Thanks for doing this research! Just for clarification, this is only taking into account ordinations of diocesan priests and not priests that are ordained for particular religious orders, correct? If that's the case, I'm curious if there are any countries or areas that have strong vocations for particular religious orders that a…
Thanks for doing this research! Just for clarification, this is only taking into account ordinations of diocesan priests and not priests that are ordained for particular religious orders, correct? If that's the case, I'm curious if there are any countries or areas that have strong vocations for particular religious orders that aren't showing up in this data because its limited to diocesan ordinations.
Also, I'd love to see this same sort of analysis done but on a US diocese-by-diocese basis. I'm sure you have a enough on your plate, though, so just a suggestion. Thanks again!
If I may ask, if an analysis is done in the future concerning vocations to religious orders, will Third/Lay Order vocation trends be included? As a Lay Dominican myself, you could say I have a vested interest in seeing the results and having others know about us.
Fascinating stuff; it also would [have] be[en] interesting to see the trends extended back a decade or two to include the trends before and after Vatican II. More always would be welcome, though I know it's a lot of work.
Going by the numbers I've seen over at catholic-hierarchy.org of the number of priests in dioceses (secular and regular), I would suspect that the numbers for ordination to regular orders would show a rather more-discouraging picture, though I've never looked at them in a systematic way, and he only shows the numbers in a diocese in a given year.
I'm glad to hear that a diocesan analysis is underway. It's an important consideration. In addition to population normalization (after all, for instance, my archdiocese has more Catholics in it than some 15 states have people), is there a useful way to correlate trends to the "atmosphere" of the Church in particular dioceses? For instance, does Wichita's stewardship model seem to help (I recall you've touched on this model earlier)? Do smaller dioceses get higher or lower rates of vocations? How much does the rate of abuse cases correlate? How does (and I admit I have no particular idea how to measure this) the mix of 'orthodoxy vs. dissent' in the presbyterate relate to ordination rates? That sort of thing.
I was thinking while I was reading the story that in my "long" almost-nine years of preaching, pushback against my occasional (maybe every other year, including last year) homilies encouraging consideration of religious, particularly priestly, vocations has decreased. But then it occurred to me that the families that who did most of the pushing back in the past largely haven't been inside the church for the last couple years …
Brendan,
Thanks for doing this research! Just for clarification, this is only taking into account ordinations of diocesan priests and not priests that are ordained for particular religious orders, correct? If that's the case, I'm curious if there are any countries or areas that have strong vocations for particular religious orders that aren't showing up in this data because its limited to diocesan ordinations.
Also, I'd love to see this same sort of analysis done but on a US diocese-by-diocese basis. I'm sure you have a enough on your plate, though, so just a suggestion. Thanks again!
Neil,
It's a good question about religious orders, and maybe religious orders in general would be a good topic for a future post!
I do have some diocese level analysis in progress, so that's something that will be available at some point too.
If I may ask, if an analysis is done in the future concerning vocations to religious orders, will Third/Lay Order vocation trends be included? As a Lay Dominican myself, you could say I have a vested interest in seeing the results and having others know about us.
Fauken,
I would have to check whether third orders are included in the Vatican statistics.
Fascinating stuff; it also would [have] be[en] interesting to see the trends extended back a decade or two to include the trends before and after Vatican II. More always would be welcome, though I know it's a lot of work.
Going by the numbers I've seen over at catholic-hierarchy.org of the number of priests in dioceses (secular and regular), I would suspect that the numbers for ordination to regular orders would show a rather more-discouraging picture, though I've never looked at them in a systematic way, and he only shows the numbers in a diocese in a given year.
I'm glad to hear that a diocesan analysis is underway. It's an important consideration. In addition to population normalization (after all, for instance, my archdiocese has more Catholics in it than some 15 states have people), is there a useful way to correlate trends to the "atmosphere" of the Church in particular dioceses? For instance, does Wichita's stewardship model seem to help (I recall you've touched on this model earlier)? Do smaller dioceses get higher or lower rates of vocations? How much does the rate of abuse cases correlate? How does (and I admit I have no particular idea how to measure this) the mix of 'orthodoxy vs. dissent' in the presbyterate relate to ordination rates? That sort of thing.
I was thinking while I was reading the story that in my "long" almost-nine years of preaching, pushback against my occasional (maybe every other year, including last year) homilies encouraging consideration of religious, particularly priestly, vocations has decreased. But then it occurred to me that the families that who did most of the pushing back in the past largely haven't been inside the church for the last couple years …