Pastor's Page:  Priesthood Ordinations and Foreign-born priests – Part I

On May 26, 1973 I was ordained to the priesthood at St. Agnes Cathedral, Rockville Centre
with twelve other young men, twenty-five or twenty-six years old, and all born in this country. For
that time our ordination class was typical in size and history. Only one new priest had completed
seminary studies outside Immaculate Conception, Lloyd Harbor. The rest of us in fact were also
graduates of the newly opened Cathedral College in Douglaston, Queens. We were all native to Long
Island.

The Vatican Council had ended only eight years before and its enormous impact, a seismic shift
in our church’s self-understanding, had been felt in all aspects of our faith life as Catholics.
Within the next ten years three of my classmates had left the priesthood to marry. Ten of us
remain in 2009, 36 years later, all in our early sixties and all pastoring parishes in the diocese.

While we were completing our training, priests were exiting the priesthood in an unprecedented drain of talent and energy. There were 58,632 diocesan and religious order priests in 1965 and 15,000 fewer priests in 2004; a total of 40,000 are active and retired today. Meanwhile the U.S. Catholic population grew from 45.6 million in 1965 to 66 million in 2009; an increase of more than 20 million people!
The priest to people ratio has jumped with fewer priests and many more people. Ordinations to the priesthood have remained low in comparison with previous decades with a national total of 533 in 2004 compared with 771 ordained in 1975.

In 2004 in our diocese one man, a native of Colombia, became a priest that June. This past June 2008, nine became priests; and four are expected to be ordained this June. Ordination classes averaging three or four men will not keep pace with retirements and inactive status due to illness. More than 25 percent of those ordained in the U.S. in 2005 were born outside the country. The age of ordination has risen from 26 years old when I became a priest, to 37 years old in Ordinations of men born in other countries and serving here, are rising steadily - from 24 percent in 1998 to 30 percent in 2008. Vietnam, Mexico, the Philippines, and Poland are the principal countries of origin.
In 2009, more than one third of our U.S. Catholic population of 66 million (25 million) is Hispanic. But the number of Hispanic seminarians preparing to serve this growing community is at ten percent of all seminarians. Neither the Anglo nor the Hispanic Catholic communities are generating vocations to the priesthood.

Peace,
Father Bruce

Next Week: Part II