Number of U.S. Catholics, deacons up; priests, religious down

Those are some excellent examples of deacons ---

**Because I assoicate their Vatican II restoration and rise (along w/their mentor Priests) with the cheery dilution of the Faith.**

How can you be the judge, jury, etc. You are condemning deacons as though you held the keys to the kingdom.

And I don't think that you can put all present-day deacons into your faulty description either.

I don't remember issuing a judgement, just expressing an observation. I'm well aware that there are good deacons out there.

Paragraphs are our frieds........
Uh......ok.....what's a fried?

Manhattan/aka New York County is the most Secular borough/county in the states and is filled with empty Churches. The Churches on Lawn Guyland are largely filled with Senior Citizens these days. Pretty much all of my friends and most of my family don't go to mass. Many of the Latinos I know are either Protestants (especially Dominicans and Puerto Ricans) or nonreligious. Any pastor in a Hispanic neighborhood will tell you the struggle it is to get people to get to mass.

The Catholic Church should sell many of its Churches in the northeast and use the money for grass roots evangelization.

No method is perfect, but a large enough sample will give a good indication.

BTW, when I lived in NYC, I lived on W. 74th St., but was registered at Corpus Christi up by Columbia on 122nd St.

>> Now that I have finished laughing hysterically, why would you imply that I would make something like this up? If you think I did, then call them up and ask them if they are fake.<<

Thanks for the information... it was very interesting.

What I am saying is that what you have stated is directly contrary to my experience seeing parish budgets, but I accept the claim you make in the NY diocese. If I had meant to call you a liar, I would have, but I did not mean to.

From what you say, it does sound like the NY diocese is, in fact, an irregular situation brought about by the peculiar circumstances of NY, though, sadly, I have no doubt such a thing once "innovated" was probably widely copied.

I also now recall the rather obvious fact that the Rockville-Center diocese parish I referred to is likely an excpetion in the diocese: It was run by Franciscans.

500 ordinations times 40 years is a rough number for predicting the future number of Priests at plateau if trends continue (the 40 years accounts for defections). That would be 20,000. However, there is reason to hope that the number will rise somewhat with no other actions taken.

Your numbers make sense at first glance, but there are a couple of points that should be born in mind.

1. The numbers you give need to be adjusted for 2 factors: priestly dropout rate and the age of ordination. The dropout rate over the past couple of decades has been horrendous, but even assuming that the worst of that problem is over (a pretty big assumption considering the present abuse crisis which has not finished playing out), still there will be a dropout rate which is more than negligible. Secondly the age of ordination is much higher. 40 years of active service would have been a safe bet a couple decades ago, but today when I see news reports of ordinations, the average age of the ordinands is often around 40.

2. The mathematician who wrote the article "Springtime Decay" on Seattle Catholic would not agree with your hypothesis of a comparatively steady state. He predicts a continuing downward trend, based on the currently available numbers. It's impossible to know who will be proven right, you or the author of "Springtime Decay," but one must at least consider the alternative:

Springtime Decay by David L. Sonnier

1. The numbers you give need to be adjusted for 2 factors: priestly dropout rate and the age of ordination. The dropout rate over the past couple of decades has been horrendous, but even assuming that the worst of that problem is over (a pretty big assumption considering the present abuse crisis which has not finished playing out),

Actually, the drop-out crisis was ended around 1978 by the Vatican refusing further laicizations. The rate now is pretty low. The rate from 1965-1978 was off the charts.

still there will be a dropout rate which is more than negligible. Secondly the age of ordination is much higher. 40 years of active service would have been a safe bet a couple decades ago, but today when I see news reports of ordinations, the average age of the ordinands is often around 40.

I based 40 years on an average age of 35 at ordination with service until mandatory retirement at age 75. Admittedly, its a rough number, but we don't have much data on age at ordination to go on.

2. The mathematician who wrote the article "Springtime Decay" on Seattle Catholic would not agree with your hypothesis of a comparatively steady state. He predicts a continuing downward trend, based on the currently available numbers. It's impossible to know who will be proven right, you or the author of "Springtime Decay," but one must at least consider the alternative:

I base the steady-state prediction on the fairly stable number of ordinations and drop-outs during the past 25 years (actually, the ordaintions have first risen slightly, as one would expect with the larger cohorts of births from the period of 1957-1967, and then decayed slightly with the smaller cohorts of 1968 on). The decay we are seeing now is that the current ordination class is not replacing the very large ordination classes from the early 1960's (although admittedly, many of these men have dropped out years ago, so its not as bad as one might initially think), and the number of Catholics in the demographic cohort of age for the seminary is smaller than previously.

However, as I pointed out elsewhere, the number of Catholics being born began to rise again in 1988 after 20 years of decline, and has stayed about 15% higher for 15 years now, so in about 15 more years, we will have larger demographic cohorts from which to draw even if the birth rate drops off (which it currently shows no sign of doing). Also in about 15 years, the remaining useful years of service of men from the seminary boom of the 1960's will be over, and we will have mostly the Priests from the steady state period of the mid-1970's onwards. The convergence of these trends, combiend with a rough loss of about 1000 priests per year on average to excess natural mortality and defections during the next 15 years will produce my predicted plateau of 25,000 priests.

The actual number of active Catholics to be served would appear to be holding steady around 15-20 million, as the registered population grows but the percentage attending Mass continus to slowly decline. So we will continue to have more priests per active Catholic than we did in the 1950's, when we had about 35,000 priests for 30 million active Catholics.

The only reason to believe this trend wouldn't come to pass would be a large shift in the aggregate number of active Catholics (up or down).

NY Archdiocese has literally bankrupted itself with its double-dealing shenanigans with some of these inner city parishes and schools. All in an effort to appear PC.

NY Archdiocese has literally bankrupted itself with its double-dealing shenanigans with some of these inner city parishes and schools. All in an effort to appear PC.

You have my 1000% agreement on that point! This combined with the rampant stealing (of which the recent revelations of allegations concerning Msgr. John Woolsey are - i can assure you - only the tip of the iceberg), have robbed the piggy bank!

My favorite story regarding one of those inner city parishes "on the dole" is that of a liberal "company man" repeatedly coming back to the IPF with the exact same fuel several times in a row for reimbursement!!!!

Like I said - "tip of the iceberg". Could you please define what you mean by the PC aspect? I think I know what you mean, but am curious to hear your comments.

Actually, the drop-out rate is down very sharply throughout the 1990s. Apparently, there was a huge lot of hippies who thought the church was going to become something very different than it is now, and when it did not, they left. The age of the horrendous priestly exodus is over.

By the way, I do not mean to disparage some very good men who left the priesthood for sound reasons.

As for the author of Springtime Decay, the application of exponential rates to any trend always creates laughable situations in the future. He acknowledges that "The last two actual data points are higher than the exponential decay function." From the wording he uses, one gets no sense the last data point is DOUBLE his expected value. And his modified slope corrects for the second-to-last data point, throws other data points off, and still underestimates the final data point.

This is no reason to dance in the aisles, for sure. What's happening is what always happens when you apply a rough exponential formula to actual data. The slope is applicable for some period of time while the highlighted issue remains the dominant factor. As the numbers change drastically, the a different factor assumes dominance, and an inflection point is reached.

This of course supports, rather than dispoves, that there was a very dominant negative factor over the past 40 years. And the emerging significance of a second factor means only future stability, not a trend reversal.

The only reason to believe this trend wouldn't come to pass would be a large shift in the aggregate number of active Catholics (up or down).

The mathematician who wrote "Springtime Decay" did in fact have another reason to believe a positive trend won't come to pass: analyzing the data for the past 50 years and projecting the curve forward. Only time will tell who is more accurate in their forecast.

Springtime Decay by David L. Sonnier

It is clear that the period from 1965 onward is nonlinear, so a different technique is required for modeling this period. The exponential decrease from 1965 onward appears similar to a graph of radioactive decay; as it turns out, this period can be modeled by what is commonly called an exponential decay function. Since this period of the Church is commonly called the "Springtime," we shall refer to this function as the Springtime Decay Function S(t), where S, the Springtime Decay, is a function of time t. We begin by taking the log of each of the data points. This gives us an essentially linear data set, to which we can match a line as we did previously for the Preconciliar Growth Function.

You are probably correct in your assertion that the peculiar financial weirdness there was started as a response to gross financial disparities across the city. And, you are also correct that the IPF concept was copied, to a greater or lesser extent elsewhere.

Probably the greatest single administrative mistake that was made, was that done by the Late Archbishop Thomas Molloy of Brooklyn. He engineered the partitioning off the "gold coast" of Nassau and Suffolk counties into the Diocese of Rockville Center. That was a blunder worthy of Inspector Cluseau of Pink Panther fame!

If the Brooklyn Diocese had all those suburban parishes to fund the populous but poor inner city parishes, things would have been a lot different!

The Arch of NY had planned a similar move many, many years ago - of separating the seven upstate counties into the "diocese of Yonkers". That would have been a literal disaster! Those seven counties are now paying to run everything in the three NYC counties (Bronx, Manhattan, & S.I.). Whew!!!!

PC aspect - the education of non-Catholic minorities being subsidized by Catholic families/parishes from suburban areas and the outer boroughs who are charged a stiff tuition in return. Worse this prevents many Catholics from feeling they can afford as many kids as they would otherwise like to have. Frequent blather about the Church's "commitment" to Inner City education, blah, blah, blah.

Frequent blather about the Church's "commitment" to Inner City education, blah, blah, blah.

Yes, yes, yes!!!!! Agreed! Shades of Cardinal O' Connor, the poor fool.

I had almost forgotten about that aspect...and who was responsible for that as Secretary of Education under O' Connor.......and the idea of the "Inner City Scholarship Program........the spending of millions of dollars on educating non Catholic kids at Catholic's expense.......and the major capital appear to raise over $10,000,000 for that???

Why, none other then Edward (fast eddie) Cardinal Egan! But let's also give the credit to that most worshipful master......er......I mean......His Excellency, Archbishop Henry (See if you can figure out what my real agenda is) Mansell, late of NYC, late of the sinking see of Buffalo, now of Hartford, CT !!!!

Can't we just do to them what was done to Captain Bligh - set them adrift in a rowboat?