Fr om t he A bb ot
Hastening to Heaven
Life happens. What is important is how you respond to it. Are the daily ups and downs of monastic life much different from the life of the average family or individual? Of course, the glaring differences are there: we are vowed, celibate men who spend about four hours a day in prayer. (Oh yeah, and I live in a monastery with 40 other men.) However, all in all, life still happens. Members of the family or community have to be places and be doing things that take them out of the “normal” routine of daily life. Such a departure from normalcy happened recently as our men in formation and their formators spent two days together in recreation and prayer away from the Abbey. This took eleven of our youngest members out of the house for two days. As you can imagine, that changed our daily life dramatically – I shared with the Benedictine College students who joined us for Mass that day, that this, a choir with no young monks, is what the Abbey community would look like if no one had joined the monastery in the past 15 years. Praise be to God that we have had men join in the past 15 years! (More than half of our community is below the age of 55.) However, we have also had two, nine-year periods in our recent history where no one who joined persevered (professed vows). Now I am not a dooms-day promoter, nor am I exhorting more men to join us to solely boost our numbers – we gratefully accept men whom God is calling to join us. If it is not God’s will, quite honestly, it is best for them and for our community if they don’t join. What I will put forward is that we as a Church, and as a culture, are facing a vocational crisis. Here are some numbers looking at the general vocational decline in the US since 1970:
What
In 1970
In 2019
Decline
Annual Priestly Ordinations
805
518
37%
Religious Sisters
160,931
44,117
73%
Religious Brothers
11,623
3,897
66%
Second Theology Seminarians
6,602
3,553
46%
You might be thinking, “I thought it was a lot worse.” That those numbers aren’t as bad as you thought they would be; down less than 50% for both ordinations and seminarians. This is where the numbers begin to get scary, (if they haven’t scared you already.) This is a case of a trickle-down effect. Some more notable numbers since 1970:
What
In 1970
In 2019
Decline
Annual Marriages in the Church
426,309
143,082
64%
Annual Infant Baptisms
1,089,000
615,119
44%
Annual Adult Baptisms
84,534
39,660
53%
Percentage of Catholics Attending Sunday Mass
71.3%
21.1%
50.2%
When I say a “trickle-down effect” what I read here is that the real drop in the number of seminarians, priestly ordinations, and the number of consecrated men and women is yet to come. If Catholics are not getting married in the Church, if they aren’t having children and having them baptized in the Church, if the tide of adult conversions is drying up, and Mass attendance is dropping drastically, then where are those future priests and consecrated men and women going to be formed; from where will they come? Our young people – our grade-school and high-school-aged youth – our young people will be formed by the culture rather than in their families. What is our responsibility in this? I want to suggest several opportunities: 4
S t. B e n e d i c t ’ s A b b e y
