Archdiocese feels pressure of priest shortage
SAN FRANCISCO – In comparison to many other Catholic dioceses in the United States, the Archdiocese of San Francisco has had relatively little difficulty in providing enough active priests to serve the pastoral needs of its faithful.
The ministry of priests from other countries at parishes in the archdiocese has, for many years, filled the gap between the archdiocese’s need for new priests and the number of its ordinations to the priesthood each year. So far the archdiocese has been spared the most serious effects of a priest shortage seen in some other regions of the country, where more than 18 percent of parishes do not have a resident priest.
But the demographics of an aging resident clergy combined with a lower number of annual ordinations are putting pressure on the archdiocese’s ability to meet the needs of parishes. The Archdiocesan Directory lists 44 priests ordained in the decade 1970-79, while the comparable listing for the decade 2000-09 shows 22 priests.
“I’ve been vicar of clergy for two-and-a-half years, and a priest ministering in the archdiocese for 41 years,” said San Francisco Auxiliary Bishop William J. Justice, “and this is the first year that I’ve said to priests, in a joking manner, ‘No one can get seriously ill or die. That’s an order.’ Because we don’t have anybody to replace them.”
Bishop Justice, who carries the responsibilities of Vicar for Clergy, paused, and then added in a serious tone: “We’ve got to continue to do some serious planning.”
The archdiocese largely has been spared the kind of logistical predicaments with regard to clergy assignments that have plagued other regions of the country where the priest shortage is felt more acutely. Its 90 parishes dot a relatively compact 1,012-square-mile landscape, and supply priests have been plentiful due to the presence of clergy-rich institutions such as the University of San Francisco, the Graduate Theological Union and several retreat houses situated within and around the three-county archdiocese.
“We are not in dire straits,” Bishop Justice told Catholic San Francisco. “Because we’ve been able to supply priests for the parishes, there hasn’t been a lot of pressure on us to look forward.”
Like other major metropolitan areas of the country, the San Francisco Bay Area is attractive to priests from other countries, including foreign-born clergy seeking to do ministry in the United States, some of whom already have relatives in the area.”
Yet even with these resources, the archdiocese is beginning to feel the pinch.
Looking ahead to the 2010-12 three-year period, 29 active archdiocesan priests will be eligible to retire. While many of these priests will elect to remain active in ministry, even if they officially retire, this demographic trend can be startling. Particularly when contrasted with the number of priestly ordinations in the archdiocese – three this year, and eight projected for the next three years – a number that falls short of what is needed annually to replace the priests who die, retire, or are unable to continue in ministry.
“Certainly, it would be good to have at least four or five ordinations to the priesthood each year in the archdiocese,” said Bishop Justice.
On the national level, the numbers tell the story of vocations in the Catholic Church. According to statistics released earlier this year by Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), 3,357 seminarians were enrolled in the post-baccalaureate level of priestly formation in the United States during the 2008-2009 academic years, an increase of 71 over the previous year.
The sobering reality, however, is that while that figure represents a modest but welcome one-year increase of two percent, it pales in comparison to the 8,159 graduate-level seminarians of the 1967-68 academic year recorded just 22 years ago.
Still, any uptick in vocation interest is cause for optimism.
The CARA report indicates “not a categorical jump, but an increase nonetheless,” said Father David Toups, associate director for the Committee on Clergy, Consecrated Life and Vocations for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “As I travel the country and speak to diocesan vocations directors, I find the numbers are increasing and the quality of the candidates is increasing.”
Sulpician Father Gerald Brown, who began a sabbatical this summer after serving five years as rector and president of St. Patrick’s Seminary and University in Menlo Park, has observed those same trends.
“They’re starting to come back,” he said of the younger candidates. “That’s a development that I think is very hopeful.”
Father Brown characterized the more youthful crop of seminarians today as a bit more conservative and serious than in the past, and as wanting to give of themselves and “believe in what they are willing to live and die for.”
Older men in their 40s and 50s – sometimes referred to as “late vocations” – still are common in seminaries, he said, which creates a healthy dynamic in the formation process. “We’ve been blessed with the older candidates, because the younger guys can learn from their experience, and the older guys can get to know how the younger generation is thinking these days,” said Father Brown.
Although the San Francisco archdiocese may not have to resort to circuit-riding priests, parish clusters, lay pastoral administrators or church closings in the immediate future, it has begun taking steps to ease the burden of its parish priests by empowering lay men and women for service.
Two years ago, the archdiocese trained 35 lay persons as parish business managers to relieve pastors of some administrative duties, and all have found work at one or more parishes. Models of collaborative ministry which have been developing since the Second Vatican Council are now bearing fruit with greater urgency in many parishes.
Permanent deacons, the ordained ministry that is experiencing consistent growth nationwide – with an average of 400 new ordinations annually since 1985 – are also taking on greater parochial responsibilities. In the United States today there are 16,380 permanent deacons, or nearly one for every parish in the country.
According to CARA, 3,400 of the nation’s 18,280 parishes – 18.6 percent – presently lack a resident priest or pastor, and 517 parishes have a deacon, religious sister or brother, or lay person formally serving as pastoral administrator.
Even amid the priest shortage, however, Bishop Justice sees the Holy Spirit at work in the more active role of deacons and laity.
“The running and administration of a parish does not only involve clergy, although they are very important. It’s also laypersons who can be trained as professional lay ministers and can work together with the priests, deacons and religious,” the bishop said. The vocation crisis thus “brings about a different way of being the Church, being a parish.”
Even if vocations were to become numerous again, he said, “We wouldn’t want to go back to the way it was 100 years ago” when priests were expected to do virtually all parish ministry.
Father Brown agreed that the growth of lay ministry is a silver lining of the vocations crisis. “I think the role of laity in the Church, thank God, has emerged,” he said. “I think it is important for people to know that, because of that, we offer more ministry to people in this country than in any other place in the world.”
Collaboration with laity and the easy availability of supply priests notwithstanding, a dramatic increase in the number of men discerning their vocation to the archdiocesan priesthood remains essential for the future of the San Francisco archdiocese. The key is to get all the faithful – clergy, religious and laity alike – to play an active role in creating vocation awareness in the parish and in the family.
Father Thomas Daly, archdiocesan director of vocations, points out the three necessary components to any successful vocations effort: Prayer, a personal invitation, and the lived example of the priest.
“There has to be an awareness of how each person and family in the pew contributes to the building of vocation awareness through regular prayer specifically for priestly and religious vocations,” said Father Daly. “Once you have that prayer and example, and a commitment with a group of people to foster vocations and make them a priority, then I think the programs are effective.”
A very positive trend he has seen in the younger priests and seminarians of the archdiocese is a willingness to reach out proactively in encouraging young people to consider a priestly vocation.
In this Year of the Priest that began this summer, San Francisco Archbishop George H. Niederauer has said he wants seminarians to give witness talks to young people, which has already proven effective, Father Daly said. He hopes to offer witness talks in a more structured and formal setting in individual parishes.
Father Daly remains optimistic and believes the vocations are “out there”: God is still calling plenty of men to serve in the ministerial priesthood, if only they would hear him and respond. It is a matter of encouraging all the faithful to seek personal holiness and the will of God in their lives.
“We have special challenges, and I believe God is not going to abandon us,” he said. “We just have to be trusting, creative and courageous in fostering those vocations.”
Back at the U.S. bishops’ conference, Father Toups recalled a bit of wisdom he once heard from the present archbishop of San Francisco.
Archbishop Niederauer has said that we don’t have a vocation crisis, we have a discipleship crisis,” said Father Toups. “Call our people to discipleship, and the vocations will be there, and the strong marriages and families will be there. That’s really the crux of it.”
By Gerald Korson
Special Report
From October 16, 2009 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
