Do you think they'll be successful?
Quote:Initiative aims to boost Catholic priest vocations by shifting narrative on the priesthood
“By sharing stories of priestly heroism and compassion, we hope to inspire young men to recognize the priesthood as a profound and fulfilling vocation,” IIC President John M. Haas said in a statement.
An IIC news release notes that the number of active Catholic priests globally has dropped from about 60,000 to only 35,000 from 1970 to 2020, even though the number of Catholics has risen by 20 million people within that time frame.
“In the next 10 years, 20 years, we’re going to see a dramatic dropoff of priests who are able to remain active,” he said.
Our culture “is becoming more secular, just overall,” he noted, but the declining trend in priests is more severe.
“It’s not a 1:1 ratio that would explain the priesthood,” Haas said. He argued there is a negative perception about the priesthood among many young people rooted in Church scandals but that those scandals reflect a “very small group of people — bad actors.”
Haas added that a major part of the initiative is to “start changing perception” because there are “so many good priests doing noble, heroic … things.”
“We’re sharing all kinds of stories, but one of the things we want to make sure we’re doing is there’s going to be a wide representation,” he added.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/...priesthood
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
