Word: priesthoods
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...think it was getting things in the wrong order. We were worried about the priesthood instead of the kids. The kids should have been first. Some of the errors in judgment, some of the horrendous mistakes in managing personnel, were done in order to avoid scandal at all costs. Some were done as a result of acting on the information that we had at the time. Some of these fellows who were put back got clean bills of health from the experts who were out there...
...surprise that we are hardly flocking to them. Annual vocations to the priesthood in America have halved in the last few decades from around 1,000 in 1965 to around 500 today. As the priesthood has become older, it has also become sparser: there were just under 59,000 priests in 1965, and there are only 45,000 today. In 1972, 49% of Catholics reported attending church weekly; in 2000, a mere 26% did. The number of men and women entering religious orders, primarily as nuns or monks, has also collapsed--by well over half since 1965. The number...
...birth control--reaffirmed by fiat by Pope Paul VI after many leading theologians and church officials seemed poised to reverse it--is not an issue as vital as, say, the divinity of Christ, the fact of the Resurrection or the miracle of the Mass. A celibate priesthood--one of the many reasons why vocations have collapsed--is an administrative matter. It was not mandatory for the first 11 centuries of the church's existence, and was imposed primarily to rescue the church from the corruption of priests bequeathing church property to their heirs. Several past Popes have been married. Mandatory...
...other men came to the priesthood because they felt called to it. "God gave me this vocation as a very little boy, before I knew I was gay," says McNichols. "It didn't seem to matter to God." But growing up gay only made him a better priest, he says. "The outcast status of gay people can provide them with a natural bent toward listening. They can be reconcilers; they can understand the sufferings of both sexes. They're natural priests." McNichols now worries that his ability to minister will be taken away. "We're all sort of like Anne...
...peace with one's sexuality, says the Rev. Robert Silva, president of the National Federation of Priests' Councils. "I say to both gay and straight seminarians, You have to be comfortable with who you are. You have to understand that sexual feelings are part of the human experience. The priesthood is a difficult life. If you find the stresses and the isolation so great, you're going to seek to fill the void...