Curmudgeon presumes to instruct Holy Mother Church on how to recruit more priests: Part IV of a series

For Part I of the series, click here. Click here for Part II, and here for Part III.

The accompanying church photo here was not randomly selected.

It is the Most Holy Trinity Catholic Chapel at West Point, on the grounds of the United States Military Academy.

And it is West Point that provides the template for my plan for the Catholic Church to eliminate the priest shortage in America.

In Part I of this series, discussing the principle of Apostolic Succession, I mentioned that a priest, good or bad, remains a priest unless or until he is laicized -- which I likened to being "kicked out." And that's true -- laicization is the way by which the Church can rid itself of problematic priests.

But that's incomplete: A priest can ask to be released from his vows -- laicized -- for any number of reasons. We had a couple in the parish, some years ago; he had been a priest; she had been a nun; they met and fell in love. They decided that their ultimate vocation was matrimonial, not clerical, and both sought, and received, release from their vows. They remained Catholics in good standing. They wed, had children, and lived long and exemplary lives. It happens. It happened a lot in the turmoil following Vatican II, but it still happens even today.

The committment to the priesthood is expected to be lifelong, and it usually is. In that sense, the priesthood is a lot like marriage: It's expected to be a lifelong committment, but, just as you don't stand at the altar reciting your vows envisioning your spouse 50 years older, you don't prostrate yourself at the feet of the bishop imagining yourself entering the old priests' home. No: Marriage is about committment today and tomorrow: This is the person I want to build a life with today, and, feeling as I do, I can't imagine that I would change my mind tomorrow. And, if you're lucky, and healthy, you wind up stacking up so many todays and tomorrows that your spouse -- and you yourself -- are 50 years older. But sometimes things don't work out... and even though Jesus was clear that marriage is for life, the church recognizes that, in some circumstances, the marriage has failed. The Church can annul a marriage.

While Jesus expressly said that marriage was for life, He did not say that ordination was for life, although, obviously, I won't argue that this has long been the expectation. But Jesus gave his Apostles the express power to bind and loose and to transmit the powers He gave to others. So I would not expect or want anyone to enter into the priesthood with the idea of merely doing a term of years and then getting out -- but the Church has recognized there are times when a priest should be returned to lay status. It may be because of scandal or fault, but it may be because the priest has recognized his true vocation lies elsewhere.

Which brings us back to West Point.

West Point graduates somewhere around 1,000 to 1,100 new second lieutenants every year. All are obliged to serve for five years. Somehwere around 50 to 60% of these will remain in the Army after the five year committment is up. But more will drop out along the way -- many at the 20-year mark -- so that only 10 to 15% of a typical cadet class will remain in the Army for 30 years or more.

The Army is happy with this arrangement, of course: It needs lots of second lieutenants -- but not so many colonels or generals.

Now, consider how this might work for the Church: Suppose the Church undertook to pay for a college education for persons interested in the priesthood. Men would take a degree in a normal academic subject, just as they typically do now (Pope Leo's undergraduate degree, for example, was in math), and spend summers and perhaps a fifth year in formation for the priesthood. After ordination, all priests would be expected to serve a minimum of five years in the priesthood.

Surely young men would line up in droves for this opportunity: The cost of higher education is astonishingly high, and going up every year, always outpacing inflation. So the Church should have the opportunity to attract as many new priests as it wants, or can handle.

This would have to be honorable service. A West Point cadet who runs seriously afoul of the Honor Code, or who refuses commission following graduation, or who refuses to honor his or her five-year service committment, is legally required to repay the government for tuition and benefits. It would be the same for men studying for the priesthood: No girls. Certainly no boys. No hanky panky of any kind. Any violation would be met with expulsion... and a very large reimbursement bill. Whatever sins of omission or commission that led to the expulsion might, potentially, be forgiven, but the bill would have to be paid.

At the end of his first five years of service, a man could ask to be returned to lay status. He'd be light years ahead of many of his peers: No student debt. Real job experience. Such men might be looked to as the mainstays of their parishes -- the likely pillars of the parish school boards or finance councils or Holy Name societies. Meanwhile, the Church would flourish with three or four priests in each parish -- mostly vigorous young men -- who could get up early enough for 6:30 daily Masses and still make parish calls and hospital visits, and sit in on committee meetings, and help plan the fundraisers, and pray with the Pro Life Committee at the abortion clinic, or coach or teach (or at least substitute teach) at the parish school. Some men would find, after stacking up five years of todays and tomorrows, that they have a call to continue in this work; others would find that their futures would lie away from the Rectory. But the priests who remain would potentially have classmates -- friends -- in any assignment, wherever they are sent.

Of course, some will get nervous about bringing lots of young men into the priesthood: What about the danger of child sexual abuse?

The truth is that, as long as there are children, there will be persons who will try and exploit them. This is a problem not just for the Church, but for our society as a whole. But there would be a number of deterrents with the Church's West Point plan. One would be structural: The molester, if found out before fulfilling his service committment, would be on the hook for full tuition and costs -- in addition, of course, to civil and criminal liability. But there is also safety in numbers: Multiple men in the Rectory -- many priests -- will allow for two or more priests to be present at any event with children. And the Church has learned a lot in the last quarter century, since the Dallas Charter. But the lesson can be summarized very succinctly: Nobody should want to be alone with a child who is not that person's own -- and any person who does want to be alone with someone else's child should never be left alone with a child.

I am sure there would be issues of canon law that would have to be addressed to make this happen. I am not a canonist, but Pope Leo is. He knows first hand the issues -- and the evils -- that arise from a shortage of priests. Even assuming the good faith of all concerned, we are too often putting men who should never be pastors into administrative roles for which they are ill-equipped. They may have other talents that could make them good priests, but these never come to the fore where they are shoved into jobs they can't handle. Deepening the talent pool will allow these men to flourish according to their gifts and strengthen the Church as a whole.

Now I know some of you started in on this essay with the question, why not just ordain women? That would double the available pool of priests without any West Point plan. Actually, if you are one of these persons, and you've read this far, I thank you. In real life, when I have proposed this plan in conversations with friends, many turn off instantly: Women must be ordained first before you do try anything else, they say.

I will tell you now what I have told people in real life: I don't know why the Church refuses to consider women's ordination. I'm just a dumb guy in the pews. The first witness to Jesus' Resurrection was a woman. Surely many of the Church's greatest saints are women. Many were martyred for spreading the Faith. And you don't have Constantine (and the Council of Nicea in 325) without St. Helena; you don't have St. Augustine without St. Monica. But I know implacable opposition when I see and hear it, and that's what I see and hear from the Church on the question of women's ordination. Maybe someday I will understand why the Church takes this position, but right now it is enough that I know what the position is, and that there's no getting around it any time soon.

And... in the meantime... we must have more priests. This, I am sure, would help.

Curmudgeon presumes to instruct Holy Mother Church on Catholic schools: Part III of a series

For Part I, click here; for Part II, click here

The Catholic Church will survive all her current challenges, certainly.

We know this because we know that the Holy Spirit guides the Church... it's just that foolish humans seem determined to undermine the Holy Spirit at every turn.

Case in point: The Daily Herald's Eric Peterson reported yesterday that the Vatican's Dicastery for Culture and Education has rejected the last-ditch appeal from parents seeking to prevent the closure of St. Hubert's School in northwest suburban Hoffman Estates, Illinois.

Enrollment had dipped at St. Hubert's and the school's finances were precarious at best. Peterson's article noted that the pastor of the parish into which St. Hubert's was recently merged, Holy Archangels Parish, and the new parish finance council actually requested the closure, and Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich obliged. A coalition of school parents, opposed to the closure, hired a canon lawyer and appealed to the Vatican, looking to "present evidence documenting mismanagement of finances and poor decision-making by parish administrators leading to the closure request." They also hired a consultant, who came up with a plan to put the school back on a sound financial footing; according to Todd Fuerer's September 1 article on the CBS News website, the parents even came up with $282,000 to "help with operating expenses."

No, I don't know what happened to the money either.

Catholic grammar schools and high schools have been merging or closing, sometimes merging and then closing in the Chicago area, throughout my adult life. The unusual feature of the St. Hubert's case was the appeal to the Holy See. Usually, at least in my experience, Catholic school closure decisions are accepted, sometimes with sadness, sometimes with anger. When St. Thecla's School was closed (in conjunction with the merger of the parish church into two others), there was initially some hope that my own nearby parish school might gain a lot of former Thecla students. And we did get a few. But only a few. For the most part, from what I heard, most of the parents of St. Thecla's School students vowed to send their kids anywhere but another Catholic school. And I'll bet you that most of them are not contributing to the support of their merged parish church either.

St. Thecla's was not in financial distress. Though enrollment was borderline, the school was operating in the black. In that case it was the Archdiocese that coveted the prime real estate on which the school and church sat... and apparently continues to sit: Although the church building seems to have been sold (or at least rented out) to a Church-of-What's-Happening-Now sort of denomination, the school building... which was rumored to be sold to the Chicago Public Schools... seems to still be on the Cardinal's hands.

Not every school closing case is the same.

But the common element in all cases is money.

Even if there is no financial hanky panky, and even if the school does not sit on prime real estate, it costs a lot to run a Catholic school.

When I served on my parish school board, more than 30 years ago, salaries and benefits were 90% or more of our entire budget. Well, even way back when, we'd just about run out of nuns. Nuns weren't free labor, of course, but they were a lot less expensive than lay teachers. Even though lay teachers in the Chicago Catholic schools don't make nearly as much as their Chicago Public School counterparts. Long Suffering Spouse -- who began teaching at our parish school after I left the school board -- still doesn't make as much as a newly graduated CPS teacher. I am certain that salaries and benefits are easily 90% of a Catholic school's budget, even today.

When I started on the school board, the parish provided a subsidy to the parish school, to help keep tuition more manageable. One year the subsidy was on the order of $250,000. But the Archdiocese of Chicago put the kibosh on that practice. I suppose it would be uncharitable of me to suggest that the Archdiocese wanted more of that money Downtown... for itself... but, though I have labored mightily, I haven't been able to come up with a better explanation.

It also seems that the Archdiocese is -- if not actually determined to shut down Catholic schools entirely -- at best barely tolerant of their continued existence.

Where -- I sometimes wonder -- do they think the Catholics of tomorrow will come from?

Now, I suppose that the vast numbers of Muslim immigrants, in gratitude for the support and services provided by local Catholic charities, may choose to abandon Islam en masse and convert to Catholicism. A lot of the money that Catholic groups are putting into immigrant services comes from the American taxpayer, not from Catholics specifically, so that would be a total win-win for the Church: They could possibly gain huge numbers of converts while only spending OPM (Other People's Money). I suppose that could happen... but I sure wouldn't bet on it.

The Church needs Catholic schools.

I would add, as a patriot, that America needs Catholic schools: Catholic schools do a better job of educating kids than public schools -- if this isn't true everywhere in the nation, it is certainly true in our big cities. And America needs better educated citizens. Desperately.

So... my advice to the bishops is this: Recommit yourselves to Catholic education. Support it. Nuture it. Find ways not to close schools.

Also -- and I don't know if this is just a Chicago problem, or if this is nationwide -- but, in Chicago at least, stop looking at the public schools as a model to be emulated. I don't mean to be blunt about this, but (with the exception of a few selective enrollment schools) CPS sucks. We do more, with less, than public schools, and we could do better if we didn't try and ape the trends they follow. CPS should be studying our Catholic schools and trying to imitate our best practices. And, please, don't be embarrassed about teaching religion: Your future collections depend on the kids in your schools now. If you want them in the pews of your churches when they are grown, you better educate them in the Faith.

Finally, to the disappointed parents of St. Hubert's: Start your own school. The heck with the Cardinal. You obviously have resources. Use them for yourselves and your children, and I'll bet you have people lining up around the block to join you. Be unashamedly Catholic. Teach real history. Teach patriotism. Demand excellence... and maybe even a smattering of Latin and Greek. You've got a canonist on call; let the canonist guide you toward establishing an independent Catholic institution that will make you and your children proud... and which the Cardinal can't reach. Good luck.

Curmudgeon presumes to instruct Holy Mother Church on immigration: Part II of a series

For Part I, click here.

The painting is Giotto's The Flight Into Egypt.

The flight of the Holy Family to Egypt, in response to an angel's warning, saving the infant Jesus from King Herod's slaughter of all boys two-years of age or younger and born in Bethlehem, is told in the Gospel of Matthew. The story is frequently cited as an example of how Christians should respond to migrants in their midst, whether illegal immigrants, or foreigners let in by elites who claim to believe in open borders: We should be welcoming to all; after all, Jesus was Himself a (pick one or more) refugee, illegal immigrant, migrant....

Actually, the Holy Family going from Judea to Egypt would not be that much different from a modern family journeying from, say, Illinois to Iowa. Both Judea and Egypt were part of the greater Roman Empire. Judea still had some nominal independence when Jesus was born -- Herod was allowed to keep his client kingdom after Actium, even though he'd initially sided with Antony over Octavian; Herod was a pretty canny politician, but there was no question as to who was really in charge. At most, you could liken the Holy Family's journey to a jaunt from Detroit to Windsor: Until a few years ago, no passport was required, and persons could come and go across the national border freely, and as often as they wished -- like crossing from the Minnesota side of Sault Ste. Marie to the Ontario side, or going from the American to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. Moreover, the Holy Family was not moving to Egypt; they were just visiting... until Herod's murderous purge was completed. So Mary, Joseph, and the infant Jesus were not illegal immigrants or migrants.

And, besides, elites don't really believe in open borders: They are fine with foreigners busing tables at fancy restaurants, or cutting the elites' lawns or trimming their hedges, or picking their vegetables, or cleaning the hotel rooms when the elites choose to come out of their gated compounds and travel. But, if elites believe national borders to be fluid, they are typically much less tolerant about foreigners actually living with them. Maybe as a nanny... but never as a neighbor.

There are some who would call this hypocritical. But not me. This is not hypocrisy, it is simply cheapness on their part. Proponents of open borders are cheap. They don't want to pay minimum wages to Americans, so they support the import of immigrants who will work for less... and never complain... lest someone call ICE. Big corporations like open borders, too, and for the same reasons: The presence of illegal immigrant labor holds down wages. Bernie Sanders used to complain about this all the time... though, obviously, not any more.

There are, undoubtedly, prominent Catholic clerics who believe in open borders. There are Catholic religious orders devoted to assisting immigrants. There will always be immigrants... and travelers... and refugees and it is not wrong for the Church to want to assist people in need. It may be problematic for Catholic Charities to get huge sums from the government for tending to immigrants let in without screening, without vetting, without consideration for what large numbers of immigrants will do to the costs of housing and other basic services for preexisting Americans... but the Church is responding pastorally to a problem. The problem may be caused by dubious government policies... but the wisdom or stupidity of the policies that lead to the influx of immigrants is not for the Church to judge, nor should it prevent the Church from responding in charity to the plight of the immigrants.

But does that mean that the Church, institutionally, is in favor of open borders? I understand why some might see it that way....

The Church's response to mass immigration is further complicated by the presence of so many Muslims among the immigrants admitted. It may be worse in Europe, but the exponential increase in the American Muslim population in recent years cannot be denied. Dearborn, Michigan is often cited as a leading example of this phenomenon, and areas surrounding Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas, but Muslims are becoming predominant in southwest Cook County suburbs from Bridgeview to Oak Lawn at least, and in Oak Brook and surrounding towns in the western suburbs, and in Morton Grove in the northern suburbs. I see women in hajibs daily on my walks in northwest Chicago; I see women in chadors and even niqabs in my local Costco.

On X (the website formerly known as Twitter) you will see any number of posts suggesting that today's Muslims are attempting to accomplish, through migration and demographics, the conquest of Christendom that the Arabs and, later, the Turks could not achieve by force of arms. I do not here stake out my position; you, Dear Reader, must decide for yourself if this is just a paranoid conspiracy theory or if there might be something to it.

But, seek some data from your children or your grandchildren before you arrive at your own opinion: Which of them, if any, have heard of Charles Martel and the Battle of Tours in 732? Which of them can explain the Reconquista? Can any of them tell you about how Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent was turned back from the gates of Vienna in 1529... or how, on September 12, 1683, Polish King John III Sobieski led his Winged Hussars to lift the second siege of Vienna brought by the Ottoman Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha and 90,000 to 300,000 (depending on your source) of his best friends?

If you, Dear Reader, are a Millennial or Zoomer, did you know about any of this stuff? Our educational system has been in decline for decades.

Even when I was a boy -- and that was a long time ago now -- schools did not emphasize the fact that the Crusades in the Holy Land were launched with the intention of restoring Christian rule to those areas of Asia where Christianity first took root. Granted, there were other motives for the Crusades as well... wealth and fame and fortune and a handy way of pruning the family trees of noble families who might otherwise terrorize the peasants in their own hometowns... but those were just happy side effects, not the entire raison d'être. And now...? Who is even allowed to say anything positive about the Crusades? Sports teams have had to change their names, etc.

I would not be surprised if a great many priests and bishops, and a great many laypeople who work for Holy Mother Church, especially in the area of migrant resettlement, are just as ignorant of history as most people today. I suppose that's how you can get a Muslim prayer room in the Vatican and 25 or 30 mosques in Rome. By the way, don't try looking for a church in Mecca -- there isn't one.

But the Church itself remembers the Muslim threat. There is an institutional memory that may, one day, save Christianity.

Pope Leo XIV has held a number of titles in the course of his career, both in the Augustinian order, and in the episcopacy. His first assignment as bishop was as Apostolic Administrator of the Peruvian Diocese of Chiclayo. This was in 2014. Because of an agreement between the Vatican and Peru, the future pope could not become the actual Bishop of Chiclayo until he became a Peruvian citizen, which he promptly did. In the meantime, however, Robert Prevost, as he was then known, could not function as a bishop without being given a "titular see" over which (in theory... and only in theory) he would preside. This was the Diocese of Sufar, a North African diocese overrun by Arab invaders.

Bishop Robert Barron, who may be well known to Americans because of his media presence and service on the Trump Administration's Religious Liberty Commission, is now the Bishop of Winona-Rochester in Minnesota. However, Barron began his episcopal career as an auxilliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. That meant he had to be appointed to his own titular see, in his case, Macriana in Mauretania, another north African diocese abandoned to the onrushing Arab invaders.

We could go on... but, hopefully, you see the point already. There are more than 2,000 titular sees recognized by the Catholic Church, and nearly every bishop winds up being assigned to a titular see at some point in his life. The loss of these dioceses, mostly in Asia, including Asia Minor (or we know it today, Turkey), and North Africa, is a scar on the body of the Church. The Church knows the injuries it has suffered. Whatever soothing words its leaders may use in addressing migration generally and Muslim migration in particular, the Church cannot be blind to the institutional threat posed by uncontrolled Muslim migration.

I, Curmudgeon, just a dummy in the pews, implore my betters among the Church hierarchy: Listen to the institutional memory of the Church. Learn your history. And be guided accordingly.

You know, the other Bible story that some people throw out when people voice even the most modest reservations about Muslim population growth, is the story of the Good Samaritan. The Jews of Jesus' day despised Samaritans, but the parable leads even the most mutton-headed Pharisees to realize that the Good Samritan was a better neighbor to the wounded Jew by the side of the road than the other Jews who (for reasons 1st Century audiences would have understood as pretty sound) passed the poor man by.

The Samaritan interrupted his journey, and, from his own pocket, made arrangements to have the wounded man cared for. He promised to stop on his return journey to see if he needed to do more.

But you know what the Samritan did not do? He did not condition aid on the Jew's conversion. He accommodated to the customs of the country through which he traveled, rather than impose his customs on his neighbors. He assimilated.

Before you throw that story in someone's face who expresses concern with Muslim immigration, think about that. Please.

We are most certainly called to be good to our neighbors. But who is our neighbor? The one who wants to help, to get along, to accommodate, to assimilate? Or the one who would forcibly convert us, demand we observe their laws and customs, and abandon our own? Even the most mutton-headed Pharisee should be able to answer this one, too.