Neo-Scholastic literature
One of the major issues of the recent Amazon Synod was the shortage of clergy in the Amazon region. I wrote a post on how this should be handled, but the final document didn’t include any of the stuff that I was proposing. It’s a bit of a shame really. However, this week I was browsing the website for my diocese and saw some alarming stuff. I want to take this information and build on my previous priesthood shortage solutions.
Three priests in my diocese are celebrating 50 years of priesthood. Four are celebrating 25 years of priesthood. I want to offer my congrats to all of these men. Out of these seven priests, one of them was born in Canada, and that is our bishop emeritus. The other two celebrating 50 years are from Belgium and Vietnam.
Out of the four celebrating 25 years of priesthood, there are zero Canadians. Two are from Poland, one is from India and the last one is from the Philippines. English speaking Canada isn’t exactly a hotbed for Catholicism despite being 20-25% of the population, similar to America.
I suppose that we have this lack of native clergy in common with the Amazon region. The big difference is that many people want to live in Canada. Not many people want to go to the Amazon region. Sadly I don’t know how long Canada’s prosperity will last with Trudeau in power. It didn’t take Venezuela a long time to go from a booming country to a socialist nightmare.
The sad fact of the matter is, Canada cannot produce its own priests. We’re reliant on foreign clergy to staff our churches. Growing up I remember priests from Nigeria, Honduras, Poland, and other places. I had a few Canadian priests but not many.
Even now, the two priests that administer my parish are from Poland and America. Some countries can simply produce vocations while others can’t. This issue is only going to become more and more of a problem in the future. Not to mention many countries are becoming more and more hostile to Christianity as Western culture spreads to the ends of the Earth.
How does one make the priesthood more attractive? That’s the question that we need to be asking. The simple solution is to change the theology. Between the 1940’s and 1960’s, the Nouvelle Theologie crept into Catholicism. This movement claimed to replace Neo-Scholasticim promoted by figures sure a Fr. Reginal Garrigou Lagrange.
Nouvelle Theologie claimed to go back to the sources such as the early church. This was a smokescreen. It was done to destroy scholasticism and replace it with modernism. Pope Leo XIII brought scholasticism back in 1879 and it experienced a revival in the form of Neo-Scholasticism.
If the Pope wants to bring back vocations he has to change the direction of their education. A scholastic priest would also strengthen the laity. No one loses. This will greatly help the Amazon region, Canada, and many parts of the globe that are short on priests.
I also want to thank all of the foreign priests who serve in my country and abroad. Thank you for helping those in need.
To all of my Catholic readers I have a question. What country are you from and are most of your priests native or foreign?
God bless.
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