VOCATIONS: A crisis of faith

By FATHER SHANE DEMAN
Director of Seminarians
 
As we celebrate National Vocations Awareness Week, questions often arise as to how many seminarians we currently have in our diocese and what efforts are supporting future vocations to the priesthood, diaconate and consecrated life. 

Given our parish closures and mergers, there is concern about how many young people will be available to serve the church in the future. Yet the reality that the church is facing runs deeper than simply calculating available personnel.
 
The Dominican priest, Father Patrick Briscoe, released an article last May in the publication, Our Sunday Visitor, in which he described our current situation in the United States. He concluded that we are not experiencing a vocations crisis, as is often assumed to be the case. Instead, we are experiencing a crisis of faith, supported by national statistics given by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA).
 
We know that there has been a decrease of clergy and consecrated religious over many decades. At the same time, the number of Catholics in this country has grown, particularly due to Catholic immigrants who enrich our parishes. This inverse reality invites us to consider how many priests are now serving Catholics who continue to practice their faith as compared to the past.
 
In 1970 across the United States, 54% of Catholics attended weekly Mass, while only 17% did so in 2022. According to Father Briscoe’s calculations of current clergy numbers, each priest served 782 Catholics in 1970, while today, each priest serves about 514 who attend weekly Mass. It is evident that the number of Catholics that each priest is serving has actually lowered in the past 50 years, tempting one to conclude that parish ministry is in a better place today across the nation than it was in the past.
 
However, when looking at our own diocesan statistics, there has been a 75% drop in the number of active priests from 1980 to 2023. During this period, the ratio of priest per Catholic was one priest for every 679 Catholics in 1980 and as of last year, there was one active priest for every 1,938 Catholics in the Diocese of Sioux City.
 
Additionally, there has been a 27% decrease in the number of Catholics in northwest Iowa since 1980, while the ratio of Catholics to the total population of our diocese has deceased by only 4%. In this, we can see that as the population of our diocese has deceased, the numbers of practicing Catholics and priests available to serve them have deceased at higher rates.
 
A point of encouragement can be seen in our seminarian numbers, as we are trending at a rate comparable to other rural dioceses. The Diocese of Sioux City and the Diocese of Des Moines each have approximately one seminarian for every 9,000 Catholics. The Diocese of Sioux Falls has one seminarian for approximately every 8,000 Catholics. The Archdiocese of Dubuque has one seminarian for every 12,000 Catholics. 

These numbers in rural dioceses are more encouraging than the realities currently being faced by larger archdioceses. St. Louis currently has one seminarian for every 13,000 Catholics, Detroit has one seminarian for every 34,000 Catholics, and Chicago has one seminarian for every 63,000 Catholics.
 
These numbers indicate that our priest to Catholic ratio is trending better than in larger urban areas where the population size makes pastoral outreach more challenging. And though our clergy are stretched between many communities across northwest Iowa, our population size and past parish mergers help the effectiveness of their outreach.
 
Even with these statistics, the shortage that threatens our parishes today is not necessarily seen in the number of clergy but rather in how the sacraments are being received and where the church is growing in evangelization. Such efforts include calling fallen away Catholics back into a relationship with Christ, introducing non-believers to the Gospel for the first time, and discipling those who already belong to the body of Christ so that their respective vocations become ever more fruitful.
 
We know the challenges that lie ahead of us. In our diocese, infant and adult entrances into the church have decreased by 56% since 1980. There has also been a 78% drop in church weddings in this same time frame. Such numbers reveal that keeping people united to Christ is a greater priority than simply helping young people enter the seminary or convent. 
For those who know the savior intimately and are walking with him in discipleship are much more likely to find the vocation to which God is calling them.
 
Many good efforts to encourage vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life are occurring across our diocese. Yet focus on the vocation to holiness among all believers must remain our primary focus, so that more people come to know a life of grace and are sustained by an intimate relationship with God. If our efforts to lead more people to Christ continue to bear fruit, more will also come to discover the ways in which God is calling them to serve in their respective vocations.
 
Our current situation is not simply a crisis about religious vocations. More fundamentally, we are experiencing a dramatic shift among those who do not actively belong to the body of Christ. 

In this way, we beg the Holy Spirit to bless our efforts at introducing others to Jesus and welcoming them into the family of believers, so that they might come to know God and offer their lives in service to others.
 
Father Deman is serving as vice-rector for Kenrick-Glennon Seminary in Shrewsbury, Missouri as well as director of seminarians for the Diocese of Sioux City Office of Vocations.

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