U.S. seminaries see steep rise in numbers

Mangalore Today News Network

USA , Dec 22, 2017 :  The Athenaeum’s Mount Washington campus in almost 60 years. The new apartments and conference rooms are necessary because the seminary has a problem no one saw coming: It needs more room.To say the seminary has struggled for years to attract men to the priesthood would be an understatement. Enrollment plummeted from about 200 in the 1960s to less than 40 in 2011.

 

Then something changed. Enrollment started to surge in 2012 and has more than doubled in the past five years.   Today, 82 seminarians study here. Their numbers are up nationally, too, though the increase is not as dramatic.  More surprising than the sudden growth is the source of it. Millennials, or those roughly between the ages of 18 and 34, make up the vast majority of new recruits.

This is notable not just because seminarians are getting younger, but also because polls and statistics show no generation has strayed further from the Catholic faith than millennials. They are less likely than their parents and grandparents to attend Mass, to marry in the church or to identify as Catholic.   Their generation came of age as society was becoming less religious overall and as the Catholic Church was suffering through a years-long clergy abuse crisis that tested their faith in Catholic institutions.

Yet no generation today is providing more men to lead the church than millennials. Nationally, three of every four seminarians are 34 years old or younger. At the Athenaeum, where seminarians in their 30s and 40s once dominated the ranks, the average age is 28.

So how did the church begin to turn things around with a generation that seemingly wants little to do with it? By using millennials’ skepticism as a selling point to young men wary of the changing culture around them.

The approach is similar in some ways to military recruitment, which extols the virtue of taking on a challenge that few others will. The message is one of sacrifice: This is a big job and not everyone is cut out for it, but maybe you are.

“I admire their courage,” Cincinnati Archbishop Dennis Schnurr says of the young seminarians. “It is a much more secular society. It’s more tough going than when I was contemplating the priesthood.”


Reaching out to future priests

Every seminarian has a story about being called by God to the priesthood.   For a few, it was a great epiphany, a moment when their mind opened and the voice of God spoke to them. For most, though, there were no bells or bright lights, only a subtle pull, a nagging feeling that life and God had more in store for them.

“As a young man, it appealed to me,” says Jeffrey Stegbauer, a 25-year-old seminarian from Mason. “That higher calling in life was very attractive to me.”


It is encouraging them now, Schnurr says.    Since arriving in Cincinnati in 2008, Schnurr has made priest recruitment a priority. He ramped up outreach, hired Schmitmeyer to oversee the effort and got personally involved by hosting meetings and dinners with men considering the seminary.

“You can’t wait for the men to come to you,” Schnurr says. “You have to go to the men.”  Schmitmeyer has taken the mission to heart. He puts as many as 2,000 miles on his car every month by crisscrossing the 19-county archdiocese in search of seminarians. Anyone who expresses interest to a teacher or a parish priest can expect a call or a visit, or both.

The contact is crucial, Schmitmeyer says, because not all voices are supportive. “Secular society is giving us so many false leads about where to find true happiness,” he says.  Despite its recent successes, including an uptick in the number of seminarians nationwide, the church still has a long way to go. Weekly Mass attendance has fallen from about 55 percent in 1965 to 22 percent last year, according to Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. Catholic baptisms and marriages are down by more than half over the same period.

Millennials are fueling those trends, even as they begin to restock seminaries. The Pew Research Center found 16 percent of America’s youngest adults identify as Catholic, compared to 21 percent of Generation Xers and 23 percent of Baby Boomers.  Zachary Cecil is reminded of the challenge almost every time he leaves the seminary wearing his black shirt and Roman collar.

On campus, where enrollment is growing and the construction behind O’Cinnsealaigh’s office keeps chugging along, it looks like the church is turning a corner. But when Cecil ventures to the grocery store or the barber shop, the rest of the world is waiting with skepticism and questions.

What’s a seminarian? What do you do? Why would you want to do that?    Cecil, 25, asked similar questions when he started thinking about becoming a priest as a kid growing up in Piqua, so he always does his best to answer. It’s part of his job, he says. He might be talking to a future seminarian.   “People are searching for all kinds of things,” Cecil says. “There is something more out there.”