Anne HendershottA noted scholar from the University of Steubenville is using solid data to challenge the prevailing view that the Catholic Church in America is in decline and proves that the opposite is true – for the orthodox.
Writing for The Catholic World Report, Anne Hendershott, professor of sociology and Director of the Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life at Franciscan University of Steubenville, says that while the Church is experiencing declining membership in the Northeast and Upper Midwest, it’s actually growing in the South and West. Her research found that the number of Catholics living in the south increased from 25 to 27 percent since 2007 and jumped from 23 to 26 percent in the West during the same time period.
“Even more significantly, in 2015 there was a 25 percent increase in ordinations to the priesthood as 595 men were ordained last year, up from 477 the previous year,” she writes.
The average age of men entering is 34 now, which continues a trend toward younger men entering the priesthood than in previous decades.
This surge in the number of young men seeking the priesthood is especially prevalent in diocese such as Lincoln, Newark, Chicago, Bridgeport, Denver and others where charismatic and faithful bishops are inspiring young men to follow them.
“Today, the renewal is most pronounced in Madison, Wisconsin under the inspiring leadership of Bishop Robert Morlino,” Hendershott writes. “Last spring, the Diocese of Madison announced a vocations initiative intended to raise funds to support the tremendous surge in vocations in that Diocese. There are now 33 seminarians, up from just six in 2003 when Bishop Morlino arrived.”
The diocese needed $30 million to educate current and future seminarians, a sum handily raised by parishioners of the diocese who were able to meet that goal.
It’s important to note that Bishop Morlino is “unambiguous about Church doctrine and does not tolerate dissent,” Hendershott writes.
This positive news is all but glanced over by those in the Church who are pushing for change such as acceptance of same-sex marriage, women priests, and an end to celibacy rules.
For example, dissenting Catholics in Morlino’s diocese say the bishop is “rigidly doctrinaire and lacking in pastoral empathy”. Instead of facing the fact that the bishop’s faithfulness is precisely what is attracting followers, they fear these new seminarians will turn out to be “carbon copies” of him.
“The success in Madison and elsewhere shows that faithfulness and orthodoxy are compelling and attractive,” Hendershott writes. “Meanwhile, progressivism relies on a tired and sterile rebelliousness.”
She cites a homily by the late Cardinal Francis George, who once pronounced liberal Catholicism as “an exhausted project . . . parasitical on a substance that no longer exists.”
Nowhere is this more obvious than in an article published in the liberal Commonweal magazine by an 81 year-old author named Barbara Parsons. Her piece was entitled, “Spiritual Assault: How Not to Run a Parish”, and describes how difficult it is for her deal with the “young priests” who are “accepting of Catholic teaching.” Instead, she believes that “Catholics are looking for a church grounded in Scripture and animated by mutual respect and cooperation, one in which baptism, not ordination, has preeminence.”
Hendershott cites this comment as being indicative of “a deficient understanding of the completely harmonious relationship that exists among the sacraments, all of which flow from Christ and impart, by the work of the Holy Spirit, the grace and power to grow as sons and daughters of God," as found in paragraph 10 of Lumen Gentium.
“For decades, progressives and dissenting Catholics have undermined the ministerial priesthood—and then demanded changes based on the dwindling numbers of vocations to the priesthood,” Hendershott writes. “Now that those numbers are climbing, many are attacking the ‘masculine spirituality’ contributing to the increase as too ‘authoritarian and intransigent’ (in the words of Parsons)."
She concludes: “What we have, ultimately, are two visions of Catholicism: one orthodox and growing, the other dissenting and declining.”
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