Word: catholicism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...complex story. Father Richard John Neuhaus, 59, founder and publisher of the neoconservative interfaith monthly First Things, thinks women's freedom not to enter the church out of necessity may be good for them and for the church: "One could argue that from the late 19th century on, American Catholicism was producing an unnatural and perhaps unhealthy number of female vocations. An awful lot of things were being done by women that did not require the base of a religious order...
Fewer and fewer men, says Richard Schoenherr, a former priest, now married and a sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Last year he coauthored a book called Full Pews and Empty Altars. By his projections, the number of active diocesan priests in the U.S., which stood at...
An alternative theory currently gaining favor among observers is that the ascent of U.S. Catholic families into the middle class has given sons a wider range of career opportunities. Monsignor Paul Cook, 62, pastor of St. Joseph's, remembers what happened after he sensed his calling to the priesthood: "When...
Margaret O'Brien Steinfels, 54, editor since 1988 of the liberal Catholic biweekly Commonweal, is less sanguine than Neuhaus about this phenomenon: "The fact that the Catholic Church is so rich in institutional life was due to women religious, and their disappearance has gone almost unlamented. They made an enormous...
Hardly anyone expects enough men to flock to seminaries in the next few years to make up for the current and projected shortfall of priests. This problem, along with the lack of sisters, affects not only local parishes but also the extensive national network of Catholic schools and hospitals, many...