A System Perfectly Designed to Produce a Priestly Crisis

Did the post-Conciliar Church set up a system of priestly formation that was destined to fail? The author, Director of Clergy Support for the Diocese of Fall River, thinks so.

From Crisis

By Matt Robinson, STM, MSc, MBA

The alarming crisis in the priesthood is less a reflection upon individual priests, and much more a condemnation of the redesigned formation of priests following Vatican II.

The priesthood is in a state of crisis. 

That’s not a criticism of anyone. There are faithful people at every level (clergy and laity alike) laboring in the Church, showing up day after day and trying to get the job done. Praise God for that. 

But the priesthood is in a state of crisis, a claim buttressed by extensive data and evidence on the spiritual, mental, physical, and ministerial welfare of our priests. So grave is this problem that many are wondering why so many men are leaving the priesthood. 

As a Church, we really need to thoroughly, prayerfully, and systematically address this issue—because as Vatican II’s Decree on Priestly Training Optatam Totius says, “The desired renewal of the whole Church depends to a great extent on the ministry of its priests.” We’re all talking about evangelization, but it seems to me that we are neglecting how a strong and holy presbyterate is a core driver of the renewal that we desire. Might the renewal of the priesthood be the quickest way to bring about a renewal in the Church? 

It’s important to say again that analyzing the crisis in the priesthood must be without casting blame (i.e., it’s the bishops’ fault, it’s the priests’ fault, it’s the broken families’ fault, etc.) and without defensiveness. That’s all just super unhelpful and counterproductive to being solution-focused. 

With that said, why is there a crisis in the priesthood? 

This hasn’t happened by chance. Every system is perfectly designed to get the results that it gets. So the “results” we’re getting—a crisis in the priesthood—are the result of the current Church system.  

What is that system? 

I’ve been really blessed to be able to work with priests across the country, and, in my experience, the system looks something like this. 

Obviously, it starts long before day one of priestly ministry. It starts in seminary formation. 

Certainly, seminaries have come a long way. But it still appears that the seminary system is fundamentally designed to produce smart priests rather than priests who are psychologically sturdy, emotionally healthy, spiritually alive, and pastorally mature spiritual fathers. 

This is not an indictment of strong intellectual formation, but we know from research that the higher someone’s IQ, the more important emotional and social competence training becomes. Given that priests are generally men of high IQ, the need for training in emotional and social competence becomes critical. 

After ordination, we’re not seeing priests struggle intellectually (there are no more heretics); we’re seeing priests struggle mightily with the psychological skills that one needs to navigate ministry and be psychologically sturdy—assertiveness, emotional management, decision-making, stress regulation, optimism, flexibility, etc. 

This has spiritual effects, too. Since grace builds upon nature as a vine grows upon a lattice, this lack of human formation affects the priest’s spiritual life and relationship with God. We are integrated persons: mind, body, and spirit. 

The seminary system also seems to be inadvertently institutionalizing seminarians. What I mean by that is that the level of support the seminary provides seminarians, while understandable, has the adverse effect of teaching seminarians to rely on the Church system rather than on God and their own abilities. That’s institutionalization. Personal resilience is not being developed due to a sort of system-wide “helicopter parenting.” So when the young priest enters the priesthood and all those institutional supports are immediately removed, he’s left in a quasi-crisis on the road to full-blown crisis. 

The lack of intentional training in the skills needed for psychospiritual sturdiness, along with a form of institutionalization, can and does result in a newly minted young priest who has spent eight years in formation feeling totally unprepared and inadequate for the realities of modern priesthood.

At this point, the newly ordained priest is turned over to the care of the diocese. How does that system work? 

In most dioceses, because the number of parishes hasn’t been adequately reduced, the only option is to assign the priest to a parish that can afford him. Sometimes that works because that parish also happens to have a great pastor; but other times, when the first pastor and parish are incapable of mentoring a young priest, it turns into a nightmare. The young priest is baptized into a type of ministry characterized by cynicism and mediocrity. He’s trained to think that the actual model of diocesan priesthood is about being an operations and activities director. 

But how about the priesthood modeled by St. John Vianney? The fatherhood model characterized by radical self-sacrifice for the spiritual welfare of those entrusted to me that I learned about in the seminary? No, curb your enthusiasm, kid; the priesthood is really about managing buildings, not rocking the ship, being a cog in the machine, keeping the diocese happy, and then being reassigned and doing it all over again. 

Speaking of being reassigned—once again, because there are too many parishes and no other apparent options—this young priest, already sufficiently disillusioned and lonely, is reassigned to a leadership role. In that leadership role, he quickly comes face-to-face with a parish culture where everyone has learned to do things themselves, perhaps because priests transfer in and out so often or because the previous pastor (to be as charitable as possible) took a laissez-faire leadership approach. This newly cemented territorialism (which emerged as a sort of organizational “survival” mechanism) among staff, volunteers, and parishioners further drives him into despair. The priest’s meaningful attempts at change and innovation are met with strong criticism—and, unfortunately, he’s never learned to manage criticism without experiencing it as a debilitating referendum on his worth as a person and as a priest. 

While all this is happening, the priest “submarines” under detection—just like he did in the seminary—because there is so much ecclesial distrust that he thinks asking for help is the end of his priesthood or, at a minimum, carries the social cost of others knowing that he’s not perfect. In his mind, those costs are too great. He needs to figure it out himself; after all, “my bishop doesn’t actually care about me anyway.” 

Since his struggles haven’t been addressed early enough, this young priest now experiences a mental health crisis, engagement in sinful escapism behavior, or some combination of both. Sadly, he begins questioning his vocation, looking over his shoulder at his secular friends with families and careers and wondering: Did I make the right choice? 

This is how it happens. 

While I know I’ve gotten a bit into the weeds here, in my experience, young priests all over the country have experienced a Church system that looks like this. 

Every system is perfectly designed to get the results that it gets. We’re getting the results that our system is designed to produce. We should stop being surprised. 

So, what’s the solution? 

Before getting into that, one disclaimer is in order. This analysis of the Church system is not a reason for priests to feel like victims. That’s a good way to absolve oneself from personal responsibility. In reality, despite organizational shortcomings, priests are still called to do the best they can in a given context through prayer, hard work, and the pursuit of ministerial excellence, no matter the cost or environment. Period. 

In reality, a successful priest occurs at the intersection of organizational support and individual effort. Both are required. 

With that in mind, the solution sounds like this: form the man, reform the system. 

Forming the man means focusing all efforts on helping priests develop as fathers who are psychologically sturdy, emotionally healthy, spiritually alive, and pastorally mature—thinkers with a heart, as it were. 

Forming the man means focusing all efforts on helping priests develop as fathers who are psychologically sturdy, emotionally healthy, spiritually alive, and pastorally mature…Tweet This

Reforming the system starts by decision-makers in the Church asking themselves one question: How do we create the internal and external conditions that priests need to perform at their best? The answer to this question literally has salvific consequences and will likely require a massive conversion at the institutional level.

Institutional conversion? Yes, institutional conversion. When institutional conversion meets personal conversion, we’ll turn the crisis in the priesthood around. 

One healthy and holy priest changes everything. Helping priests to be all that they can be is the greatest evangelization initiative. St. John Vianney took a dying parish and turned it into one overflowing with tens of thousands of parishioners. That’s the power of the priesthood. Thank God for the gift of the priesthood. 

As an organization, we just have to ask ourselves: Are we setting up conditions that make that reality easier or harder to attain?