Best of Jesse Romero: Catholic Truth Against Modern Confusion and Decline

This is specifically found in the change of the priest-to-faithful ratio over the last 54 years.

This ratio is as telling as it gets.

Obviously, the lower the priest-to-faithful ratio, the more the mystical body of Christ is served.

The larger the ratio, the harder it becomes for the faithful to go to mass, have their confession heard, or to have a meaningful contact with priests at all.

This is where you nail it here.

In 1970, the year that the Novus Ordo Mass was introduced, we had 59,192 USA priests and around 52 million Catholics, or about one priest to 881 Catholics.

Today, we have around 28,000 priests and 72 million Catholics, or about one priest to 2,571 lay Catholics.

So we have one-third of the priests that we had right after the unexpected innovation of the Novus Ordo Mass.

That's the mass of Pope Paul VI.

In the five-plus decades since 1970, the ratio of priests to faithful has never gotten better.

It keeps cratering.

Gee.

The Catholic Church is in dire straits.

In the 1950s, we had approximately 80% of our Catholics attending Sunday mass.

Wow, 80%.

In 1980, it was about 50%.

By 1990, it was around 40%, and by 2000 it was about 33%.

By 2019, it had fallen to 20%.

Currently, a diocese is fortunate to count 8% of those who identify as Catholics attending Sunday mass.

So I ask myself, Father Worth, I remember the, the, you know, a lot of the, the bishops, even some of the popes were talking about the new springtime of evangelization.

It doesn't look like a springtime.

No.

Comments so far on what you've written? Looks like a hard winter.

Y- yeah.

It looks like a demographic winter.

This is specifically found in the change of the priest-to-faithful ratio over the last 54 years.

This ratio is as telling as it gets.

Obviously, the lower the priest-to-faithful ratio, the more the mystical body of Christ is served.

The larger the ratio, the harder it becomes for the faithful to go to mass, have their confession heard, or to have a meaningful contact with priests at all.

This is where you nail it here.

In 1970, the year that the Novus Ordo Mass was introduced, we had 59,192 USA priests and around 52 million Catholics, or about one priest to 881 Catholics.

Today, we have around 28,000 priests and 72 million Catholics, or about one priest to 2,571 lay Catholics.

So we have one-third of the priests that we had right after the unexpected innovation of the Novus Ordo Mass.

That's the mass of Pope Paul VI.

In the five-plus decades since 1970, the ratio of priests to faithful has never gotten better.

It keeps cratering.

Gee.

The Catholic Church is in dire straits.

In the 1950s, we had approximately 80% of our Catholics attending Sunday mass.

Wow, 80%.

In 1980, it was about 50%.

By 1990, it was around 40%, and by 2000 it was about 33%.

By 2019, it had fallen to 20%.

Currently, a diocese is fortunate to count 8% of those who identify as Catholics attending Sunday mass.

So I ask myself, Father Worth, I remember the, the, you know, a lot of the, the bishops, even some of the popes were talking about the new springtime of evangelization.

It doesn't look like a springtime.

No.

Comments so far on what you've written? Looks like a hard winter.

Y- yeah.

It looks like a demographic winter.