(ZENIT News / New York, 29.07.2024).- Priests who describe themselves as progressive in theological ideas are almost irrelevant in number, if compared with those inclined to the official doctrine of the Church. According to a survey, 3,500 priests of the United States prefer orthodoxy.
Michael Sean Winters, former seminarian and columnist of the National Catholic Reporter, considers himself a progressive Catholic and states that “there are fewer liberals with numerous families in the churches.” Moreover, parents with more children generally rejoice at new vocations arising in their families.
In November 2023, The Catholic Project published the conclusions of a national study of Catholic priests carried out with the Catholic University of America, which interviewed 10,000 priests about priests’ tendency and their positions according to age.
The study showed “a significant division between the political and theological identification of older priests and the younger.
The data points out that “the portion of new priests that see themselves as politically ‘liberals’ or theologically ‘progressives’ is constantly decreasing and has practically disappeared.” More than half of those ordained since 2010 were inclined to orthodoxy and none of those ordained since 2020 defined themselves as “very progressive,” seeing themselves politically as “moderates or conservatives.” The majority of the elderly priests regarded themselves as “politically liberal” and “theologically progressive.
The analysis of Michael Sean Winters, specialized in religious information, stresses: “The Catholic liberal priest in the United States coulc be extinguished in the near future.” The survey’s data states that the progressives, in their day 68% of the ordained, hardly represent 1% today. The reflection on the Report opines that Vatican Council II and the 2002 sexual abuses crisis marked the change in tendency.
Ruth Graham wrote in The New York Times that “today’s young priests don’t see themselves as a conservative insurgency, but as part of a new generation that embraces the teachings of the Church instead of robbing them of importance, in what they see as a mistaken search for an evangelization of great reach.”
The priests and authorities interviewed by Ruth Graham last July 10, corroborated the data of the November Report. Brad Vermurlen, Sociology Professor at the University of Saint Thomas in Houston, says that those ordained since 2010 “are clearly the most conservative seen in a long time.” And that, since 1980, each generation is more conservative than the previous one.
He notes that the acceptance of “secularism” in the Church also even “softened the expectations” on the ordination of women, premarital cohabitation and appropriate dress for Mass, “in an attempt to make the Church seem more welcoming and that her teachings be easier to accept. Many priests of the 1970s and 1980s looked at the world and said: “The world is changing and we too need to change.” The vision didn’t work: there was a generalized loss of faithful and low practice of the faith.
The numerous conversions during this year in the United States are attributed to young priests who are “faithful, energetic and willing to do anything,” said Jason Whitehead, Director of Evangelization and Catechesis in the diocese of Fort Worth.
A survey of the Episcopal Conference of the United States, published on April 15, reported that half of the 400 seminarians about to be ordained this year are aged around 30, older than in the past.
According to Whitehead, orthodoxy and fidelity to the Gospel result in more converts. He, himself, a convert and former Baptist, recalls his preparation to enter the Catholic Church, where he witnessed many abandoning the preparation “because they were not given the truth of the Gospel and the teachings of the Church.”
