Priest Shortage

From USA Today:

"U.S. Catholics face shortage of priests"

Nationally, one in five Catholic parishes does not have a resident priest. America's Catholic population is rising by 1 percent annually, but seminary enrollment is flat. An inadequate supply of priests already has forced hundreds of parishes to close or consolidate. Priests aren't getting any younger, either. Their average age is 63. Something's got to give. "These people have served the church for 30, 40 or 50 years, and now they are retiring or dying and leaving the priesthood," said Mary Gautier, senior research associate with Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. In 1975, there were 58,909 priests in the United States. Today, Georgetown's CARA puts the figure at 39,600, a 33 percent drop. Meanwhile, America's Catholic population rose from 54.5 million to 78.2 million, a 43 percent increase, during the same period. Although the 39,600 priests seems plenty for America's 17,413 parishes, it's not. Presiding over Mass is just one of a priest's duties, along with hearing confessions, baptizing babies, officiating weddings, counseling parishioners, conducting funerals, teaching schoolchildren, blessing hospital patients, running missions and more. On Easter and Christmas, some parishes in Southwest Florida have a half-dozen or more Masses, often simultaneously on church campuses, to accommodate residents, tourists and seasonal residents. "I don't know of any bishop who believes he has too many priests," said the Rev. John Guthrie, associate director for the secretariat of clergy, consecrated life and vocations with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Nationally, Guthrie said, the ratio of priests to parishioners in 1950 was 1 to 652, but that climbed to 1 to 1,653 by 2010. That doesn't account for the millions of Catholics who are not registered with a parish or regularly attend services. "There are fewer of us doing more and more work," Guthrie said. When schoolteachers are sick or on vacation, a principal finds substitute teachers. The same holds true for a church when priests are needed. A long-term vacancy at school, however, poses more serious problems: Who will teach students, and will their education suffer because of instability and inconsistency? The same questions arise for a parish without a resident priest: Who will provide spiritual guidance and manage the parish? In some cases, the answer is no one. "There are places where they only hold Mass once a month because that's the only time you can get a priest," Gautier said.

^ I have seen first-hand the priest shortage. The local priest covers 4-5 other churches in surrounding towns. It is a shame because they used to be pillars of the community and now they are merely commuters in the community. ^

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2014/05/25/us-catholics-face-shortage-of-priests/9548931/