that all of their numbers are entirely false.
Defecting Priests. Louise Haggett of the dissenting group Celibacy is the Issue is often quoted by those supporting married priests: “20,000 (400 per state average) priests had resigned the clerical priesthood in only a 20-year span; 9 out of 10 left to marry.”
Call to Action and other dissenters have often repeated Haggett’s statistic in their attempts to give the impression that 20,000 men left the priesthood during the time period 1971 to 1990, almost all to marry.
Predictably, the numbers quoted by dissenters are wildly inconsistent; FutureChurch and leavingthepriesthood.com both claim: “During the past 60 years [1956-2016] 25,000 priests have left the priesthood in the United States.”
In reality, 22,722 men did indeed leave the diocesan priesthood in the United States during the period 1971-1990; however, 92 percent of these men left because they had died, not because they had married. This means that a total of only about 1,905 living priests defected during the period 1971-1990 for all reasons — an average of about 95 a year — and no numbers are available from any source on the percentage of those who left to get married. In this case, the dissenters are giving a false impression by padding their numbers with nearly 21,000 deceased priests.
Studies have shown that priests who abandon their ministry do so for a variety of reasons — not just to get married. These include emotional instability, crises of faith, conflicts with superiors, depression, difficulties with the Magisterium and serious limitations of character, including homosexuality or drug or alcohol addiction.
Declining Number of Priests. FutureChurch has stated that “In just eight years [2016], we will have only 13,500 active diocesan priests.”
In reality, as of the end of 2016, there will be 17,550 active diocesan priests in the United States. Keep in mind that the majority of retired priests spend some of their time assisting at local parishes, so the equivalent number of diocesan priests is significantly higher, probably closer to 21,000.
The dissenters talk endlessly about the rapidly aging priesthood in the United States, but they always omit the most critical fact — that all Christian denominations are experiencing a shortage of clergy, and that the average age of the clergy is rising steadily among both conservative and liberal denominations.
This means that men and women in general are turning away from the clergy as a vocation, not just in Roman Catholicism. Since denominations that permit married and female clergy are suffering the same problems as Catholicism, it obviously follows that the “priest shortage” is not caused by an exclusively celibate and male priesthood!
Young clergy are scarce in many of the largest denominations in the United States. It is certainly true that the Roman Catholic Church has more elderly clergy than the other major denominations, but it is only a matter of time before the others “catch up” and also age significantly. Thirty-two percent of Roman Catholic priests were aged 55 or older in 1975, and 69 percent were 55 or older in 1999. By comparison, the number of Disciples of Christ clergy 55 or older was just 14 percent in 1979, and rose to 53 percent in 2012; Episcopal clergy 24 percent in 1974 and 59 percent in 2012; Presbyterian clergy 19 percent in 1975 and 53 percent in 2012; and United Methodist clergy 38 percent in 1985 and 57 percent in 2015.
Booming Numbers of Catholics. Both Call to Action and FutureChurch have claimed that, as the number of priests is falling, the number of Catholics is booming, making the situation even worse: “By the year 2005 . . . the total number of U.S. Catholics is expected to increase by 65 percent.”
This is among the most egregious of the examples of statistical deception used by dissenters. There were a total of 56.3 million Catholics in the United States in 1996 (when this claim was made), and there were 63.9 million Catholics in this country at the beginning of the year 2005. This represents a total increase of only 13 percent over the 1996 figure, not 65 percent as the dissenters have claimed.
Pastor Shortage. One claim by the dissenting group CORPUS in 1996 was that “50 percent of parishes worldwide are currently without resident pastors.”
To begin with, the actual number of worldwide parishes that did not have resident pastors when this claim was made was about half of what CORPUS claims, or about 27 percent. When bandying about their figures, the dissenters conveniently forget to mention the critical fact that fully two-thirds of the entire world’s parishes are located in Europe, where many priests have always covered a second small parish with one Sunday Mass that is usually within five miles of their primary residence. If Europe is discounted, this means that in 1996 only one out of eight — 13 percent — of all parishes in the rest of the world had no resident pastor.
The situation in the United States regarding the priest shortage is nowhere near as dire as the dissenters claim. There were 17,483 parishes in this country as of 2014. Of these:
13,987 (80.0 percent) have resident diocesan or religious priests.
3,108 (17.8 percent) are covered by priests from nearby parishes, meaning that a total of 98 percent of all parishes are covered by a resident or non-resident priest.
388 (2.2 percent) are administered by permanent deacons, men or women religious, lay people, or pastoral teams. These are usually remote parishes with small memberships.
Abandoned Celibacy. CORPUS claims that most priests are not celibate, and echo the pro-abortion line that, if a law is widely ignored, we might as well abandon it. CORPUS claims: “Research has shown that at any given time only 50 percent of priests actually practice celibacy. . . . Three out of every five heterosexual priests in clerical life are in [a sexual] relationship with a woman.”
We have to wonder what kind of “research” was done to arrive at this result. Naturally, it is never documented in the dissenters’ claims.
First of all, note that the above short claim quotes two different numbers, 50 percent and 60 percent. This is a telling characteristic of statistics that are pulled out of thin air — they frequently contradict themselves. It is said that “a lie must have a good memory,” but the dissenters seem to be pretty forgetful.
Add to this figure the common liberal claim that one-fourth of all priests are “gay,” and we arrive at the ridiculous conclusion that almost no priests are faithful to their vows of celibacy.
Dissenters make claims that they cannot possibly substantiate, and their footnotes usually refer to other dissenters’ writings, rarely to original research. Their spurious claims are obviously meant to convince people that even priests who do not abandon their vows and leave the Church are living a hypocritical lie.
The worst aspect of such claims is that they insult and hurt the vast majority of good priests — both conservative and liberal — who do faithfully keep their vows, and the wide publication of such lies undermines the confidence that the faithful have in Holy Mother Church — and ultimately causes the loss of souls.
Plunging Vocations. CORPUS has also claimed: “By the year 2005 there will be a 40 percent decline in priestly vocations [over 1995].”
This is more unsubstantiated propaganda by dissenting groups. The number of diocesan and religious priests ordained in the United States fluctuates to a certain extent each year, with 778 men ordained in 1995, 702 in 2010, and 783 in 2014. There are now more total Ordinations annually than there were in the year this CORPUS pamphlet was written. Therefore, there has been a general recent upward trend in Ordinations — not a huge decrease as CORPUS claims.
Summary of the Claims. These statistical fallacies are the most common arguments used by dissenting groups to buttress their demands that women, homosexuals, and married men should be ordained, and they have not been updated in two decades. Since all of these statistics are false and misleading, it looks as if the dissenters, in the interest of honest “dialogue,” should find a new set of justifications for a married priesthood. But since they are still using the same 20-year-old statistics, we must assume that this is not a high priority for them.