I can say that, at least experientially as a seminarian, this is true. I didn’t really think about seminary until I met a seminarian and he asked me if I’d thought about it. My pastor frequently asked guys who are serving if they’ve thought about priesthood and girls if they’ve thought about religious life and that question is often enough to get people to think about it.
I had the initial question and that got me actually thinking and then a person at Mass said they thought I’d be a good priest and that got me thinking and praying about it more. Presenting priesthood and religious life as real options is a big part of it.
The stats about proportions of ordinations and seminarians also seems to line up with what I’ve noticed just comparing number of seminarians from different dioceses at my seminary. I come from a smaller diocese and in comparison to one’s with much larger Catholic populations we hit well above our weight. Interesting to see the stats line up with my intuition
One pastor I knew explicitly stated that he wouldn't encourage anyone to be a priest because he wasn't happy with the theology and politics of the Church. I wonder if that might have somewhat of an effect as well.
That said, although I discerned away from the priesthood and religious life, I was only able to consider either due to knowing priests and religious personally. And yes, they encouraged me to ask God where He was calling me.
This is how my husband and I approach it with our own sons - we don't want them to feel undue pressure, but we do want them to have an awareness that this is a possibility and we would support them if they felt called to it. This is new to us on both sides of the family so hopefully that's a good way to go about it!
I think it helps when you can be close to your priest too, not just because he can make a direct suggestion, but you can see that he's a normal person, too. The temptation is there, for some of us, maybe, to view priests the way children view teachers, and think they don't have hobbies or interests or need to buy or cook food or do other normal people things.
A friend of mine was a seminarian for our diocese and needed a letter of recommendation from our pastor. The letter was very negative, but the priest's reputation was such that the vocations director actually took it as a good sign.
I wonder if this effect also plays into the increase in vocations to "Trad" orders/societies like the FSSP, ICKSP, etc. In my limited personal experience, "trad" parishes are generally much more tight-knit and connected than other parishes of the same size. The parishioners tend to have a closer relationship with their priests, as well as their fellow parishioners. People also tend to have a heightened awareness that religious vocations are normal, and should be considered as a live option.
This is probably due to self-selection bias - everybody who's there is there because they're already deeply committed. Nobody's there who doesn't really want to be. To my mind, this is a feature, not a bug, and a reason for hope. After all, shouldn't we want a Church where everyone present is deeply committed, even if that means fewer bodies in the building initially? Regardless if we want it or not, this seems to be the future that's coming for us - since Catholicism is deeply unpopular with the broader culture, nobody will remain Catholic except those who are truly and personally committed to the Gospel. And as the data seems to suggest here, it's easier for smaller and more committed communities to be fervent, and to flourish.
For the past 10 years or so, our parish has had a high school young men weekend sacristan program. We have 4 young men in various levels of priestly formation now, and many sacristans have attended Archdiocesan vocation events.
Could The Pillar do a more detailed analysis of the impact of student loan debt on vocations, especially how it affects men’s and women’s vocations differently? Anecdotally, it seems like there are more opportunities for men to start formation with debt, while it’s more common for women to be required to be debt free and pay a kind of “dowry” when they enter religious formation to cover the cost of health insurance, etc. Not sure if the data actually bears this out though. Obviously there are material realities to religious life that can’t be ignored, but I do worry that religious vocations are increasingly being limited to the financially privileged, which has to impact ministry down the line. As a friend of mine in college once said, “Taking a vow of poverty is very expensive.”
The problem is that The Laborite society & similar organizations who help young adults fundraise already have most of the publicity. I’ve yet to see media cover the issue in a more comprehensive way. What about individuals who spend years in formation, then earnestly discern out and are left to foot the bill entirely? E.g., my sister had a friend who left after 8 years with the Jesuits and then was held responsible for the entire cost. There’s also a huge difference between being able to start seminary with a student loan balance (and many dioceses fully cover the cost of graduate formation) and having to wait years to enter a religious order while eliminating debt. Plus, indebtedness drastically affects the discernment process to begin with. How many people don’t even consider a religious vocation because of the financial realities? Being poor isn’t a formal barrier to marriage, despite the popular notion that more people are delay marriage in part due to the cost of weddings. Not to mention a good chunk of people in the pews who receive fundraising pitches from religious communities are already struggling to support their own families. The loan balances of lay people affect whether they can even participate in supporting religious communities financially. The issue of student debt affects the life of the church in much larger ways than I’ve seen most people acknowledge.
In a diocese of just over 250,000 Catholics (but growing quickly due to migrations from the West Coast) we have 19 seminarians. Unfortunately, the turnover is great.
One major problem seems to be the very rigid and stringent application process. We have turned away a great number of men because they did not meet the human, spiritual, pastoral and intellectual formation standards expected by Ordination.
Why would they? That is part of what seminary formation is for.
If a candidate has so many issues that he doesn't meet the criteria for application he should not be accepted.
If there are psychological issues so serious the a man should be dissuaded from application the suggestion of serious counseling could help overcome these issues (depending too on grace). Even in these cases men might not be accepted.
If a man is dealing with issues that are a part of the current cultural milieu and influenced by them to an extent that is what the the new propaedeutic year is for, a year of developing habits of prayer, study, fraternity, trust and docility to formation. It is also a year of discernment for both formators of candidates and the candidates themselves.
At the rate we're going more men are being turned away than allowed in initial formation.
Seminaries form men, men with very human foibles and issues that can be resolved.
While we should not accept men with serious issues that formation cannot change we should not look for men for seminary formation that are immediately ordainable.
We have used "cookie cutter" seminaries for years; one for over 11 years and 3 men have been ordained from there. They and others want "cookie cutter" priests. Fortunately, we no longer use these seminaries. We use more that are willing to gently but firmly evaluate men for priesthood.
My diocese has abour 160000 Catholics. We had 7 ordinations last year. At only 15 current seminarians right now we are at the lowest number since a year or two after Bishop Rhoades became our bishop. And I have heard my pastor encourage the students in our grade school at their weekday Masses to consider vocations many times.
I wonder if anyone has given serious consideration to the role of altar servers post Vatican II. Not to blame every ill on Vatican II, but - consider the role of altar server before and after. There is a great difference in roles and responsibilities. Today it seems that the biggest responsibility for an altar server is to stay awake for lack of duties. Prior to Vatican II, the roles appeared to be important in conducting the mass. It gave priests the chance to not only interact with servers, but also to identify those who were serious, and who could be candidates for a vocation. Little wonder that in the mega Archdiocese of Chicago an overwhelming percentage of seminarians from the Archdiocese (20% at my last calculation) come from one parish - St John Cantius - which offers 3 Sunday Latin masses and daily Latin masses. https://www.cantius.org/full-liturgy-schedule
Vocation Director here, and I agree with this entirely: asking is everything. If a young man hears the same question from his pastor and from laity in the parish, he's very likely to consider a priestly vocation. If the people who know him can identify gifts and talents that would serve him well as a priest, this speaks powerfully to a young man.
I'm the Vocation Director in a big-geography/small-population diocese, and I do feel like I know all my discerners, and their pastors do as well, better than a lot of brother priests in more populous dioceses.
Over a year ago my husband and I committed to pray for seminarians every day. We belong to the Austin diocese mentioned in the article. We are thrilled that our Austin diocesan prayer calendar has the names and pictures of 42 men on it, from 23 different parishes. Fourteen are from four different university student center “parishes.”
Surprisingly no one was ordained last year, because we’ve had a number of ordinations in preceding years. Hopefully, many more will follow in the coming years.
I firmly believe that if someone had asked me about whether I had a vocation to religious life as a young woman, I would have been very likely to pursue it. I would *certainly* at least have taken the suggest quite seriously, likely at least going to a “come and see” weekend or similar. But it seemed like a crazy idea and I ended up falling away from the Faith instead.....
...anyway, point being, this really rings true to me.
Part of this is also a result of bishops with terrible reputations being placed in charge of large dioceses. My own diocese got a Quinn protoge (a bestie of McElroy) and seminarian numbers are about half what they were when he came into the diocese a decade ago. Does anyone in their right mind think Cupich is going to inspire vocations? Look at what he did to Fr. Frank Phillips, after Phillips was cleared of abuse accusations. Vocations in Chicago are about half what they were just 5 years ago, according to their seminarian prayer booklets. I wish there was a good resource to track seminarian statistics by diocese.
Thanks for this. I teach a vocations class at a local Catholic high school and am always looking for new resources to inform how I teach my students.
I can say that, at least experientially as a seminarian, this is true. I didn’t really think about seminary until I met a seminarian and he asked me if I’d thought about it. My pastor frequently asked guys who are serving if they’ve thought about priesthood and girls if they’ve thought about religious life and that question is often enough to get people to think about it.
I had the initial question and that got me actually thinking and then a person at Mass said they thought I’d be a good priest and that got me thinking and praying about it more. Presenting priesthood and religious life as real options is a big part of it.
The stats about proportions of ordinations and seminarians also seems to line up with what I’ve noticed just comparing number of seminarians from different dioceses at my seminary. I come from a smaller diocese and in comparison to one’s with much larger Catholic populations we hit well above our weight. Interesting to see the stats line up with my intuition
One pastor I knew explicitly stated that he wouldn't encourage anyone to be a priest because he wasn't happy with the theology and politics of the Church. I wonder if that might have somewhat of an effect as well.
That said, although I discerned away from the priesthood and religious life, I was only able to consider either due to knowing priests and religious personally. And yes, they encouraged me to ask God where He was calling me.
This is how my husband and I approach it with our own sons - we don't want them to feel undue pressure, but we do want them to have an awareness that this is a possibility and we would support them if they felt called to it. This is new to us on both sides of the family so hopefully that's a good way to go about it!
I think it helps when you can be close to your priest too, not just because he can make a direct suggestion, but you can see that he's a normal person, too. The temptation is there, for some of us, maybe, to view priests the way children view teachers, and think they don't have hobbies or interests or need to buy or cook food or do other normal people things.
A friend of mine was a seminarian for our diocese and needed a letter of recommendation from our pastor. The letter was very negative, but the priest's reputation was such that the vocations director actually took it as a good sign.
I wonder if this effect also plays into the increase in vocations to "Trad" orders/societies like the FSSP, ICKSP, etc. In my limited personal experience, "trad" parishes are generally much more tight-knit and connected than other parishes of the same size. The parishioners tend to have a closer relationship with their priests, as well as their fellow parishioners. People also tend to have a heightened awareness that religious vocations are normal, and should be considered as a live option.
This is probably due to self-selection bias - everybody who's there is there because they're already deeply committed. Nobody's there who doesn't really want to be. To my mind, this is a feature, not a bug, and a reason for hope. After all, shouldn't we want a Church where everyone present is deeply committed, even if that means fewer bodies in the building initially? Regardless if we want it or not, this seems to be the future that's coming for us - since Catholicism is deeply unpopular with the broader culture, nobody will remain Catholic except those who are truly and personally committed to the Gospel. And as the data seems to suggest here, it's easier for smaller and more committed communities to be fervent, and to flourish.
For the past 10 years or so, our parish has had a high school young men weekend sacristan program. We have 4 young men in various levels of priestly formation now, and many sacristans have attended Archdiocesan vocation events.
Could The Pillar do a more detailed analysis of the impact of student loan debt on vocations, especially how it affects men’s and women’s vocations differently? Anecdotally, it seems like there are more opportunities for men to start formation with debt, while it’s more common for women to be required to be debt free and pay a kind of “dowry” when they enter religious formation to cover the cost of health insurance, etc. Not sure if the data actually bears this out though. Obviously there are material realities to religious life that can’t be ignored, but I do worry that religious vocations are increasingly being limited to the financially privileged, which has to impact ministry down the line. As a friend of mine in college once said, “Taking a vow of poverty is very expensive.”
The Laboure Society helps solve this problem you are addressing and might have resources or comment. https://rescuevocations.org/
The problem is that The Laborite society & similar organizations who help young adults fundraise already have most of the publicity. I’ve yet to see media cover the issue in a more comprehensive way. What about individuals who spend years in formation, then earnestly discern out and are left to foot the bill entirely? E.g., my sister had a friend who left after 8 years with the Jesuits and then was held responsible for the entire cost. There’s also a huge difference between being able to start seminary with a student loan balance (and many dioceses fully cover the cost of graduate formation) and having to wait years to enter a religious order while eliminating debt. Plus, indebtedness drastically affects the discernment process to begin with. How many people don’t even consider a religious vocation because of the financial realities? Being poor isn’t a formal barrier to marriage, despite the popular notion that more people are delay marriage in part due to the cost of weddings. Not to mention a good chunk of people in the pews who receive fundraising pitches from religious communities are already struggling to support their own families. The loan balances of lay people affect whether they can even participate in supporting religious communities financially. The issue of student debt affects the life of the church in much larger ways than I’ve seen most people acknowledge.
Wait if you leave Jesuit formation...you have to pay for it? That can’t be right.
In a diocese of just over 250,000 Catholics (but growing quickly due to migrations from the West Coast) we have 19 seminarians. Unfortunately, the turnover is great.
One major problem seems to be the very rigid and stringent application process. We have turned away a great number of men because they did not meet the human, spiritual, pastoral and intellectual formation standards expected by Ordination.
Why would they? That is part of what seminary formation is for.
If a candidate has so many issues that he doesn't meet the criteria for application he should not be accepted.
If there are psychological issues so serious the a man should be dissuaded from application the suggestion of serious counseling could help overcome these issues (depending too on grace). Even in these cases men might not be accepted.
If a man is dealing with issues that are a part of the current cultural milieu and influenced by them to an extent that is what the the new propaedeutic year is for, a year of developing habits of prayer, study, fraternity, trust and docility to formation. It is also a year of discernment for both formators of candidates and the candidates themselves.
At the rate we're going more men are being turned away than allowed in initial formation.
Seminaries form men, men with very human foibles and issues that can be resolved.
While we should not accept men with serious issues that formation cannot change we should not look for men for seminary formation that are immediately ordainable.
We have used "cookie cutter" seminaries for years; one for over 11 years and 3 men have been ordained from there. They and others want "cookie cutter" priests. Fortunately, we no longer use these seminaries. We use more that are willing to gently but firmly evaluate men for priesthood.
In our Archdiocese it costs an average of $60,000/yr per seminarian - so that is a consideration...
My diocese has abour 160000 Catholics. We had 7 ordinations last year. At only 15 current seminarians right now we are at the lowest number since a year or two after Bishop Rhoades became our bishop. And I have heard my pastor encourage the students in our grade school at their weekday Masses to consider vocations many times.
I wonder if anyone has given serious consideration to the role of altar servers post Vatican II. Not to blame every ill on Vatican II, but - consider the role of altar server before and after. There is a great difference in roles and responsibilities. Today it seems that the biggest responsibility for an altar server is to stay awake for lack of duties. Prior to Vatican II, the roles appeared to be important in conducting the mass. It gave priests the chance to not only interact with servers, but also to identify those who were serious, and who could be candidates for a vocation. Little wonder that in the mega Archdiocese of Chicago an overwhelming percentage of seminarians from the Archdiocese (20% at my last calculation) come from one parish - St John Cantius - which offers 3 Sunday Latin masses and daily Latin masses. https://www.cantius.org/full-liturgy-schedule
Vocation Director here, and I agree with this entirely: asking is everything. If a young man hears the same question from his pastor and from laity in the parish, he's very likely to consider a priestly vocation. If the people who know him can identify gifts and talents that would serve him well as a priest, this speaks powerfully to a young man.
I'm the Vocation Director in a big-geography/small-population diocese, and I do feel like I know all my discerners, and their pastors do as well, better than a lot of brother priests in more populous dioceses.
Regress vocations on the left-right voting breakdown of the diocese’s territory and I bet the priest-per-parishioner coefficient disappears.
Over a year ago my husband and I committed to pray for seminarians every day. We belong to the Austin diocese mentioned in the article. We are thrilled that our Austin diocesan prayer calendar has the names and pictures of 42 men on it, from 23 different parishes. Fourteen are from four different university student center “parishes.”
Surprisingly no one was ordained last year, because we’ve had a number of ordinations in preceding years. Hopefully, many more will follow in the coming years.
I firmly believe that if someone had asked me about whether I had a vocation to religious life as a young woman, I would have been very likely to pursue it. I would *certainly* at least have taken the suggest quite seriously, likely at least going to a “come and see” weekend or similar. But it seemed like a crazy idea and I ended up falling away from the Faith instead.....
...anyway, point being, this really rings true to me.
Part of this is also a result of bishops with terrible reputations being placed in charge of large dioceses. My own diocese got a Quinn protoge (a bestie of McElroy) and seminarian numbers are about half what they were when he came into the diocese a decade ago. Does anyone in their right mind think Cupich is going to inspire vocations? Look at what he did to Fr. Frank Phillips, after Phillips was cleared of abuse accusations. Vocations in Chicago are about half what they were just 5 years ago, according to their seminarian prayer booklets. I wish there was a good resource to track seminarian statistics by diocese.