By Tim Rohr
10/08/2000
I was take aback to learn recently from a priest friend that many priests have to plan for their own retirement and even concern themselves with finding a place to live in their old age. He also told me that in his diocese a letter was recently issued informing priests that if they needed to go into a nursing home that the diocese would not be financially able to provide for their care. He said he knew of two elderly priests from his diocese who have already been turned over to state-run nursing homes.
I have also been getting more and more mail from religious communities soliciting funds so that they can take care of their elderly. There’s usually a picture of some 80 year-old nun and a text that reads something to the effect of “Dear Sr. Mary Eusebius, who gave so many years of her life to her Church, now is in need of your help, etc....”, and it goes on to spell out the financial woes of the community and its inability to take care of its aging Sisters usually due to the lack of younger members who in the past were able to generate income for the religious community.
The picture of Sr. Mary Eusebius, elderly priests in wheelchairs wasting away in state-run nursing homes, and retired priests looking for a place to live...Well, pardon my naiveté but I guess I’m still living in the days of “The Bells of St. Mary’s”. I had always assumed that elderly priests and nuns spent their waning years in a rectory or convent, respected, loved, cared for, and still of much assistance as heath permitted. Apparently that picture has gone the way of Gregorian chant.
I’m sure the roots of this problem are all very complex, but it can be compared to the social security crisis our country is soon doomed to face. Beginning in the 60’s, with the new found personal and sexual freedoms, baby-boom kids began having smaller families (a nice way of saying “using birth-control”). Anyone familiar with the economics of social security will know that because of this there will be fewer people to pay into the system when baby-boomers reach retirement age, which is just beginning to happen. The system is doomed to crash unless something radical is done.
Many religious communities have followed the same form of economic suicide when, also in the 60’s, they admitted new freedoms and attitudes that almost immediately led to a catastrophic decline in vocations. And since the “social security” of a religious community is spelled “v-o-c-a-t-i-o-n-s”, aging priests and nuns are now forced to face an economic future that they are ill prepared for. The much hoped for “springtime” of the Church, from a pure economic point of view, has turned into an early winter.
In last week’s Pacific Voice, columnist, Fr. Eugene Hemrick, in an article about the vocations crisis asks: “Why did we have so many vocations at one time and then suddenly see such a dramatic change?” He goes on to say that he has analyzed the vocations crisis for a quarter of century and at times was tempted to give up and leave its solution to someone else. Another priest, a personal friend, and one who confesses to playing “ a small part” in the liturgical renewal of the last 30 years, also confesses to being “amazed” at the dismal statistics which I highlighted in my last week’s column “A Look at the Numbers”.
Why are we so bewildered? How true it is that we look everywhere but at ourselves when we have a problem. For me, it’s just not that hard to figure out. No need for the Continental Congress on Vocations that Fr. H. is all excited about, no need for special seminars and studies. Simple surveys and polls have already shown us over and over almost the exact historical moment when vocations took a U-turn. And no, it’s not Vatican II. It’s what was done in the name of Vatican II that was never called for. And that particular moment can be traced back to even before the Council closed.
This was the point of my last week’s article. I am not advocating a return to “pre-Vatican II”. I am advocating a return TO (Bold, Underlined, Italics!) Vatican II. The Council was infallible. That which has often been done in its name is not. Why can we not hear what the Holy Spirit is shouting so loudly through the language of cold, hard, irrefutable, and catastrophic numbers?
What’s ironic is that most of the religious and clergy who are most likely to suffer materially from this dearth of vocations are of the same generation of those who set in motion, however well-intentioned, those events and attitudes that have now led to this same dearth. Of course they shouldn’t feel alone. There will be many lonely, old, 2.1 children-Baby Boomers in the same nursing homes. Fr. Hemrick was right. “We need an awakening.”