Thursday 5th December 2024

Home » Our Catholic Faith » Currently Reading:

Vocations Dearth Killing Parishes

August 31, 2023 Our Catholic Faith No Comments

By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK

The victims of the Maui fire jumped into the water to flee the hellish conflagration all around them. Souls are abandoning the Barque of Peter as heresy and lack of priests threaten parish viability. The synods welcome a priest shortage so that they “fix” it by further multiplying the already ubiquitous lay “ministers.” The Church teaches officially that there are only three ministries in the Church: bishop, priest, and deacon.
Lay attendance at Mass is commonly acknowledged to be in freefall. Join lack of priestly vocations to that and you have a looming disaster.
“The Episcopal Conference of France has published their figures for priestly Ordinations: There are 88 new priests in 2023, as compared with 130 in 2021. The press release from the French bishops easily recognizes a fall which is part of a continuous trend of falling vocations within the Church, which we have been observing for 20 years, and which many sociologists of religions have documented” (Bishops’ Conference of France).
The context: “There were about a hundred diocesan priests per year between 2000 and 2010. There are only 52 this year, to which are added 36 religious. But despite this contribution, the total figure of 88 new priests is indeed an unprecedented drop.
“For the record, in 1961, the quarterly review of the National Vocations Center had already titled one of its issues: ‘The most serious crisis in 150 years!’ Indeed, from 1951 to 1960, the number of ordinations of diocesan priests had dropped dramatically. The Church in France had gone from 1,028 to 595 ordinations per year.
“In Le Figaro of June 22, Jean-Marie Guénois comments on the particularly worrying figures for this year: ‘If this trend is confirmed, the number of ordinations of diocesan priests would have fallen by 50 percent in two decades. Unheard of, even if we have to wait for confirmation of the sustainability of such a projection. However, it is probable, the entries being more and more rare’.”
“Important seminaries were recently closed in Lille and Bordeaux. It takes seven years of training to mature a vocation, with a loss rate of one out of two candidates. The [Archdiocese] of Paris is even beginning to tremble: In September 2022, only four candidates presented themselves for the first year of seminary. And only five priests will be ordained this June 24 in the Saint-Sulpice church in Paris. There were 10 in 2022, 12 in 2021.”
“And to specify: ‘This crisis of vocations is not only French, but European. It is also very notable in Poland but also in Italy, which is beginning to worry the Vatican. North America is not being spared, nor is South America.’
“In Switzerland, the Institute of Pastoral Sociology (IPS), relayed by cath.ch on June 24, also notes: ‘Since 1950, the number of diocesan priests domiciled in Switzerland has been reduced by half, it has decreased by one quarter since the turn of the century alone, but the differences between dioceses are notable.’
“The decline was particularly marked in the Dioceses of St. Gall, Basel, Sion, and Lausanne-Geneva-Fribourg, while it was less marked in the Dioceses of Chur and Lugano, especially during the last two decades. In 1950, the Swiss dioceses had 2,986 priests. They had 1,294 in 2022.
“According to an estimate by the IPS, ‘the number of diocesan priests will decline further in all dioceses, but with significant disparities. In 2029, barely more than 900 priests should still belong to a Swiss diocese, i.e., one-third less than today. The two Dioceses of Basel and St. Gall will suffer a greater than average decline, as has already been the case over the past decades, due to the significant aging of priests and the scarcity of priestly ordinations.”
For years, dioceses hired radical lay-garbed women religious to sit on vocations admissions boards and to interview and accuse candidates of “rigidity” and other false charges in order to eliminate them and artificially reduce the numbers of seminary candidates. It looks now as though they did their job so well they are no longer needed.
“This vertiginous drop in the number of ecclesiastics leads to abuses that the next synod on synodality is very likely not to sanction, and perhaps even to condone. To compensate for the lack of priests in Switzerland, they will not hesitate to call on lay people. In La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana on June 16, 2023, Luisella Scrosati notes that in the canton of Basel, it is now usual for lay people to exercise priestly functions: they preach; they preside over a liturgy of the Word which completely replaces the Mass; and they baptize and celebrate marriages.”
The agenda, as dictated by the perpetual cycle of synods, will be to consolidate the process already in play of replacing ordained priests with women “ministers” at Sunday Communion services in lieu of Mass. This in the hope of building pressure on bishops to do that which the Church has already officially declared impossible: confer ordination upon women. How they will pull this off in the United States, which has more ordained deacons than the rest of the Catholic world combined, remains to be seen. Deacons were sold as a plan to assist priests with Communion calls, Baptisms, preaching, and other tasks. In reality, deacons are seen little around parishes except when they are needed least: on Sunday at Mass in the sanctuary with the priest.
Already there is a phenomenon at play in parishes which use lay “ministers” to give Communion. Some faithful in the Communion queue at Mass can be observed switching lines in order to receive the Sacrament from the consecrated hands of a priest.
At the same time, the small number of real Catholic believers who are left will flee to the few parishes remaining with a priest at the helm. This will hasten the already advanced balkanization of the Church made evident by such websites as “ReverentCatholicMass.com.” What made such a resource necessary? The rampant and widespread loss of the sacred with the banning of Traditional Latin Masses. Which is happening all over again.
Concerned Catholics in Switzerland decried the catastrophic results of priest-less parishes in a dubium sent to Rome: “Lay theologians are appointed by the bishops to the heads of parishes, which is not in conformity with canon law. This gives them the option of preaching in parishes during Mass or doing away with Mass altogether, replacing it with Liturgies of the Word.”
“The dioceses most affected by this phenomenon are those of Basel, Chur, and St. Gall. The first has even been taken as a model by Germany’s Synodal Path. . . .
“In Basel, lay theologians preach, baptize, and celebrate marriages, and same-sex couples are blessed, hence this implacable consequence recalled by Vera Fides: ‘All this has led to an immense loss of faith in this diocese, and many people have left the Church.’ Almost half of the parishes in the Diocese of Basel no longer have Sunday Mass, but only a Liturgy of the Word with distribution of communion’ (La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, June 16, 2023).
With the emptying of the parishes, the Church is being dangerously diminished.
Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
apriestlife.blogspot.com

Share Button

2019 The Wanderer Printing Co.

Vatican and USCCB leave transgender policy texts unpublished

While U.S. bishops have made headlines for releasing policies addressing gender identity and pastoral ministry, guidelines on the subject have been drafted but not published by both the U.S. bishops’ conference and the Vatican’s doctrinal office, leaving diocesan bishops to…Continue Reading

Biden says Pope Francis told him to continue receiving communion, amid scrutiny over pro-abortion policies

President Biden said that Pope Francis, during their meeting Friday in Vatican City, told him that he should continue to receive communion, amid heightened scrutiny of the Catholic president’s pro-abortion policies.  The president, following the approximately 90-minute-long meeting, a key…Continue Reading

Federal judge rules in favor of Gov. DeSantis’ mask mandate ban

MIAMI (LifeSiteNews) – A federal judge this week handed Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis another legal victory on his mask mandate ban for schools. On Wednesday, Judge K. Michael Moore of the Southern District of Florida denied a petition from…Continue Reading

The Eucharist should not be received unworthily, says Nigerian cardinal

Priests have a duty to remind Catholics not to receive the Eucharist in a state of serious sin and to make confession easily available, a Nigerian cardinal said at the International Eucharistic Congress on Thursday. “It is still the doctrine…Continue Reading

Donald Trump takes a swipe at Catholics and Jews who did not vote for him

Donald Trump complained about Catholics and Jews who did not vote for him in 2020. The former president made the comments in a conference call featuring religious leaders. The move could be seen to shore up his religious conservative base…Continue Reading

Y Gov. Kathy Hochul Admits Andrew Cuomo Covered Up COVID Deaths, 12,000 More Died Than Reported

When it comes to protecting people from COVID, Andrew Cuomo is already the worst governor in America. New York has the second highest death rate per capita, in part because he signed an executive order putting COVID patients in nursing…Continue Reading

Prayers For Cardinal Burke . . . U.S. Cardinal Burke says he has tested positive for COVID-19

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — U.S. Cardinal Raymond L. Burke said he has tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19. In an Aug. 10 tweet, he wrote: “Praised be Jesus Christ! I wish to inform you that I have recently…Continue Reading

Democrats Block Amendment Banning Late-Term Abortions, Stopping Abortions Up to Birth

Senate Democrats have blocked an amendment that would ban abortions on babies older than 20 weeks. During consideration of the multi-trillion spending package, pro-life Louisiana Senator John Kennedy filed an amendment to ban late-term abortions, but Democrats steadfastly support killing…Continue Reading

Transgender student wins as U.S. Supreme Court rebuffs bathroom appeal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed a victory to a transgender former public high school student who waged a six-year legal battle against a Virginia county school board that had barred him from using the bathroom corresponding…Continue Reading

New York priest accused by security guard of assault confirms charges have now been dropped

NEW YORK, June 17, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — A New York priest has made his first public statement regarding the dismissal of charges against him.  Today Father George W. Rutler reached out to LifeSiteNews and other media today with the following…Continue Reading

21,000 sign petition protesting US Catholic bishops vote on Biden, abortion

More than 21,000 people have signed a letter calling for U.S. Catholic bishops to cancel a planned vote on whether President Biden should receive communion.  Biden, a Catholic, supports abortion rights and has long come under attack from some Catholics over that…Continue Reading

Bishop Gorman seeks candidates to fill two full time AP level teaching positions for the 2021-2022 school year in the subject areas of Calculus/Statistics and Physics

Bishop Thomas K. Gorman Regional Catholic School is a college preparatory school located in Tyler, Texas. It is an educational ministry of the Catholic Diocese of Tyler led by Bishop Joseph Strickland. The sixth through twelfth grade school provides a…Continue Reading

Untitled 5 Untitled 2

Attention Readers:

  Welcome to our website. Readers who are familiar with The Wanderer know we have been providing Catholic news and orthodox commentary for 150 years in our weekly print edition.


  Our daily version offers only some of what we publish weekly in print. To take advantage of everything The Wanderer publishes, we encourage you to su
bscribe to our flagship weekly print edition, which is mailed every Friday or, if you want to view it in its entirety online, you can subscribe to the E-edition, which is a replica of the print edition.
 
  Our daily edition includes: a selection of material from recent issues of our print edition, news stories updated daily from renowned news sources, access to archives from The Wanderer from the past 10 years, available at a minimum charge (this will be expanded as time goes on). Also: regularly updated features where we go back in time and highlight various columns and news items covered in The Wanderer over the past 150 years. And: a comments section in which your remarks are encouraged, both good and bad, including suggestions.
 
  We encourage you to become a daily visitor to our site. If you appreciate our site, tell your friends. As Catholics we must band together to rediscover our faith and share it with the world if we are to effectively counter a society whose moral culture seems to have no boundaries and a government whose rapidly extending reach threatens to extinguish the rights of people of faith to practice their religion (witness the HHS mandate). Now more than ever, vehicles like The Wanderer are needed for clarification and guidance on the issues of the day.

Catholic, conservative, orthodox, and loyal to the Magisterium have been this journal’s hallmarks for five generations. God willing, our message will continue well into this century and beyond.

Joseph Matt
President, The Wanderer Printing Co.

Untitled 1

Catechism

Today . . .

Trump CDC Nominee Dave Weldon Protected Pro-Life Doctors From Being Forced to Do Abortions

President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is the reason the government doesn’t give money to entities that discriminate against pro-life health care providers. In 2005, then-Rep. David Weldon, R-Fla., first proposed the Weldon Amendment, which prohibits Department of Health and Human Services funds from going to entities that discriminate against providers that don’t pay for, provide, cover, or refer for abortions. The amendment has been readopted in every HHS…Continue Reading

Donald Trump elected president in decisive win over Kamala Harris

(LifeSiteNews) — Republican former President Donald Trump has won this year’s election to become the 47th president of the United States, defeating Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris. Fox News called the 2024 presidential race for Trump around 1:50 a.m. EST on Wednesday after declaring him the winner of swing states Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The Associated Press has since called the election for Trump.

This week at the Synod on Synodality — revolution or much ado about nothing?

Perhaps it is in the very nature of the Synod on Synodality to take steps back after having taken several steps forward. But the tone of the opening days of the synod’s final general assembly makes it apparent that, for the moment, there is no talk of revolution within the Church.  That tone was set days before the gathering got underway this week at the Vatican, when in his speech in Belgium on Sept. 27, Pope Francis…Continue Reading

Wyoming doctor fired by GOP governor for opposing child ‘sex changes’ asks to be reinstated

(The Daily Signal) — Wyoming’s governor removed a doctor from the state’s board of medicine because the doctor supported a law banning “gender-affirming care” for minors. The doctor is suing, and his lawyers are filing a motion Tuesday asking the court to reinstate him on the medical board. His legal team also revealed that more than 5,000 Wyoming residents have signed a petition asking the governor to reinstate him

Pro-life leaders express disgust with ‘fully booked’ mobile Planned Parenthood unit at DNC

(LifeSiteNews) — Planned Parenthood was “fully booked” with 25 appointments to dispense abortion pills at a mobile center on Monday and Tuesday during the Democratic National Convention (DNC). “Twenty-five innocent human beings whose lives are being ended at the DNC. And this is done as a political statement,” pro-life activist Lila Rose remarked Tuesday on her podcast.

The King of Kings

Cindy Paslawski We are at the end of the Church year. We began with Advent a year ago, commemorating the time awaiting the coming of the Christ and we are ending these weeks later with a vision of the future, a vision of Christ the King of the Universe on His throne before us all.…Continue Reading

7,000 Pro-Lifers March In London

By STEVEN ERTELT LONDON (LifeNews) — Over the weekend, some seven thousand pro-life people in the UK participated in the March for Life in London to protest abortion.They marched to Parliament Square on Saturday, September 2 under the banner of “Freedom to Live” and had to deal with a handful of radical abortion activists.During the…Continue Reading

An Appeal For Prayer For The Armenian People

By RAYMOND LEO CARDINAL BURKE (Editor’s Note: His Eminence Raymond Cardinal Burke on August 29, 2023, issued this prayer for the Armenian people, noting their unceasing love for Christ, even in the face of persecution.) + + On the Feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, having a few days ago celebrated the…Continue Reading

Robert Hickson, Founding Member Of Christendom College, Dies At 80

By MAIKE HICKSON FRONT ROYAL, Va. (LifeSiteNews) — Robert David Hickson, Jr., of Front Royal, Va., died at his home on September 2, 2023, at 21:29 p.m. after several months of suffering and after having received the Last Rites of the Catholic Church. He was surrounded by friends and family.Robert is survived by me —…Continue Reading

The Real Hero Of “Sound of Freedom”… Says The Film Has Strengthened The Fight Against Child Trafficking

By ANA PAULA MORALES (CNA) —Tim Ballard, a former U.S. Homeland Security agent who risked his life to fight child trafficking, discussed the impact of the movie Sound of Freedom, which is based on his work, in an August 29 interview with ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. “I’ve spent more than 20 years helping…Continue Reading

Advertisement

Our Catholic Faith (Section B of print edition)

Catholic Replies

Editor’s Note: This lesson on medical-moral issues is taken from the book Catholicism & Ethics. Please feel free to use the series for high schoolers or adults. We will continue to welcome your questions for the column as well. The email and postal addresses are given at the end of this column. Special Course On Catholicism And Ethics (Pages 53-59)…Continue Reading

Color Politics An Impediment To Faith

By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK The USCCB is rightly concerned about racism, as they should be about any sin. In the 2018 statement Open Wide Our Hearts, they affirm the dignity of every human person: “But racism still profoundly affects our culture, and it has no place in the Christian heart. This evil causes great harm to its victims, and…Continue Reading

Trademarks Of The True Messiah

By MSGR. CHARLES POPE (Editor’s Note: Msgr. Charles Pope posted this essay on September 2, and it is reprinted here with permission.) + + In Sunday’s Gospel the Lord firmly sets before us the need for the cross, not as an end in itself, but as the way to glory. Let’s consider the Gospel in three stages.First: The Pattern That…Continue Reading

A Beacon Of Light… The Holy Cross And Jesus’ Unconditional Love

By FR. RICHARD D. BRETON Each year on September 14 the Church celebrates the Feast Day of the Exultation of the Holy Cross. The Feast Day of the Triumph of the Holy Cross commemorates the day St. Helen found the True Cross. It is fitting then, that today we should focus on the final moments of Jesus’ life on the…Continue Reading

Our Ways Must Become More Like God’s Ways

By FR. ROBERT ALTIER Twenty-Fifth Sunday In Ordinary Time (YR A) Readings: Isaiah 55:6-9Phil. 1:20c-24, 27aMatt. 20:1-16a In the first reading today, God tells us through the Prophet Isaiah that His thoughts are not our thoughts and His ways are not our ways. This should not come as a surprise to anyone, especially when we look at what the Lord…Continue Reading

The Devil And The Democrats

By FR. DENIS WILDE, OSA States such as Minnesota, California, Maryland, and others, in all cases with Democrat-controlled legislatures, are on a fast track to not only allow unborn babies to be murdered on demand as a woman’s “constitutional right” but also to allow infanticide.Our nation has gotten so used to the moral evil of killing in the womb that…Continue Reading

Crushed But Unbroken . . . The Martyrdom Of St. Margaret Clitherow

By RAY CAVANAUGH The late-1500s were a tough time for Catholics in England, where the Reformation was in full gear. A 1581 law prohibited Catholic religious ceremonies. And a 1584 Act of Parliament mandated that all Catholic priests leave the country or else face execution. Some chose to remain, however, so they could continue serving the faithful.Also taking huge risks…Continue Reading

Advertisement(2)