Fr Ray Blake writes:
The Vatican says the number of priests worldwide is slowly but steadily rising.
The Holy See presented its yearbook filled with statistics to Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday.
Since 2000, the number of priests has gone up by several hundred each year. The two decades before that had witnessed a marked decline.
The percentage of Catholics worldwide remains stable, at about 17.3%.
In 2007, the last year statistics were available, Catholics numbered some 1.147 billion around the globe.
Such are the fruits of accurate catechesis, including edifying liturgy, in those countries which have them, and which alone, apart from islands of the same elsewhere, are experiencing this abundance. Truly the Spirit of Vatican II.
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Rising from a pathetically low base of course. And not keeping pace with population growth.
ReplyDeleteAnd an Irish statistic that there are now more priests in their 90s than there are in their 30s.
Scary stuff for people like me....who actually care.
A visit to Maynooth last month my first in maybe 10 years was particuarly poignant.
Along the corridors are framed photographs of Silver Jubilarians. The most recent photograph (2006) named just ELEVEN priests.....who had been ordained in 1981 and made it thru to 2006.
One of the earlier photographs was not on display. My host indicated it was being "amended".
Of course the whole ambience has changed. The place is now totally secular.
Condom machines in the Students Union.
"Rising from a pathetically low base of course. And not keeping pace with population growth"
ReplyDeleteNot at all. Africa and the Catholicised parts of Asia have always been awash with priests. It is only places such as you describe that have ever had any problem.
Ireland is one of those places, like Latin America, where the question aries of how Catholic it ever really was, anyway. There has never been a Catholic intelligentsia in Ireland.
And I remember David Ervine being questioned for several minutes about Popery. Eventually he described the processions that he had seen. On holiday. In Spain. He had to admit that he had never seen, or even of, anything remotely like them in Ireland.
Likewise, in Latin America, numerous forms of paganism - indigenous, African or both - have always been practised even among regular Mass-goers, few are the countries where regular Mass-goers have ever accounted for the majority of the population, several are those where even the baptised have seldom or never done so, and there has always been a very heavy reliance on missionary priests (historically Spanish or Portuguese, these days mostly North American).
Oh dear......David Ervine is a strange case. He probably did not see many Catholic processions in East Belfast although his UVF unit was involved in an attack on St Matthews Church on the Lower Newtownards Road in June 1970.
ReplyDeleteThe same unit shot and seriously wounded a priest in Ballymacarret (St Colmans???) East Belfast in the mid 1970s and the small Catholic Church St Anthonys in Willowfield East Belfast was forced to close.
I had no idea Ervine, who the Media have canonised was quite so ecumenical.
No Catholic Intelligensia ?. Some might say that lack of education facilities in the 17th and 18th centuries would do that.
As every English Catholic (I believe Bernard Manning was one) the Irish are very stupid people.
But as Cardinal O'Fiach (not overly popular with English Catholics) once said "we could be recusant AND poor".
That's hardly an excuse now. The Irish Republic has any number of public intellectuals, but they are rarely regular Mass-goers, and never in any ideological sense Catholics. Contrast that with, say, England.
ReplyDeleteThe only way to save Northern Ireland's Catholic schools is to keep Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom. For that matter, the only way to keep abortion out of Northern Ireland is to keep Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom. On both of those issues, the Republic is now a lost cause.
Have you ever considered becoming a priest? Not suggesting it of course as the world of politics needs you - but just curious.
ReplyDeleteI have thought about it in the past, yes.
ReplyDelete