Rich Leonardi posts that the Archdiocese of Atlanta is experiencing a vocations boom. They currently have "more than 50" seminarians in training, with 262 priests and 95 parishes in the diocese. Since I spend my days creating and comparing metrics, this seemed like a great opportunity to run some numbers.
Atlanta Archdiocese (assuming 50 seminarians):
seminarian to parish: 0.526316
seminarian to priest: 0.19084
priest to parish: 2.757895
And, of course, that got me curious to look at our own Diocese of Austin. We have forty seminarians. There are also 200 priests and 125 parishes.
So the Austin Diocese metrics are:
seminarian to parish: 0.32
seminarian to priest: 0.2
priest to parish: 1.6
Monasticism is a beautiful thing. I think that with the proliferation of sexual dangers, both physical and emotional, more people are looking to the monastic life to find balance.
ReplyDeleteAs an Orthodox, our priests are mostly married. It's a rare treat to meet a monk-priest. They are very different and wonderful to speak with.