Priorities

This past winter, about a month apart, I saw death notices for two religious sisters, one a Dominican from the Sinsinawa convent, and the other a Benedictine based at Holy Wisdom Monastery. Besides that both were near the same age and committed themselves to religious life, I quickly noticed they had one other thing in common. Both funerals were at Holy Wisdom Monastery which is slightly north of Madison, WI. Each of the funeral services were led by a female, and with communion using gluten free hosts. Needless to say they did not have a Catholic funeral mass. At least for the Benedictine it is not like a priest was not available, as one priest played the music, and another gave the homily. Instead they went with a female who preaches at Holy Wisdom which was started by the Benedictine sisters. At one point Holy Wisdom was under a different name until then Bishop Robert Morlino helped encourage the split and asked them to give up the tabernacle that had been housed at the location, at that point they changed the name. I bring this up  as it shows the priority for the Catholic Church and its affect on even religious sisters.

1 July 2026 SSPX recently consecrated bishops (white)
Google images

Unfortunately, as many in the Amazon can attest, the chief priority of the church is not the resurrection and saving grace of Jesus, or service to the faithful, but rather a single all-male clergy. Persons in the Amazon can go over a year without a priest showing up. So much for the church serving those at the margins. At the same time, in the United States, we see many foreign priests such that we have become a mission area. The priests from India or Africa or wherever, are favored by some of their home territories because the American diocese pays their diocese for their services, a rent-a-priest program. The problem is many of the foreign priests are hard to understand, so it further drives away people. Why attend mass when you cannot understand the celebrant, whether it highly accented English, Latin, or Bengali. According to EWTN in the 1990's over 80% of Brazilians were Catholic, and it is now down to 52%...and falling. It does not take a genius to figure out why. In the meantime, Evangelicals are the recipients of the Catholic loss. Given the move to Evangelicals, it is not that the church is not sufficiently traditional, as many rad-trads say, but it is failing to have boots on the ground, and clergy rooted in the community. 

Diocese of Detroit, symbolic of decline in the Catholic Church
Ryan Burge is a professor at Washington University
L to R: Baptisms, First Communion, Confirmation, Marriages Funerals

People are voting with their feet and leaving, and the church lets its institutional sclerosis and its conservative nature keep it down. Even the firmest trads, SSPX, recently split with tradition by not getting papal approval for consecration of new bishops. Recently, some news outlets, pointed to recent high number of converts, but the incoming does not offset those who leave, and the number is actually lower than pre-Covid years. Yet, the church will take it as a win. Mass attendance is at 28%, much less than most other faiths. One wonders if Benedict's change to the mass also led to disaffection. If it is the one true church, in trad minds, why is it loosing so many people? Over the centuries this idea of one true church has led to a significant arrogance that has become embodied in the institution. When my grandfather used to say "The walls of hell are lined with the souls of priests!" it was not the abuse crisis, but the arrogance priests exhibited, clericalism. Here is a link to an article on the disconnect in the Church. While the data is almost ten years old, it shows the clear disconnect between the rad trads who demand purity and compliance, compared to the parishioners. This is part of the reason, I believe, so many have left or are leaving. Yet, even the rad trads, as pointed out in a prior post lose themselves, lace only goes so far in binding rad trad clerics to the faith. When Pope Francis proclaimed Todos, todos, todos, he was recognizing that people can disagree with church teaching and still be Catholic, to him it was a matter of accompaniment and not putting people down. This is different from John Paul II and Benedict XVI who both seemed to demand strict obedience. Even Poland is starting to go the way of Ireland. The bible may say, regarding Christ's church, that "the gates of hell shall not prevail against it," but that does not say anything about the folly and sins of men.

Sadly, the increasing number of young rad-trad priests think their main activity is to wear funny hats and dress in long black cassocks, rather than provide service to their parishioners. I know of one rad-trad, who no longer identifies as a priest, but when pastor of a parish got rid of its 24 hour hotline for its congregants. If you needed anointing of the sick, or confession, you may be dead by the time you get it. Unfortunately, this is becoming more the rule than the exception with the Morlino priests. In less than two decades we will only have Morlino priests and the church will increasingly be smaller and more doctrinaire focused on Latin, funny hats and long cassocks rather than people and God. The "gift" of Robert Morlino keeps on giving. Hence, rather than accompanying congregants on a spiritual journey, they think of themselves. 

The problem is the priests then complain about how few attend mass, but yet many clergy fail to accompany parishioners. They complain even more about the lack of giving, but yet they preach exclusion and have a mass more like SSPX than Vatican II. They do not like the effects of their preaching and actions, yet they still do it. The actions of the local bishop has also driven congregants away. The Church is in a perfect storm when you add in its clericalism, and what that has led to in the church. It is now getting worse as many diocese close churches, consolidate, and cut back on masses because of the priest shortage. Figures show when this occurs 20% of the congregations are lost. Yet, they keep doing it. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, and that is where the church finds itself.

So much focus of the church over the past few decades has been on trying to keep the conservative, Holocaust denying SSPX in the fold. So much so that leaders have been blind to the other end. It is a true misreading by the church when two religious sisters do not have a Catholic funeral mass. The church not only cannot preach to a choir which has dispersed, as at St Maria Goretti, and Christ the King, but it has failed to keep its own religious properly in communion. It is not like these two religious sisters up and got married, they still lived within their respective religious communities. The conservative nature of the church, in trying to patch things up for so long with SSPX, failed to recognize the crumbling foundation, leaky roof, and all that entails on the other end of the divide.

Ryan Burge

The injustice is even greater for the persons in the Amazon and other regions at the periphery who desire to better practice their faith, but lack clerics to attend to their needs. It is not like the issue is not known, the Synod on the Amazon brought the issue of lack of clergy for many communities to the forefront. It seems to me the Church made a pact with people when it baptized them, and now it throws them to the side and fails to live up to its end of the bargain because of the single, all-male priesthood. Poor John Paul NO, in his rush to maintain male clericalism, he used historic arguments that make little sense. After all, the first person to encounter the risen Christ was not male, but Mary Magdalene (John 20:11-18).

Yet, even John Paul apparently did not say no to female deacons, which existed in the early church, but no longer exist due to patriarchy and clericalism. Pope Francis got some things right, but choose not to go too far, perhaps a concern with what Cardinals Burke and Mueller would say. When the US bishops visited the Vatican on their ad limina visits a few months after the Amazon synod, it was not the issue of declining priests or drop in attendance that they wanted to broach with the Vatican, but to make sure the Pope (Francis) would not think of allowing ordination of married men, or allow female deacons, two issues that synod document touched on. The final no action was a win for clericalism and patriarchy. One would think the rad-trads would embrace female deacons, since they were active in the early church, but they do not. Rather, they look to Pius X and the 19th century as the "highwater" mark, not the first centuries of Christianity. Even with this, the church still studies the matter and the recent study committee document (2025) was laughable for its incomplete and poor treatment of the issue.

To help with the lack of clergy one would think deacons could become more common. However, Bishop Morlino forbad any new deacons. I have a man in my book club who had wished to become a deacon  when Morlino was a bishop, but Morlino said no. Fast forward to present time, and another member of my book club noted he had received a letter from the diocese asking him to consider becoming a deacon. Apparently the letter was sent to a certain demographic of males, as the one who earlier had desired and is retiring this year, did not get a letter. So, we go from the short-sighted Morlino to present time when they are now wanting more deacons. Do they finally realize the negative effects of the lack of clergy? They realize the clergy shortage is real, and perhaps they realize that the Morlino priests really do not wish to work all that hard. Why do Morlino priests dislike work? It could be thta they are too busy tidying up their lace, and dusting their beanies. 

Hence, the Catholic Church is left with people having been praying for the past 50 or more years for more priests and the situation has not improved. It reminds me of the joke...

A devout person refuses evacuation during a flood. They stubbornly decline a rowboat and a motorboat, insisting God will save them. Even when a helicopter arrives, when they are perched on the roof of the house, they refuse the rope. Eventually, the person drowns. They meet God, and ask why He didn't intervene, to which God replies, "I sent you two boats and a helicopter, what more did you expect?

Clearly, in the above joke, the Catholic Church is the devout person. Maybe God is telling the Church that it has failed to properly use all its human resources, In that sense, in holding to a single, all-male clergy the church shows that its priority is not attending to the Gospel or the bringing people to encounter Jesus, but rather its priority is the single all-male priesthood to which all else in the church is subservient. 

Those two religious sisters continued to live with their religious communities, showing the diversity of thought in the church. But, community, long a standard of the faith is being lost and its decline is increasing as parishes are closed, or consolidated. It may be an urban legend, that Pope Benedict XVI desired a smaller more doctrinaire church, but that is coming true. The church will look much different in a couple generations, as more churches close due to declining attendance, and fewer priests. The priority of the church for a single all-male clergy feeds on itself and this priority is what has led to realignment, closures and consolidations. The church is reducing its population to align with its decreasing number of clergy. It is a matter of priorities, and the message of Gospel is second to the single all-male clergy.