Catholic Priest Shortage

In Europe, U.S., Catholic Church Prays For More Priests

(AP) 
"I don't think that the fact that they cannot marry plays the principal role. Everyone tells me that it's because they are scared," said the Rev. Charles Bonnet, superior at the Saint Irenee Seminary in Lyon, France. "This lifetime commitment plays a bigger role in their decision than does the fact of having to remain celibate."

France in the mid-1970s became the first predominantly Catholic country in Europe to suffer a collapse in seminarian numbers. A generation ago the country produced about 800 new priests annually, but today manages just 100, Bonnet said.

In Spain, the number of seminarians has declined to 1,524 this year, a 24 percent drop from 1990. Officials cite materialism and alienation from faith as bigger factors than celibacy.

"The problem is attracting people to Christian life," said Juan Miguel Prim, the rector of a seminary in a Madrid suburb. "These days, a lot of young people have no religious experience and see the church as something very distant."

In Ireland, recruitment has collapsed since the mid-1990s, when the Irish economy took off on the back of high-tech investment — and the church's image fell amid sex scandals.

In 1992, a bishop in Galway was exposed as the father of a teenager in the United States whose support he'd been secretly paying from the collection plate. In 1994, the Irish government fell apart after admitting it failed to extradite a pedophile priest wanted in Northern Ireland on criminal charges.

The floodgates since have opened for more than 3,000 civil claims and criminal cases involving allegations of sexual and physical abuse dating to the 1940s, when Ireland was impoverished and the church ran schools, workhouses and orphanages.

"Obviously the scandals, the child abuse and the poor response to it hit hard. But this Celtic Tiger economy of ours hit just as hard," said the Rev. Joseph Tynan, a parish priest in County Tipperary who is director of vocations in a western Irish diocese. "Vocations never thrive in an affluent society. There are too many other choices, opportunities and temptations."

Tynan graduated from Tipperary's seminary in 1980 with 25 classmates, but the seminary closed in 2002 after failing to attract a single new candidate. Today, just two of the diocese's 90 priests are under 30, according to Tynan, who said the church may need to make celibacy optional.

"There should be room for married clergy," said Tynan, who noted that even "John Paul II acknowledged that celibacy is a church rule rather than a divinely instituted rule."

For Donnelly, the aspirant priest, campus life is a reminder of the less-traveled path he's taking. The seminary is surrounded by a 6,000-student university and Maynooth pubs full of coeds doing what coeds do.

"You do see couples holding hands and going off to do things together, and you do find yourself thinking: I'd like to have that," Donnelly said. "I will miss not being able to have children — Santy (Santa Claus), the tooth fairy, the first day of school.

"But sacrifice is supposed to be hard. And I see the sense of the celibacy rule. I'm really supposed to be wedded to God, and the parish is my family."

"And I'm still going to make it to the pub," he added with a smile, "because that's where the people are. A good priest must be with his people."