Catholic priest numbers set to fall in wake of scandal
Freiburg, Germany – A string of sex abuse scandals in the German Catholic church has led to a dramatic fall in the number of young men wanting to become priests, Germany’s top Catholic bishop [Archbishop of Freiburg Robert Zollitsch] said Sunday.
… ’We are living through a great trauma, indeed the deepest crisis of the Catholic church in Germany since 1945,’ Zollitsch said.
Sexual abuse scandals have rocked the church in Germany since January, when dozens of cases emerged involving sexual molestation of minors by priests and other clergy over a period of 50 years at church-run schools.
Zollitsch said that new applications to join the priesthood across had fallen to 150 this year, a record low.
Ignoring the wider systemic concerns which implicate the whole Vatican hierarchy in the abuse crisis, Zollitsch describes the cause of the crisis as “The sinful and abhorrent behaviour of a few priests”. This is despite himself being under investigation earlier in the year, following accusations that in his own diocese he had protected a priest accused of abusing children.
I understand the number of catholic vocations (priests and nuns) has been declining for the last 25 years. The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University (USA) reported that from 1970 to 1995, seminary enrollment in the United States alone dropped by half, and the main reason for this continued decline is the requirement for celibacy.
So let’s stop this spin rubbish that the cause of the crisis is “The sinful and abhorrent behaviour of a few priests”. While it certainly hasn’t helped, the sex abuse scandal is a consequence of existing problems inherent in the Church, not a cause of it.