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Is Milwaukee’s Priest Shortage Slowing?
Milwaukee News Buzz ^ | 8/19/10 | Sarah J. Worthman

Posted on 08/20/2010 1:33:52 PM PDT by marshmallow

Church officials are hoping an increase in the number of priests graduating from the Milwaukee Archdiocese’s St. Francis de Sales Seminary will help slow Milwaukee’s growing priest shortage. But it might not be enough as priests ordained during the 1960s and 1970s, when the church experienced tremendous growth, begin to retire.

The Archdiocese, which spans 210 parishes in ten counties in Southeastern Wisconsin, greeted the ordination of six seminary graduates last year as the sudden reversal of a long drought. It was the largest class to graduate in 17 years. Previous classes produced just one or even no new priests.

This year, the seminary ordained almost as many new clergy for the Archdiocese. Five graduates were ordained. Father Don Hying, seminary rector, says he expects six ordinations next year, then five and potentially a record seven in 2013. They would be arriving just in time, as retirements continue to drive down the ranks of clergy in Milwaukee and around the country.

“We’re still going to decline in numbers, especially when those ordained in the 1960s and 1970s retire or die,” he says. “We’re going to go down from where we are, but if we can continue to ordain six to 10 men a year, it will stabilize.”

For the past two years, for each priest who has retired or died, another has come in to take his place. But about five percent of the Archdiocese’s parishes lack a priest, according to Hying. Elsewhere in the country, particularly in rural areas, the figure is several times higher.

The national priest shortage was first studied in detail in the 1990s by a UW-Madison sociologist and former priest, Richard Schoenherr, who predicted, with the help of a team of researchers at a collaborator at Brigham Young University, that priests assigned to a diocese

(Excerpt) Read more at milwaukeenewsbuzz.com ...


TOPICS: Catholic; Ministry/Outreach
KEYWORDS:
Homosexual bishop depart.........vocations arrive.

Very simple.

If the Catholic Church in Milwaukee has managed to survive Weakland, it can survive anything....... :-)

1 posted on 08/20/2010 1:33:53 PM PDT by marshmallow
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To: marshmallow

Very true.

Was just at an ordination at the Cathedral for a good friend who will do wonders for the Church in Milwaukee.


2 posted on 08/20/2010 1:39:22 PM PDT by MNlurker
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To: marshmallow

“Shortage Slowing” is a dumb way to express the information.


3 posted on 08/20/2010 1:41:04 PM PDT by Tax-chick (Maven of alcoholic beverage bargains!)
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To: marshmallow

It is not just the seminary, it is the orthodoxy of the entire church. If the diocese is orthodox, they can develop necessary priests and deacons. If, on the other hand, the diocese is run by liberals, they will of course have a shortage of qualified clergy.


4 posted on 08/20/2010 1:47:14 PM PDT by iowamark
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To: Tax-chick

Almost as bad as “summer of recovery could be slipping away”. We should be 2/3 recovered by now, how can it all just slip away?


5 posted on 08/20/2010 1:51:58 PM PDT by Secret Agent Man (I'd like to tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.)
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To: Secret Agent Man

That one translates to, “We told you there was a recovery going on, but we lied.”


6 posted on 08/20/2010 1:54:13 PM PDT by Tax-chick (Maven of alcoholic beverage bargains!)
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