Word: priestly
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Even these disturbing figures do not adequately show the depth of the church's clerical crisis. In the past three years, the world population of Catholics has increased by 13,800,000?but there are fewer and fewer replacements for the priests and nuns who leave. Vatican statistics indicate that the number of seminarians dropped from 167,000 in 1964 to 147,000 last year. Across the U.S., hundreds of financially hard-pressed parochial schools are closing, partly because they do not have enough teaching nuns to stay open. Five years ago there was one priest for every...
...from the ranks of its vow-bound servants. But in the past those who left usually went as single spies, not in battalions. The best-known rebels were usually heretics like Luther or prophets ahead of their time, like Hugues Felicite Robert de Lamennais, the 19th century activist French priest whose political liberalism prefigured modern Christian Democratic movements in Europe. Some left in shame, branded as social or spiritual misfits. Others were simply embittered by their personal experience in the church, or were unwilling to meet the stern demands of religious life. The latter reason impelled Monica Baldwin to quit...
...Netherlands, faith has not prevented many a believing priest and nun from joining the exodus. On the rolls of those leaving today are some of U.S. Catholicism's most eminent names?such as former Jesuit Bernard J. Cooke, one of the nation's leading Catholic theologians. Last November, Cooke announced that he was leaving the clerical state and Marquette University, where he was chairman of the theology department, because he saw "a need to develop new forms of Christian life and priestly ministry outside the ordinary clerical structures but not in opposition to them...
Schallert notes that priests spend "an average of four to five years agonizing over their decision before walking out of the door. They probably spend more time deciding to leave than they spend deciding to enter the ministry. They just don't get mad at somebody and walk out in a huff. The priest who leaves may be frustrated at the difficulty in finding a way to work for the church, but he is not angry...
...experiences of former priests interviewed by TIME bear Schallert out. PAUL HILSDALE, 47, is a sociologist and former Jesuit who now conducts "awareness workshops" with his anthropologist wife in Los Angeles. "I left the priest hood," he recalls, "because I wanted to grow into a person who was ever more responsible and ever more loving. The church and the Jesuit structures were narrowing areas in which I could express my love." He resented the fact that when he said Mass, "people thought I was doing some kind of magic." After taking a leave from Loyola University of Los Angeles...