The state’s three Roman Catholic dioceses rank in the bottom third nationally in spiritual vitality, with the Archdiocese of Hartford placing last, according to this month’s Crisis magazine.
"The State of the Catholic Church in America, Diocese by Diocese" measured the 176 U.S. dioceses according to three criteria: the change in the number of priests, including those that move into the diocese (an indicator of morale); the number of ordinations; and the number of adults joining the church...
When the three scores were totaled, Hartford came in 176th, with the Diocese of Bridgeport at 132 and the Diocese of Norwich at 117... None of Connecticut’s bishops has been at the helm for even half the 1995-2005 decade studied. Bishop William E. Lori has led the Bridgeport Diocese since 2001, Norwich Bishop Michael R. Cote was installed in 2003, and Hartford Archbishop Henry J. Mansell began at the end of that year... Spokesmen for the Archdiocese of Hartford and the Diocese of Norwich could
not be reached or declined comment.
The Register is right not to place the blame at the feet of Connecticut's current bishops and to reference the question of Catholic complacency in already-heavily Catholic New England.
But my missus blogged the other day on what that complacency may cost us and on the duty of our shepherds to teach. And to teach not just in traditional venues but through those modern means of communication that are the only way to reach the legion of lapsed Catholics in Connecticut. Lapsed Catholics are probably a bigger proportion of the state's population than practicing Catholics. They may, perhaps, even be the biggest "religious" group in the state. Evangelizing them is the key to the spiritual revitalization of Hartford...and to stopping "Plan B", gay "marriage" and the rest of the carnival of horrors the state's secularists have cooked up.
But it can't be accomplished by only visiting the churches they're not attending. Memo to Archbishop Mansell's secretary: book your boss on Colin McEnroe, Brad Davis, On the Record, Beyond the Headlines and the op-ed page of the Hartford Courant asap!
3 comments:
Certain things about this study just seem wrong. Hartford is the worst? Sure, I'll agree that it's not necessarily a jewel in the crown of the Church's New World spiritual splendor, but WORST? There are dioceses that are lining up people and herding them into heresy ... Hartford has been pretty good, in its parishes and in its conference. Hartford at least should get credit for being the site of one of the biggest seminaries in the country, in Cheshire. Or for being the home of the Knights of Columbus, the biggest rock-solid Catholic organization in the country. Or how about being the site of the National Catholic Register newspaper and Faith & Family magazine? Huh?
The survey is kind of pre-Vatican II in that all it cares about are bishops and priests, and numbers.
Better questions, questions along the lines of what the Holy Father has been asking for, and questions that history teaches will be truly indicative of health might be:
Number of participants in World Youth Day
Availability and use of confession
Eucharistic adoration
Health and activity of the pro-life movement
Health of Catholic families
Openness to lay activity (movements, organizations, etc.)
Number of children per family
Retention rate of Hispanic immigrants
By focusing on the number of priests, the study is onto something ... but it might really be gauging the effectiveness of the vocations director, not the worth of the diocese or the bishop. By focusing on the number of recent converts, it's hard to know what the study is gauging. Denver had a ton of converts in the 1990s... thanks to Columbine and World Youth Day. Those numbers don't necessarily tell the tale of their greatness of the bishops only ...
Anyway, it's good that Crisis did this, I suppose. But it over-simplifies the picture, I think, and removes lay activity from the equation ... which means it removes the future of the Church and the real vibrancy from the equation.
Vocations, for every newly ordained priest the Archdiocese has produced, another leaves before ordination. Why such a high number?
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