Mahony Says Shortage of Priests Is ‘Very Serious’

Warning that the Los Angeles archdiocese has a “very serious shortage of priests,” Cardinal Roger M. Mahony has urged the region’s estimated 4 million Catholics to shoulder more parish duties, welcome creative new deployment of priests and pray for more seminary graduates.

While not providing a comprehensive picture, Mahony gave frank examples of a clergy shortfall in an open letter to the nation’s most populous archdiocese, which embraces 287 parishes in Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.

The trend toward fewer priests in the parish is obvious to parishioners. “Perhaps there used to be two or three associate pastors and now there is one--or an associate pastor shared with another parish--or there is no associate,” the cardinal observed.

“Our priests are stretched to the breaking point, and we cannot ask them to do even more to fill these gaps,” Mahony said.

Nationwide Phenomenon

The priestly shortage is a long-term, nationwide phenomenon dating from the mid-1960s, when the U.S. social and sexual revolutions coincided with a Catholic Church undergoing changes initiated by the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65.

Many observers of the church say that a major factor in the diminishing clergy supply is the church’s requirement that priests not marry. That point was made in a letter commenting on Mahony’s appeal and published Friday in the Tidings, the archdiocesan weekly paper.

The absolute requirement of celibacy “is an injustice to the baptized faithful who need and have a right to [the] Eucharist and sacramental ministry on their journey to God,” said the letter-writer.

Whatever the cause, the problem is particularly acute in Los Angeles, where the Catholic population, pushed upward by immigration, both legal and illegal, is large and growing.

In some other parts of the country, Catholic dioceses have dealt with the shortage of priests by closing or merging parishes. But that is not being contemplated here, said Father Gregory Coiro, the archdiocesan spokesman. The dioceses that have closed parishes had mostly been experiencing declining Catholic populations. “That’s not the trend in the Los Angeles archdiocese,” Coiro said.

The 1998 Official Catholic Directory says that 3.7 million Catholics live in the Los Angeles archdiocese. Mahony puts the number still higher, at more than 4 million, because of many Latino Catholics believed to be unregistered on parish rolls. The national Catholic population is estimated at 61.5 million.

The growth in the region shows no sign of slowing. Last year, infant baptisms in the archdiocese totaled 101,126, the first time a U.S. diocese or archdiocese has topped 100,000 baptisms in one year. The figure is more than twice that of the Chicago or New York archdioceses.

The “sobering statistics” on the priest shortage include 17 pastors who are 70 or older and 15 priests who will fill pastor vacancies now or next summer but are unlikely to be replaced in their old jobs, Mahony said. Six clergy quit the priesthood in the past year--a statistic not usually publicized.

More than 60 parishes are served by religious orders such as Jesuit, Dominican and Franciscan priests, but “almost all of them face the same situation of older clergy and diminishing numbers,” Mahony said.

Though the Catholic Directory lists a total of 571 Los Angeles archdiocesan priests, that figure includes many men who are retired, teaching or filling other non-parish roles. For example, four or five priests serve on the marriage tribunal, which deals with annulment requests: “They live in parish rectories and help out with some Masses but otherwise don’t perform parish duties,” said Coiro.

As of last October, 412 archdiocesan priests were active in about 225 parishes not manned by religious order priests. At that time, an archdiocesan report presented to a Los Angeles priests assembly in Palm Springs predicted that the number of priests would be down to 400 by 2002. By then, the Catholic population will have risen to 5.5 million, the report projected.

It is unclear whether the archdiocese now believes that the forecast of 400 parish priests four years from now is too optimistic. The variables include transfers of priests from other dioceses and the reassignment of non-parish priests to parishes.

But it is known that relatively little relief is coming from the archdiocese’s seminary.

Although a large class of 14 priests was ordained this spring, Mahony said in his open letter this month that St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo “will have small ordination classes for the next few years.”

Msgr. Jeremiah McCarthy, rector of the seminary, said five new priests graduated in 1997, and five is the expected average for the next three years.

Among the steps recommended by Mahony for dealing with the shortage are “serving a cluster of parishes with a smaller group of priests” and asking laity to “step forward” to offer their administrative, counseling or spiritual talents. Each parish should establish a committee on the lookout for men who might be good candidates for the priesthood, he said.

Seven priests active in parish ministry have died in the last 15 months, he said. They included Father Lawrence Caruso, who, though 70 years old, served as pastor at St. Anthony’s Church in Long Beach and doubled as high school principal, and Father Francis Meskill, 63, pastor of the cathedral-like St. Basil Church in the Wilshire district.

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More People, Fewer Priests

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, by far the nation’s biggest in terms of parishioners, has a declining number of priests to serve them.

Membership: Officially, 3.71 million Catholics in Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, up from 3.67 million a year ago. But church officials estimate that the number is really more than 4 million and projected to reach 5.5 million by 2002, partly because of continued immigration.

Baptisms: Infant baptisms totaled 101,126 in 1997, the first time a U.S. diocese or archdiocese has topped 100,000 in one year.

Priests: As of 1997, a year ago, 412 archdiocesan priests were active in about 225 parishes that were not staffed by priests from a religious order. Last year, the archdiocese predicted that by 2002, only 400 priests would be active. A steady toll of deaths, retirements and resignations may have made that prediction too optimistic.

Ordinations: Although 14 new priests were ordained this year, seminary officials say that the next three graduating classes may only have four or five each.

Sources: 1998 Official Catholic Directory, St. John’s Seminary