The study revealed a more complicated situation in regard to women religious. In 1978, they numbered 990,768; now they total 792,317.
As opposed to the case of seminarians, there is no significant growth in the number of women entering novitiates. In this case also, the most notable decrease has been registered in Europe, North America and Oceania.
The bad news far outweighs the good here.
Of course they are down. This article represents a tendentious use of statistics. A couple of quick points:
1. They used 1978 as the starting point because that was the nadir. But there had already been a complete collapse of vocations over the previous 10 years. Yet even compared with the worst of the seventies, things have not improved.
2. The number of priests has dropped as dramatically as you might have expected since 1978, but there's a huge generation of priests ready to retire and/or pass on. There's virtually no one there to replace them. The priesthood is facing demographic annihilation.
3. The increase in seminarians is up from the very lowest point when there were virtually none as a percentage of Catholics worldwide. But it's still not nearly enough to replace the dying generation that represents the last of the pre-Vatican remnant.
4. It's no consolation to know that they are finding vocations in Africa or Asia if there are none in your own parish, and your diocese expects you to attend a "worship service" run by a lesbian pastoral administrator. First of all, the increase in those areas is up from virtually none. There are still not nearly enough priests to serve the Catholics in their own regions. The Phillipines, for examples, has a priest - laity ratio much worse than our own. Secondly, if the Catholic Church dies in its traditional home of Europe and in the Americas, Asia and Africa are not going to be able to replace the loss of this precious heritage.
At least a guy gets three squares a day in a seminary on a continent where abject poverty is the rule and with little hope for a man with an IQ over 90. Priests don't starve.
The clerical profession's image in some of these countries is beginning to rival the one it held in the US prior to the 70s and will, hopefully, some day recover.
My sense is that most seminaries in the US fall somewhere in between these two extremes. Homosexuality is still tolerated but no longer forced. This would correspond to the typical behavior of JPII bishops who tolerate but slightly downgrade the proclamation of liberal heresy while energetically suppressing attempts at Catholic restoration.
Needless to say, the heartless, ongoing toleration of heresy and buggary is alienating and corrupting Catholic youth.