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 regul…
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 …
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 …