Greg Daly
Clarity and honesty are urgently needed around Ireland’s low vocation numbers, writes Greg Daly
“Fifteen seminarians have begun their formation and academic programme for 2019 – 2020,” began the press release last week from the Catholic Communications Office (CCO) in Maynooth. “The new students are currently in formation in Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth and the Pontifical Beda College, Rome; with a number beginning their propaedeutic programme in other locations in Ireland and abroad. This brings to 68 the total number studying for the priesthood for Irish dioceses.”
So far, so apparently clear, but for anybody who has paid attention to vocation numbers in the Church in Ireland over the past few years, this statement should have immediately invited questions.
Last year, after all, the bishops’ spokespeople began their press release on men beginning formation for diocesan priesthood in 2018-2019 by announcing that 17 men had begun formation, with five beginning formation at Maynooth, four beginning formation at the Neocatechumenate Redemptoris Mater Seminary in Dundalk, and eight beginning propaedeutic years – pre-seminary years not unlike the novitiates of religious orders – in Ireland and abroad.
Even a straightforward comparison of the two statements, then, should lead to some very obvious questions about the men who began a propaedeutic year last year. Are men who completed a propaedeutic year and then went on to Maynooth, say, being counted as having begun their formation this year? If not, why isn’t a total figure given for numbers beginning seminary proper? Do the 15 seminarians include pre-seminarians? If they do, why are pre-seminarians called seminarians in these statements? Is there double-counting going on?
Alarm bells
Even without grappling with such questions the most cursory comparison with press releases over previous years should be causing alarm bells to ring. Fifteen men starting in 2019, down apparently from 17 in 2018, down in turn from 19 in 2017? In Britain they talked of a ‘Benedict Bounce’ in the years following the 2010 papal visit; it can take time for seeds to germinate, but if this decline doesn’t reverse soon we’re bound to hear talk before long of Ireland’s ‘Francis Flop’.
And how many men are going to the national seminary in Maynooth this year? Last year the figure was an all-time low of five, following on from the previous year’s all-time low of six. This year, though, there’s nothing about this in the press release. Queries to the Catholic Communications Office (CCO) shed no light on the situation.
An email sent moments after the press release was received, asking how many men were going to Maynooth, how many to the Pontifical Beda College in Rome, and how many on propaedeutic years went unanswered, leaving this newspaper unable to report the story in an accurate way; as it stood the press release invited more questions than it answered, and a ‘churnalistic’ recycling of it ahead of deadline would have been bad journalism, lazy and even misleading for Catholic readers.
A second email later that day after The Irish Catholic had gone to press likewise went unanswered.
It was only on the following day, after a third email had been sent, reiterating the previous day’s questions and asking for a comprehensive list by dioceses of the 68 men currently in formation, distinguishing between seminarians and propaedeutic students as appropriate, that the CCO replied.
“We have no further information for publication beyond the press release,” came the belated response from the official spokespeople for the Church in Ireland. At the time of writing there has still been no response to my prompt reply asking who the paper could contact asking for further information.
The website for the National Vocations Office is in some ways a dispiriting place to visit, with – apparently – no news updates since May 2019”
The hierarchy’s spokespeople haven’t always been so laconic on this subject, it’s worth pointing out; it is possible, after all, to get a good sense of what the national vocations picture was like from previous years’ press releases.
Ten years ago, for instance, the CCO issued a press release declaring that 36 men were starting priesthood studies for Irish dioceses.
“36 new seminarians are to commence priesthood studies for Irish dioceses in 2009,” the release began. “26 will be based in the national seminary of St Patrick’s College, Maynooth; seven will study at St Malachy’s College, Belfast; two will study in the Beda College in Rome, whilst one candidate is entering the pre-seminary discernment year (propaedeutic year) in Valladolid, Spain.
“The new seminarians range in age from 18 to mid-40s and come from a wide variety of education and employment backgrounds,” the press release continued, before moving through the usual quotes welcoming and praising the men and then detailing where the 36 new men were coming from, diocese by diocese.
This kind of breakdown, this kind of transparency and accountability enabling the Faithful to see the reality of Ireland’s vocations crisis, used to be the norm for the Church in Ireland. Year upon year press releases used to be issued giving diocese-by-diocese breakdowns of the number of men entering formation for the diocesan priesthood in Ireland: 26 men in 2006, 25 in 2007, 20 in 2008, 36 in 2009, 16 in 2010, 22 in 2011, 12 in 2012, 20 in 2013, 14 in 2014, and 17 in 2015.
2015’s press release began by declaring that the national seminary had welcomed 17 new seminarians for their introductory programme, and that a few weeks later four of these would head north to continue their studies at St Malachy’s College in Belfast; 13 men, by implication, were starting in Maynooth.
Of the 17 first-year seminarians, the press release revealed, three were from Dublin, three from Down & Connor, two from Killaloe, and one from each of Armagh, Cork & Ross, Derry, Galway, Ossory, Raphoe, Tuam, and Waterford & Lismore.
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Since 2015, however, there’s been a staggering silence around how many men have entered formation for our dioceses each year. How many men are entering Maynooth? How many people complete propaedeutic years and go on to seminary proper? Which dioceses, generally speaking, do best at helping young men hear God’s call to priesthood?
It’s worth remembering that the Church in Ireland was capable of answering these questions and sharing those answers between the clergy and laity even a few years ago, when vocational numbers, though hardly robust, were higher than they are now. If proper numbers aren’t being supplied, it’s hardly because it’s too difficult to supply them, and it’s worth remembering now that we in Ireland have since 2017 had a National Vocations Office.
The website for the National Vocations Office is in some ways a dispiriting place to visit, with – apparently – no news updates since May 2019. It’s a pale shadow of ukvocation.org, the website of the English and Welsh bishops’ National Office for Vocation, which as well as trying to encourage all types of vocations also gives an unvarnished picture of the overall vocations scene in England and Wales.
In a section headed ‘Communicate Vocation’ our neighbours’ website features sub-sections on personal testimony, video resources, schools, the 2018 Synod on Youth, the Anglo-Welsh Church’s national vocations framework and – crucially – statistics. For each of 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 it offers clear breakdowns of vocational patterns across England and Wales, whether for the permanent diaconate, the diocesan priesthood, or religious life, with these figures further being broken down to allow for propaedeutic years and different stages of religious profession.
Equation
The figures normally are released around Easter, so it will be a few months before the 2019-2020 picture can be seen, but even looking at 2018 tells us a lot. Following the equation that Total Number of New Entrants = Entrants into Propaedeutic Year + (Entrants into Diocesan Seminary – Transfers from last year’s propaedeutic Year) gives an overall figure for 2018 of 27, down from 41 in 2017, up on 2016’s 25, and down on the 42, 35, 44, 33 and 46 new entries in each of the previous five years.
The 2018 figures, then, were almost the worst England and Wales had seen in eight years, but even so it looks as though they were almost double the numbers who came forward for Irish dioceses – and this despite England and Wales having a roughly comparable number of practicing Catholics to Ireland, with two dioceses alone having four men each entering formation. It seems 21 women entered religious life in England and Wales in 2018, with 16 men doing so, and 38 men began formation for the permanent diaconate.
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The statistics include a simple bar chart showing the vocations trajectory year by year in England and Wales going back to 1986, including straightforward seminary entry figures, propaedeutic year entry figures, and – of vital importance – combined totals modified to remove duplications. They also detail the average ages of entry into seminary and propaedeutic years – 36 in both cases – and summarise things with a simple table detailing the numbers of men currently doing propaedeutic years, in seminary formation, in other formation programmes, and overall: the total is 151.
Does anybody really think the Irish Church incapable of gathering and sharing this kind of information? Granted, silo mentalities can still thrive in Ireland, where dioceses, religious orders, and even branches of the Church’s bureaucracy can jealously guard their own patches, but most observers would feel the disparate parts of the Church in Ireland have nonetheless got better at sharing information in recent years. As numbers have declined, whether in the sanctuaries or in the pews, there has been little choice.
Good stewards
Some, of course, will say this kind of outlook is ‘managerial’ and ‘bean-counting’, excessively focused on quantity and heedless of quality, or will claim that even one soul brought to God, one soul helped to hear God’s call is an achievement, and there is truth in these claims, but equally they don’t express anything near the whole of the truth.
After all, anybody who knows the Parable of the Talents will know that Our Lord expects his followers to be good stewards of his gifts and his resources, and numbers are one of a very small number of objective measures for how we are looking after and nurturing his Church.
Numbers should matter to Christians, and not just because there’s a book of the Bible with that name; the New Testament, rather, is full of them not least in how it maps the growth of the Church.
Acts starts by describing how the nascent Christian community in Jerusalem consisted of about 120 brethren, of whom 12 were – after the enrolling and ordination of Matthias – deemed apostles, the first priests of the Church.
About 3,000 souls were enrolled in the Church at Pentecost, and some time after, around the time that Peter and John were arrested, the number of men in the Church reached about 5,000. With numbers continuing to grow, and with disagreements over widows not being cared for, the 12 gathered the disciples and had seven men of holiness, wisdom, and good repute picked out for them to ordain as deacons.
Remember how the Second Vatican Council taught in Dei Verbum, its dogmatic constitution on divine revelation, that the authors of the Scriptures “as true authors consigned to writing everything and only those things which (God) wanted”. In other words, it’s not an accident that the early Church recorded its growth in terms of precise numbers – even if those numbers were intended symbolically as could happen in ancient historical writing, the point remains that the inspired authors of Scripture believed that numbers matter, and who are we to say different?
Anticipating difficulties and confusion around the seminary and pre-seminary entry figures, The Irish Catholic last month contacted every diocese in the country, speaking with vocations directors, diocesan communications officers, and even bishops. Some figures seemed confused, and in almost all cases sources were careful to stress that these figures were provisional, since it was always possible that people expected to start in Maynooth or Spain or wherever might at the last minute think more time is needed, or decide that a priestly life is not for him.
Anybody who knows the Parable of the Talents will know that Our Lord expects his followers to be good stewards of his gifts”
Allowing for this, however, our queries established that 10 men were on the cards to begin propaedeutic years, generally in Spain, these coming from Armagh, Clogher, Cloyne, Derry, Kildare & Leighlin, and Waterford & Lismore, with two from each of Dublin and Killala.
A further five men, two from Down & Connor and one from each of Derry, Dromore and Tuam, were expected to enter seminary straight away without a propaedeutic year.
This could, one suspects, tally with the 15 men announced by the CCO as having started studies this year for the priesthood, even if most of them were pre-seminarians rather than seminarians proper.
Against this, however, it seems that two men were also lined up to start at the Redemptoris Mater seminary in Dundalk for the diocese of Armagh, taking the expected starting numbers up to 17, with two more men hopefully beginning propaedeutic years soon, but after the beginning of the year, bringing the expected numbers of new men up to 19. Does the 15 exclude these four extra men?
What of those men who started propaedeutic formation last year? It appears that just two men are entering seminary after propaedeutic years – such, at least, was the import of conversations between journalists from this newspaper and representatives of Ireland’s dioceses. Two out of eight? Is there something wrong with our propaedeutic system? Or are our problems elsewhere?
It seems, too, that a mere five men are entering Maynooth this year, just like last year’s five, and down slightly on 2017’s then record-breaking low of six. Sixteen men, then, have entered the national seminary in the last three years.
Questions, again, must rear their head about the future sustainability of our national seminary, which was never envisioned as a giant, empty hulk in which just a couple of dozen seminarians would rattle around.
The Church has for too long acted as though maintenance mode is possible. It’s not, of course”
We talk a great game in Ireland about how ours must be a Church in missionary mode, not just maintenance mode, but obstacles – needless obstacles – to getting a transparent and accurate map of our national vocational landscape show how far we are from this. Too often it seems we’re not even in maintenance mode.
Newspapers have been full of headlines in recent weeks about a Kerry parish irate that it has lost its parish priest, distraught that in future a priest might not be located in their village and would have to drive 10 minutes from Killarney in an emergency; reportedly the matter has been taken to the Bishop of Kerry, the Archbishop of Cashel & Emly, and even the Papal Nuncio, with the Holy Father next in line for an appeal.
The real issue here is that the Church has for too long acted as though maintenance mode is possible.
It’s not, of course – in just 35 or so years Ireland is likely to have about a seventh as many active priests as it does now – and yet time and again parishes react with shock when the façade of sustainability finally drops, and they rather than their neighbours are seen to pay the price. In a situation when the Church, or elements in the Church, make it difficult for the Faithful to understand just how dire our vocational situation is, these shocks are going to keep coming.
If we truly want a Church fit for mission, we need to find the courage to speak up, tell the truth, and recognise that crises really can be opportunities.