And what could be causing the shortage?
Hmmm....
From ABC News
***
The Catholic Church is keen to recruit priests from Asia to help overcome a shortage in regional Australia.
Bishop Greg O'Kelly from the Port Pirie diocese in South Australia says the church also needs to ordain younger people.
[you mean, younger men?]
He says only three of 23 priests in the diocese are under 50.
[And those 50 above belong to the Kumbaya era.]
Bishop O'Kelly says he has been to the Philippines and found strong support for the idea of relocations to Australia.
[I hope those Pinoy priests go there for the right reasons. But I digress.]
"The Australian church has never supplied enough priests by itself, we've been dependant on Ireland until relatively recent times," he said.
"There's scarcely a Catholic in the older generation who wasn't taught by an Irish nun or had an Irish parish priest or an Irish brother.
"Now that source from European overseas, Ireland, has dried up, we have to look to Asia I believe."
***
The Catholic Church in Australia and the rest of the world is not addressing the issue why there are shortages of priests.
BAH! Enough of the married thing and the women thing.
They are non-negotiable especially the WOMYN priests. No such thing. It is almost the same as saying that Felix Manalo and his cohorts start hating money, and Eli Soriano stops hating boys. WHA!
A survey conducted by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate of uhm, Jesuit run, uhm, Georgetown University, found out that "clearly and unambiguously that most new vocations in the United States are going to Orders (and seminaries!) that practice and stress more traditional forms of religious life and priestly formation."
Even if there is no research in other parts of the world, this trend is happening worldwide! Traditional Orders are running out of space, while liberal orders especially those spending more time in (get your pen and paper) Justice and Peace, Liturgical Inculturation, Eco-Spirituality, Gender Equality, and the whole nine yards of 60s madness.
The CARA study concluded:
"The most successful seminaries and institutes in attracting and retaining new members at this time are those that follow a more traditional style of priestly formation and religious life in which members live together in community, participate in the daily Eucharist, pray the Divine Office and engage in devotional practices together. They wear a religious habit, work together in common ministires, and are explicit in their fidelity to the Church and the teachings of the Magisterium. All of these characteristics are especially attractive to the young people who are entering seminaries and Religious life today."
Remember how Christ called His disciples and sent them out into the world "like sheep among wolves"? How could you even atract men and women to a life of poverty, chastity and obedience if all they are going to do is be like Mao Tse Tung or Nelson Mandela without the spirituality of an Mother Teresa or Josemaria Escriva?!
Is it worthwhile to give up the world's pleasures with most of our congregations and orders "marketing" their lifestyle to be "missionaries of love and presence"? Whatever happened to saving souls, or harvesting for the Lord?
The difference with most liberal orders as against traditional ones is not only in their garbs. Traditional ones always wear theirs all the time. Liberals and modernists, hate to be identified, as if they hate being nun, brothers and priests.
The difference is traditional ones always talk about salvation of the soul, while liberals talk about salvation of the marginalized and oppressed, salvation of our planet...and any other new things other than those taught by the Church for 2,000 years.
That is the fruits of Modernism. They are so stale that they have no chance of survival. They do not multiply, just like the RH Bill that they espouse. They are so full of anger with the Church that the new breed of Modernists end up tearing their very own Modernist professors. They just cannot survive.
Modernists are dying!
Just find a congregation of Modernist priests, brothers and sisters and see if their numbers are even increasing. While the Modernists find new ways of trying to destroy the Church from within, traditional Catholic orders are silently increasing in number. In due time, their chants and traditional hymns will subdue the "Praise and Thanksgiving" songs of the Kumbaya church.
These are just two of the traditional orders whose numbers are on the rise.
The Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration aka Mother Angelica Sisters :)
Canons of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest where Canon Jean Marie Moreau is a member.
And I almost forgot, Michael Voris has his Vortex episode for today about this.
I found this wonderful illustration of the different garbs and habits of some of the biggest Orders, Societies and Congregations of Men in the Church.
