St. John's Seminary closes. Campus President Ken Rudnick says "... alternatives such as distance learning or consolidation were other options for the church."
Interesting statistic from the article: "In 1967, more than 13,000 students were enrolled in seminary colleges, according to studies by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. Last year, about 800 were enrolled." If the rate continues at the same pace, then I calculate that October 17, 2005 is the date on which there will a grand total of one student enrolled in seminary studies . . . and he'll be checking in at DegreeInfo to learn about his other options.
There are two kinds of priests around here - really old or from lesser developed countries. Must be the nooky factor. I remember mentioning that priests couldn't marry to a Catholic and she hadn't heard of such a thing. All her priests had been married. Ukrainian Catholics and a couple others, as part of some re-unification, were allowed to keep a married priesthood. The married priests would be ordained in the Ukraine and return to serve ethnic Ukrainian congregations in Canada.
Orthodox priests have always been able to marry. My wife, raised Russian Orthodox, remembers the look on some people's faces when her mother would say, "The Priest and his wife are coming for dinner." ___________________________________________ "Oh, my God, it says celebrate." (Punch line of that fine Catholic joke)
Dennis: Yup. According to the Union of Brest and the Union of Uzhorod (Ungvar), Byzantine Rite candidates for holy orders (Ukrainian, Ruthenian=Carpatho-Rusyn, and eventually Slovak, Romanian, and Magyar Byzantine Catholics as well) were permitted to be married within the "Roman" Catholic Church. Likewise with Maronites, Melkites, (I think) Chaldeans, and most if not all of the other "Eastern" rites within the RC Church. This infuriated the, uh, not culturally sensitive American RC bishops, who were mostly of Irish or German background at the time, when Eastern Rite Catholics started to show up in large numbers in the US and Canada around the turn of the century. Married priests were insulted and their children called bastards, etc., etc. In the late 1920's the right of North American Eastern/Byzantine Rite Catholic ordinands to marry was taken away, despite the explicit guarantees of the Unions .As a result, large numbers of Eastern Rite Catholics became Orthodox again (sic). The first priest to do so back in the 1890's has been canonized, to use a western term, by the OCA (St. Alexis Toth). The OCA and the Carpatho-Russian diocese owe much of their numerical strength to this shift of allegiance, and significant numbers of Ukrainian and Romanian Orthodox are of former Eastern Rite Catholic background. When I was in college, there were still a few Byzantine Catholic priests' widows around, and perhaps a couple of very aged married priests. They were really revered in Byzantine Rite circles. This was before substantial numbers of ordinands were farmed back to Ukraine or the Arab countries for ordination and then brought back here. Most Latin Rite Roman Catholics know nothing about this stuff, or about the flourishing communal and religious life of their Eastern Rite Catholic brethren. Dr Bear: Yup again. When I was in various places in the urban rust belt, I recall many Orthodox priests' wives, who had titles of respect: presvytera, popadia, khouria, etc. (Dunno what the Russian version is.) I recall one priest whose young child would quietly ride a tricycle around the church during the liturgy. What was odd was running into an Orthodox parish priest who was NOT married.
I think that what's changing is how priests are recruited. In the past they often went into their undergraduate years planning to become a priest. Now they are generally making that decision at a later age, and seminary studies are undertaken on the graduate level. From the story: Michael Jennett, a priest at Our Lady of Assumption Church in Ventura, was a member of the college's first freshman class in 1961... Almost all 28 of his fellow graduates went on to prepare for the priesthood, he said. "It was different then," he said. "That is not the case now."... Mary Charlotte Chandler, a research associate at the Center for Applied Research, said that as the total number of ordained priests drop, there is more emphasis to attract potential priests at the graduate level... Bob Juarez, a vocation director at the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, said as more men in the seminary come from more varied universities, the seminaries will be become more diverse.
Bill: I think you're right. The minor seminary is becoming a thing of the past, and recruitment from childhood less common. My own denomination still maintains such a system, but even without the disincentive (for some) of required celibacy, it is difficult to keep it running--both financially and in ternms of recruitment.
