The 'New Springtime' in Statistics!

Just a few of the many statistics at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA): 

Please keep in mind as we go through these figures that in the 51 years between 1970 and 2021, the Catholic population of the US increased from 47.9 million people actively registered in a Parish and 54.1 million who 'identified' as Catholic to 66.8 million Parish registrants and 73.2 million who identified as Catholic.

In 1970, there were a total of 59,192 Priests in the US. They could be divided into 37,272 Diocesan Priests and 21,920 Religious Priests. Last year, in 2021 there were a total of 34,923, with 24,204 serving as Diocesans and 10,709 in Religious Orders. IOW, the total number of Priests had dropped by over 40%, with the Religious Orders being hit the hardest with a drop of almost 50%.

In 1970 there were 160,931 Religious Sisters and 11,623 Religious Brothers. Last year there were 39,452 and 3,832 respectively, a drop of 75% in the number of Sisters but only 67% for the Brothers.

In 1970, there were 18,224 Parishes and by last year only 16,579. Not a big drop, BUT of those Parishes in 1970, only 571 were without a resident Pastor, whereas by 2021 pastorless Parishes had risen to 3,377, an almost six-fold increase.

Partly because of the ageing of the Priests that we do have, coupled with a collapse in Priestly vocations, the percentage of Priests in active ministry had dropped from 90% to 66%, and the number of Parishes entrusted to a Deacon or another person had jumped from 7 to 312.

And speaking of Priestly vocations, there were 805 ordinations to the Priesthood in 1970 and only 441 in 2021. But, whilst there were no Permanent Deacons yet in 1970, by 2021 there were 18,619, over half as many as the number of Priests we had.

And in 1970 there were 6,602 men about to graduate from seminary and whilst I don't have the numbers for 2021, by 2015 that number had dropped to 3,650.

Again, whilst I don't have the figures for 2021, in 2015 there were 39,652 laymen and laywomen occupying 'lay ecclesial ministries', which did not yet exist in 1970. I assume that this only encompasses Instituted Acolytes and Readers and their equivalents who are not actually called to a ministry and not the untold myriads of altar boys, 'altar girls', and Extraordinary Ministers of the Eucharist of all stripes.

And how did the collapse of the Priestly and Religious 'infrastructure' of the Church affect the life of the average pew sitter?

Well, in 1970 there were 4.2 million children in CCD, with 3.4 million in 9,366 Catholic elementary schools. By 2021, those numbers had dropped to 1.8 million in CCD and 1.1 million in 4,853 schools.

Secondary education wasn't much better. At the beginning of the covered period, there were 1.3 million teens in CCD and 1.0008 million attending a total of 1,986 secondary schools. By 2021, those numbers had dropped to 550,170 CCD students and 535,844 teens attending 1,174 schools.

The figures for post-high school education, at first glance, look much better. In 1970, there were 411,111 students attending 279 Catholic colleges and universities. By 2021, the number of schools had dropped to 221, but the number of students at them had risen 44% to 730,803. 

However, it must be remembered that the Land O'Lakes Statement, written under the inspiration of Theodore M. Hesburgh, CSC, President of Notre Dame, and endorsed by major Catholic universities such as Georgetown, Seton Hall, Boston College, Fordham, St. Louis University, and the Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico, that had basically repudiated the very idea of a truly Catholic university, was issued in 1967.

So, whilst the number of students had increased substantially, whether or not they were actually receiving a Catholic education had become highly doubtful.

In terms of the Sacraments received, a similar collapse had occurred. Infant baptisms had plummeted from 1.089 million in 1970 to less than half that at 411,482 in 2021.

The percentage of Catholics who attend Mass at least once a week (we assume on Sunday) had dropped from 54.9% to 17.3% in 2021. Lest that be blamed on the CCP virus pandemic, it had already fallen to 23.4% in 2015. The same with those who manage to make it at least once a month, including weekly and more frequent attendees. That percentage dropped from 71.3% to 36.6% (in 2015 it had been 49.5%).

All I want to know is where is that 'New Pentecost', that 'New Springtime' we were promised back in the 1960s? As the title of Bishop Athanasius Schneider's excellent new book puts it, it was 'The Springtime That Never Came'!