American Catholic demographics and the future of ministry

There is a significant part missing in the "The Ministers" portion of this article. While speaking of the declining number of priests and the increasing number of lay ecclesial ministers is accurate it totally ignores the increasing number of Deacons throughout the nation and indeed the world.

The great majority of Deacons are still employed in the work force and conduct their ministry for the church in a non paid capacity. During our formation one of our priest instructors described Deacons as "Ordained ministers in the work place" with one foot in the church and the other in the work a day world, a bridge if you will. Obviously Deacons are not priests and there are certain things we cannot do, most obviously Sacraments of the Eucharist and Reconciliation, however to totally ignore this large and growing part of ministry in our church, especially with the title of the article in mind, is to not paint a complete picture of the future of ministry within the church in these changing times.

Gosh, Mr. Allen, did you completely forget about the deacons & all the ministry they carry out and will continue to carry out? How about their numbers?...we find in our diocese that our current training program cuts out quite a number of men because it is of a much longer duration than previously & has a higher academic level than it used to have...they are accepting fewer men than they used to...what is the impact of current deacon training programs? Is the diaconate aging, too?

There's a story there, Mr. Allen...

As a brand new Catholic of 66 years old after a life-time of being a very secular but socially conscious person, I find your article very informative. I am learning a lot about the Church, its history and related issues. Thank you very much.

Sabine Atwell

John, and where do the permanent deacons figure in this scenario.. or don't they?

Great stuff. Thank you John. Will share with others.

Good analysis. I was a teenager during the Second Vatican Council and a candidate in the RCIA in the early 80's. Therefore, I am definitely one of the progressive older Catholics who might be challenged by the views of U.S. Catholics in their teens and 20's.

Catholics of my generation, however, should remember that it isn't 1970 or 1980 any longer. It's 2010, and we should stop fighting old battles. There is a legitimate need for an alternative to much that characterizes contemporary society. If we old folks can show that our progressive views about the church will contribute to the strong sense of identity and the fundamental values many of the young are seeking, then we have the right to enter into dialogue with them. But we also need to listen. It would be good, however, if John Allen devoted a future article or talk to people in their 20's and 30's who were raised Catholic but who have rejected any formal religious affiliation. Is this a larger group than those who remain active Catholics? I suspect that it might be.

The "Balkan tribalism" in the church is truly unfortunate. What can U.S. Catholics of any age do to transcend it?

As always John's articles are insightful. I just have two thoughts or rather questions.
The numbers presented here cause me to pause. Are there really more priests than lay ministers? In most parishes I know there are three lay ministers to every priest. Is it that the number of lay ministers are underreported? Does this number also include the number of lay ministers working in diocesan offices, elementary and high schools, and campus ministries? The numbers simply do not add up.
Another question I have is how will the younger "evangelical Catholics" interact/minister with their contemporaries? Since their contemporaries are also the future of the church with a totally different outlook on things, can this inner core group evangelize their peers or will they cause division within the church? And who will their peers look to when they seek assistance from the church? My experience with college students tells me they will not react positivily to this inner group of evangelical Catholics.

Excelent observations, as usual.
I wonder if time is ripe for evangelical or guerrila action on the part of younger laypeople that would put then in on the street corners and doorsteps to deliver the Good News. It is past time to do something about sects like the JWs who are sending teams to attract poorly instructed Catholic with sometimes blatant out-and-out lies about the Church and its teachings.

It is interesting to note that in John Allen Jr.'s blog on american catholic demographics and minister demographics he does not address the Sacred Order of Deacon in the American Church. I am perplexed by this. He pays careful attention to noting the statistics on Priests and Religious, and offers a good summary of the many outstanding "lay" ministers providing service to our Church, including naming many of the ministries that they are facilitating. However, no mention is made of the Diaconate and its demographics (almost as many Deacons in the US Church as active Priests in ministry)or of the role many Deacons, as Ordained clergy, are playing in the administrative, pastoral and sacramental areas of Parish and Diocesian life and structure. He also does not mention that vocations to the Diaconate are growing rapidly in the US Church, especially within the new immigrant Catholic communities.

As usual John Allen's report is insightful and well written. The recruitment of priests from other countries, especially developing countries has been reported in a series last year in the NY Times. This reminds me of the practice of recruiting health professionals, especially nurses, from countries in dire need of medical staff but lacking the financial resources to support them. We have had recently two excellent priests from African countries. But what about their home areas? Both are from countries with "impossible" ratios of baptized Catholics to priests.

Also much of this comes back to the restriction of ordination to celibate males.
As long as the Church refuses to seriously consider this issue we will be deprived of the talent and leadership of the full Catholic community.

I was at the 50th ordination celebration of a priest in a town that recently
merged two long standing parishes into one because of their shortage of priests.
Yet the merged communities have already experienced the negative effects anonynity of the giant parish and the hectic life of overworked clergy. At the same time there are women, single and married, and married men willing to serve as priests. It makes no sense to me.

"The choices Catholics make in parishes?" Are you kidding? We can't choose a bishop, we can't choose a pastor, and in my parish we can't even choose the members of the parish council--as if it made any difference when the council has no authority to decide or do anything anyway. There is indeed "a vast reservoir of Catholics who would dearly love to offer their professional skills" not only to the Vatican but to their own parishes and dioceses. Unfortunately, they are overlooked or dismissed (unless they have money, of course). Until the clerical culture becomes less rigid and less threatened by competent lay people, particularly women, a lot of people will leave the church of the future to those millenials and offer their gifts elsewhere.

John Allen,

You're so full of hot air. You have absolutely no idea how the future will play out or who our "ministers" will be.

John Allen's analysis tallies with my research in the same areas. My question, however, is whether we are moving in the direction that the Dominican historian Edward Cleary is suggesting Latin America went, that is to say, developing a form of Catholicism that will not center on the liturgy. I've been editing a history of Christianity in the modern period written by two very astute Protestant scholars, and when I finished their chapters on the 16th and 17th centuries, I could see them setting the groundwork that gives warrants to Cleary's thesis. There were a lot of other things going on in Latin America, of course, including the fact that Spanish and Portuguese church leaders didn't want Indian and mestizo priests and the way in which popular Catholicism was providing a quiet subversive way for local peoples to be Christian while dissenting from the colonial ideology.

In Latin America, as the saying goes, the Catholic Church opted for the poor just as the poor were opting for Pentecostalism. A people largely unformed in solid biblical and doctrinal teaching often grabs it with both hands when Pentecostals and Evangelicals. Protestantism is in many ways "Christianity without Frills." Vatican II was all about identifying our frills and trying to put the emphasis on the essentials. Alas, what many in the hierarchy seem intent on doing is interpreting the essentials in the light of their own experience in clerical life. The new laity, I suspect, may love John Paul II's and Benedict XVI's teachings on the really essential essentials -- as do I -- but I wonder whether many of them won't get disgruntled when they are told to conform to what imported foreign priests, some without deep understanding of American culture, tell them to do. JP2 and B16 understand well the dangers of modernity, they appear to me less able to provide leadership on how to adapt without compromise.

A former student of mine was a director of church planting for the Southern Baptists metropolitan arm in Chicago. He "planted" thirty Baptist churches around Chicagoland in the 1980s. Half his new Baptists, he said, were former Catholics. I've met many of the imported priests. They are usually very fine men. But so were most of the Spaniards and Portuguese priests that Latin American Catholicism used in the 17th - 19th centuries. Are we headed the same way Latin America went? I very much agree with John Allen that the most impressive of the new Catholic lay leaders are "evangelical." We do well to realize that in the 1520s the last thing Luther wanted to do was to found a Lutheran Church. He wanted to make the one Catholic Church evangelical.

At some point, American Catholic episcopal leadership is going to either begin to take American culture seriously and find ways to adapt to it without going in a reductionist "liberal" direction or we will live with a much enfeebled, too-Roman, antiquarian body that will be a pale imitation of the vigorous Body of Christ.

Mr Allen,Im a catholic from Brazil,I would like to do one suggestion,you could write an article about the permanent deaconate a vocation that is growing here and in the world.
Thanks

Mr. Allen absolves B16 of any blame re: his handling of the sex abuse crisis yet the evidence from his days as archbishop of Munich and his pronouncements concerning withholding information from the civil authorities, until very recently, suggests otherwise.
How, then, can Mr. Allen substantiate his claim that B16 "has done more than anyone else to weed out abuser priests and to acknowledge the suffering of victims."?

I'm afraid you forgot someone in your demographics of ministry: Permanent Deacons.

Traditionally, the relationship of deacons with priests and religious is complementary; together they form a communion of ministries. The order of deacon is an ordained ministry. Graced by the sacrament of Ordination, the deacon proclaims by his very life the Church's call to serve the needs of others in the three great areas of the Church's life: word, sacrament and service.

Upon ordination, the deacon enters into a new set of relationships with his bishop, those with whom he ministers, as well as the laity, from whose ranks he comes and from whom he is now separated.

As an ordained minister, he becomes for the community a unique sign and instrument of what Jesus Christ is for the Church, and of what the Church must be for the sake of Christ - a servant. It is this "service" which characterises the ministry of deacon, a distinctive mark from the ancient days of the Church (see Acts 6). The deacon, by his ordination, is a representative symbol of the inner-connection with laity among the tri-ministry of word, sacrament and service.

Pope Paul VI outlined the deacon's role as follows:

to assist the bishop and priests during liturgical services in regard to all those matters assigned to the deacon by the liturgical books for the various rights;
to administer baptism solemnly...
to reserve the Eucharist for himself and for others; to bring viaticum to the dying; to give benediction with the monstrance or ciborium;
to assist marriage in the name of the Church, when no priest is available, and, with the bishop's or pastor's delegation, to impart the nuptial blessing...
to administer sacramentals and preside at funerals and burial rites;
to read the books of Scripture to the faithful, to instruct and exhort the congregation;
to preside at offices of worship and prayer services, when no priest is available;
to lead celebrations of the work, especially in places where there is a lack of priests.
Such is the liturgical service deacons render to God and God's people in the celebration of the Eucharist, other sacramental rites, and communal prayer.

How can the more than 14,000 permanent deacons be excluded from the "demographics" of ministry?

Pardon me if I feel insulted--or at least neglected.
Not one word about the fastest growing ORDAINED ministry in the Church--the diaconate. Almost everything lay ecclesial ministers can do--Church documents say deacons should be first to do them--including being parish administrators.
And finally there is a married ordained clergy in the Catholic Church and sometimes it is as if those who wanted a married presence in Church leadership are determined to be blind to the fact it already exists.

As far as "public relations" is concerned. The Vatican would be best served if it had a policy of "the whole truth and nothing but the truth" because of the Cover-up Scandal. Unfortunately Vatican officials don't seem to understand what that means as far as the cover-up is concerned. Let me suggest the elimination of policies of secrecy for starters followed by "full" transparency meaning disclosure of "all" communications with regard to all sexual abuse cases (censoring ONLY the names of those who were sexually abused).

oy vey . . .
just come to the Spanish Mass already
y bienvenidos

Good article. "What about some “wild card” factor, he asked, which would scramble the picture in unpredictable fashion -- in the way that 9/11 recalibrated American foreign policy?"

Here are a few wild cards of which there is considerable anecdotal evidence at this time. (1) Although the majority of Catholics are women, the Church may experience continued steady loss of female members as many educated women will no longer be willing to participate in their own oppression and male-hierarchy-defined definition of their purpose or role in life, at least without their input; this loss of female Roman Catholics may be exacerbated/accelerated by actions such as the Vatican investigation of women religious or, for example, excommunication of women who attend female ordinations while failing to excommunicate child molesting priests or men who rape their own daughters; I see this type of "bailout from the Church" among my female friends; (2) Continued decline in vocations in the U.S., in part because independent, educated women are reluctant to encourage their sons (or even actively discourage their sons) to represent a system of belief/theology of oppression/inferiority of women; (3) Decline in membership due to ongoing disgust with sexual abuse in the church and the history of coverups and its perceived intertwined nature with the church's obsession with celibacy, homosexuality, the church's condemnation of homosexuality, women's bodies, and the church's disdain for women.

Where do deacons fit into all of this? I read about priests, religious, and laity, but no deacons. Do we not matter?

The Traditional segment in the Church is growing rapidly. It is also quite young. I have been informally studying it for a few years now. I estimate that over 50% of attendees at a typical FSSP Mass are less than 14 years old. There is also a large number of infants being born. At the SSPX chapel in St. Mary's, there were over 100 baptisms this year.

We are currently at the cusp of a boom among Traditionalists. The leading edge is currently 18 years old. I expect marriages and priestly vocations to start an exponential climb during the next 5 years. The Traditionalist seminaries are already full. I expect all the Traditional orders to have to add new seminaries in the next 5 years.

Whether the Holy Father is deserving of the anti-press now apparent is not the point. What really matters is what is needed to obtain a complete turn-a-round.

We are relational creatures by nature - clergy and people. If only the Church Fathers can eat humble pie and do what should have been done years ago - make celibacy optional, it may cut the ground from under the feet of a hostile press and allow the Church to regain it's self respect

http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20100427/ZNYT03/4273018/-1/APA?p=1...

The above link creates what is a dilemma for me any many, many Catholics on this side of the Atlantic. I agree with you John (although not really the purpose of your article) that B16 has indeed done more than any other Pope to "...weed out abuser priests" and has spoken to victims. I also genuinely believe he is profoundly sorry, but what I do not see is the radical actions that need to be taken to change the system that allowed such systemic abuse to occur, throughout the world, indicating emphatically that it is of no matter as regards national cultures. Therefore, it is highly likely that the system for training priests has a huge role to play.
It must be radically changed.
Quick suggestions-;
1 - Academic studies done in secular universities.
2 - Much more emphasis on pastoral work, by working and living in parishes during formation.

The core problem with all these issues is the Vatican and the paternalistic leadership and the Pope himself. Dump any two of these and the problem is solved.

The church should include the sacrament of holy orders in the sequence of initiation rites for all, maybe 5 or 7 years after confirmation. Then we will literally be the holy priesthood that we are called to be.

Let us find a way for all Catholics to experience all seven sacraments.

God's grace is infinite, and it is ridiculous to see some little men trying to ration it, dole it out, bottle it up, use it like a carrot, and control the faucet. The church hierarchy treats God like politicians and land grabbers here in the west have treated water rights.

The church's personnel crises are self-inflicted.

John,

Do you project that the trend for the priesthood within this snapshot of the future will be disproportionately homosexual vis-a-vis the general Catholic population, or closer to the actual Catholic demographic than appears to be at present? Did you consider mentioning this in your address and think you'd better not? Or did it truly not occur to you?

Elizabeth

I just finished reading, "Goodbye Good Men," and would love to know how the Seminaries compare from when that book was written to now. After reading your article it sounds as if there are still vastly fewer entering than in the past, or are there fewer entering and more being dismissed as "Goodbye Good Men" discussed? I must admit I am concerned as to the future path our Church will take here in America.

I always learn something when I read a John Allen column; they are full of well researched and well written information that makes me think.

We live in the age of what I call "MBA efficiency" with the belief that organizations have to be efficient and relevant or they die. I don't think BXVI is being condemned for doing nothing about the sexual abuse crisis, certainly he did more than his predecessor, but in his five years in the Apostolic Palace he has done very little to completely reverse the downward course of this crisis. It appears he has simply responded to events and not taken charge. If BXVI does understand the seriousness of pedophile priests, as the "chief manager" he hasn't pounded it into his staff and made its resolution a top priority in the Church. From the outside he appears to be focused on the theology wars between right and left and comes across as the lost leader of an incompetent gerontocracy. Abuse of children is a very important matter to parishioners and the public and as a manager he has failed to focus sufficient resources to manage it. Perception is reality and change at glacial speed is perceived as no action.

The unstated assumption is that the priesthood itself will not change. Personally, I would not be the least bit surprised if Catholics just took the problem into their own hands and stopped waiting on the Vatican to face reality and change doctrine and theology surrounding the priesthood. I would not be surprised if this movement actually began in Latin America and not North America.

It seems pointless to save the all male celibate priesthood if it means the laity is lost to denominations who can actually serve their spiritual and religious needs. Unless of course, Catholic identity is nothing more than an enabling strategy for maintenance of this priesthood. This would mean preserving the Trentan notion of priesthood is a higher priority than serving the People of God. But then putting the priesthood over the needs of the people is itself traditional.

Each step of the way, the future is here. As with any institution, progress and change is slow, as it should be. Talk of Benedict's 'smaller and holier church' or, the often held sentiment, 'the church is done', are both doomsday prophecies, assuming we are on the 'straight-line projection'. If this were ever the case, we wouldn't be here. The Catholic Church, as always, will change, adapt and survive. If it doesn't, then nature dictates it will die. There are too many variables and too many theories to predict with any confidence. I personally wonder if the MONARCHY style of leadership is headed for extinction, maybe replaced with a 'supreme court' type of rule. hmmmmm....

The problem with telling the future based on current trends is that it can’t account for the unforeseen. Imagine if Catholics stopped contracepting like Protestants and returned to having larger families. Is the current two generation demo of 2 kids per and anomaly or the new steady state? If Catholics are open to life (like they promise at the wedding Mass) then the vocations will return.

I can't believe that you reflected for more than an hour on the future of ministry in the Church in the US, and the word deacon didn't even cross your lips. The lay ministry lobby apparently has bought you, lock, stock and barrel.

Thank you for the interesting item from the Pew Forum regarding Hispanics growing a majority of the Roman Catholic chruch in the USA.

This can only produce a salutatory effect on our rigid hierarchy, which must bend to the pastoral needs of this ineluctable process, or further lose the Church in America, giving open, free market, as under Wojtyla's early choice for Central America, Obando v Bravo, to the evangelical and other sects who can quickly offer a more brotherly face, more direct and concrete aid, a more compassionate and constant co-journeying, than a bunch of old white English speaking Irish and German guys wearing forty foot robes in their concrete and glass skyscraper in the heart of the financial district.

Kind of like when the British Crown and Parliament under Derby forced the dispossessed Irish Catholic to pay for the Protestant Church of Ireland, which offered in return a bowl of soup if they would only join. Most starving Irish, their own agriculture stolen and send to England, still refused to take the soup, but some did.

There may nevertheless be hope, even here.

The Gospel at this morning's Mass concludes with Juan 13:34-35. I don't know what they read at the English only Mass, and judging from the Balkanized comments here, it must have been the Gospel according to Beck, but we read together:

Les doy un mandamiento nuevo: ámense los unos a los otros. Así como yo los he amado, ámense también ustedes los unos a los otros. En esto todos reconocerán que ustedes son mis discípulos: en el amor que se tengan los unos a los otros.

So.
Where's the Love, dudes?

Ubi Petrus ibi ecclesia

Ubi caritas Deus ibi est

"The future leaders of Catholicism in America will come from this inner core. By now there’s a considerable body of data about these “millennial Catholics,” and the consistent finding is that they’re more traditional in their attitudes and practices than the “Vatican II” generation they’re replacing. These younger Catholics are attracted to traditional spiritual practices such as Eucharistic adoration and Marian piety; they have a generally positive attitude towards authority, especially the papacy; and they’re less inclined to be critical of church teaching." - John Allen

Read em and weep NCR crowd. Your fad has come and gone. It's kind of ironic; your revolutionary idealogy ultimately resulted in you demographing yourself out of existence. Bravo!

There are a few thingsin this article that I would like to question
1 The blue collar catholics of the future.
This has occurred only partly from immigration. The older well educated and thinking Catholics have not lost their faith in Jesus and God but have turned thei backs on the church because they can no longer accept the restraints on their understanding of their relationship with God, the bullying from above that stifles new ideas, new ways of understanding what we believe that do not force us to walk our of the institution or cease to be authentic christioan.

2 If we are to revitalise the church we must not take the easy way out of embracing only those who are happy with the status quo but must seek out those who would be only too willing to help in this reformation if they could be listened to with open minds. Any reformation must be undertaken with an openess to the working of the Holy Spirit and a willingness to follow where we are led.

3 I think no reform can happen from the top - the situation has gone too far

In answer to the Traditionalist on May 1 and Future Leaders on May 3 the U. S. church they describe is much narrower than was the case in my youth. I am 70. When I was 20, Catholics of all stripes were Catholics. Today the Catholic young attending Mass regularly are apparently Catholics of a more provincial outlook, as proudly proclaimed in these two comments. One might seriously question whether this change is an improvement. From a small base future growth can appear very large.

As an aside, many young Catholic parents today still value Catholic teaching for their children's spiritual and ethical growth and try hard to tune out their distress with regard to some in the Catholic hierarchy. I don't think these American Catholics, sometimes considered lukewarm Catholics because of their questioning of authority, among other issues, should be treated so cavalierly as is done in the abovementioned comments. The optimum size of the tent is not always easy to determine.

In our diocese the priests are now over 60% Philipino and 80% foreign born. Unlike the Irish clergy of the past, there is such a disconnect in culture, language, interests and devotions that the people are slowly losing heart and just migrating away. Other priests from Mexico, Colombia, Africa and Asia seem totally unprepared for the American parish and are virtually useless except as designated Mass celebrants. Preaching and leadership are approaching a new low and younger, educated and thinking folk are simply drifting away. We are on the verge of creating a 'museum church.'

Thank you to all of you who mentioned the Deaconate as a missing link in Mr. Allen's essay. We too often overlook you folks when you are indeed one of the growing ways of service to the world Church. You deserve a front and center place in Catholic life and I promise that from now on, I will remember you all in my daily prayers.

Is it possible, do the deacons among us who read here think, that you are marginalized by most of the Church because of the continued "addiction" to it being a clerical state? In thinking about it, I cannot recall much being said or written about a serious effort on the part of bishops to recruit for the Permanent Deaconate. Keep shouting at all of us, deacons, until we hear you clearly!

One other thought. If anyone knows of any sound data about his, please let me know, but I wonder if the traditionalist-leaning younger Catholics referred to, are in any greater number than has been the usual case historically. It would seem to me that they may be more traditionalist in some of their practices and observances, but (a) not in the same way their older church members are, and (b) that they have significant differences in attitudes and therefore obedience to many traditionalist norms of the Church. I would like specific references, as much of what some blogs here represent as "fact" are not supported by the research or at times even common sense.

Typical of American cultural imperialism: not only do your marketers try to impose Americanism all over the world (Coke, McDonalds, etc) - but now you are stealing priests from countries that need them far more than you do. Shame on you.

Also, the young involved-Catholics may be more conservative now, but wait 'til they grow up a bit and experience the very factors that lead the older generation to a more liberal position. Example, I know an early 30's couple who embodied the very involved-yet-evangelical outlook that is mentioned. Very, very involved. Very gifted. Despite all that he fell in love with a 19 year old, and proved just what a silly boy he really is. His now-ex wife ... what happens to her: if she wants to stay involved, she must stay single for the rest of her life. The cruelty of church-teaching in this area in breathtaking.

Having been Confirmed during the Easter Vigil of 2008, I speak of the RCC with a small whispering voice. However, in the 2+ years I have been Catholic, there is one overiding difference I have noticed from my 5 decades of Protestantism. Cradle Catholics seem to be apologetic about their faith. I do not mean they do apologetics (defense of their faith), but they almost seem to be saying, "I am sorry, I'm Catholic" whenever a discussion of faith happens in their lives outside of church. It is as if they are ashamed of their faith. Trust me when I say that their is much curiosity and interest about the Catholic faith in the Protestant world. One problem is that many Catholics have not been catechized well and do not understand their faith as well as they should. In that case, read, read, read. There are plenty of books, webpages, etc. to educate yourselves. So therefore, live out your faith daily, go to mass regularly, pray, invite others to Mass, read and study the teachings of the Magesterium. Spread the Gospel and the beauty of the One, True, Holy, and Apostolic Church that Christ Jesus founded.