High profile recruitment drive for new priests fails to attract even one response

Dr. McHugh, you leave nothing left to be said. Well done, m'am.

hermitTalker...You were going for irony, weren't you? You tell Dr. McHugh that she needs to seek professional help while you ramble on in a negative fashion and finally bring Obama and the economy into a discussion of the absence of young men and vocations in Ireland. Curitiba...Dr.McHugh laid out a very persuasive argument for the lack of seminary applicants and yet you come up with the Fox News rebuttal.

Portia and Spartacus North are very sick and bigoted individuals ,out of touch with reality and taking cheap shots .I am bloody sure they would not comment in such terms on the principles of Islam !

I am not surprised, 2 weeks ago while not a regular attender I did go with 2 friends to mass. They both went to confession, The P.p. a man in his mid-fifties refused 1 absolution for living in sin with her partner of 15 years, the second was refused both absolution and communion for living in sin and also having a six year old child. Both friends were very upset as they never miss mass, hence 2 good-living ladies now deciding not to return to mass or confession. Is this 1912 or 2012 ?????????????

For decades in the USA, young adults have been the group most likely to avoid the churches. This is as true of Catholicism as of any other denomination, but Catholicism has also lost heavily from the baby-boomer generation. As a result, RC has lost more members than any other denomination. Baby Boomers left when they despaired of the Vatican or the bishops ever allowing the reforms that energized them in their youth, the reforms decreed by Second Vatican Council. An influx of immigrants keeps RC churches open here, but only as a stop-gap, because the children of the immigrants will leave just as other young people leave. What is astonishing about these sad facts? Only that Fr. Murray, like American priests, does not seem to realize that "the crisis of legitimacy" has brought down his Church. Even that blindness has been studied: in the 2004 Barna survey, 72% of young adult respondents said that church people are "out of touch with reality." If they were in touch, they'd be busy cleaning up and closing up, not trying to recruit priests for empty churches. It's sad that people feel they must leave church to find God, especially when Jesus went to some trouble to organize his followers for keeping and spreading the faith together, not as individuals on their own.

Now is a good time for the pope and his cordinals to made celibacy optional. About 90% of normel young men are naturally attracted to women and it is very unreasonable of R.C. Church leaders to expect potential candidates for the priesthood to take vows of permanent chastity.

You're all quite right. I would say also that any young man should not consider becoming a surgeon either, since IC ran a story last week about one who is on trial for sex offences against young people in his care. So obviously all people in all institutions are bad and young people should not join an institution of any kind, to be on the safe side. The dole in Ireland is high enough so a young man can sit at home and not put himself at any risk from these sickos who are obviously everywhere.

A NO SHOW for wannabe priests is the precursor to a NO SHOW in the pews of Roman Catholic "church's" across the globe. A most fitting epitaph I might add for the unholy Roman Catholic “church” before finally consigning her to the graveyard of ignimony and shame, whose reputation for unchecked vice and licentiousness committed under the guise of religion by her 1)ministers of unrighteousness remains unparalleled and whose countless victims offered on the altars of priestly abuse cry to Heaven for justice! 1) God's Word as it is found in II Cor. 11:14-15: "For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel: for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light, Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works." What a mockery these religious impostors have made of the religion of Christ! What shame and disrepute they have brought upon the cause of Christ! Roman Catholicism is not Christ's Church!

Thanks to Dr. McHugh for telling it like it is, and the way it has really been for at least the half-century I've lived in! Just the other day I wrote to a group of friends who hope to change the RC Church from within, "This hierarchy of men will never change until there is one last Catholic in the pew, and they are down to their very last dollar." Who wants to join a completely corrupt organization, let alone make a career out of it! We can all do our own Jesus, and fairly soon, I think we'll have to anyway!

Agree that a major schism within the church is appropriate. A breakaway of those progressive-minded Catholics to join similar believers in various Protestant religions would make sense. This would mean that women religious and married couples will be permitted to seek the highest orders. Those not willing to join this new sect can simply stick with the old way of thinking, hope to retain power, and also hope those African and South American congregations can come up with enough coins to keep them in business.

DrMcHugh: Again you have clearly and concisely cut to the very heart of the matter. Why would any healthy and sane person want to commit his life to an organization that is run by people that are obviously not in their right minds? Schism is in the wind.

Dr McHugh, your constant negative comments on different topics urge me to ask you to consult a psychiatrist to sort out what happened your own head and faith. It is no wonder that men are not jumping up today to enter seminaries, some definitely are; but the pile of camel dung to which they have been exposed for the past two decades, the hostility to the Church and now attacks on the Natural Law are very tall hurdles for them to jump make it more daunting. The recent comment by the running at the mouth Archbishop of Dublin who asked the people -at the annual McGill Summer School recently, for the people to support their priests while be tarred the current seminarians with a comment " They are very conservative and fragile" brush does not help. The usual destructive comments on here of course are par for the course. If you have no faith, lost it or never had it, stick with the physical, such as trying to defend Obama and the Demos' "spin" on women worldwide, and the Labour Party at home who are chomping at the bit for "gender-equality" in sexual unions and life in the womb. ASK how any of them plan to stop the melt-down of the economy. AND listen for the metaphysical in your quiet moments. There is a God in Christ whose Church has survived a heck of a lot worse than this age and is growing in leaps and bounds in places; and will long after the USA and the European partnership has given way to what is next. One presumes if they find water on the Moon a future pope will be baptising there in the future. Look at the reality of drought in the USA, the huge loss of corn and soya beans, the fear of whole cities being abandoned for lack of water with major aquifers being drained dry. I am not a pessimist but I do keep my feet on the ground, and my faith intact and see beyond today's issues, and propaganda that passes for politics and news. " Shalom y'all" as we say in the Florida Synagogues!

Dr. McHugh I agree, you are spot on and a good set of reasons that called (it was God I am sure) me away from the church. How can I listen to this group of people.

Fr Murray from Galway added: “...you have to think the hand of God is at work....Certainly, the abuse scandals have had an impact.” As a Catholic physician, I believe it is a healthy sign that young men in 2012 do not want to join an institution: 1) that would give them no voice, 2) that demands an immature type of obedience, which seems more important than morality, 3) that demands mandatory celibacy, 4) that looks on lay people as second class citizens, 5) that refuses to see women as equals and even wants to deny them their reproductive needs, and 6) that has a leader, the Pope, that has not admitted to his central role in allowing the clergy sexual abuse of innocent children to flourish worldwide, from the time that he was head of the office that dealt with clergy sexual abuse cases for 24 years, and then since 2005, as Pope Benedict XVI. Why would any thinking man want to give his life to this institution until it cleans up its act and until it gets rid of mandatory celibacy? Where is Jesus in the lives of the Pope and in many of the rest of the hierarchy? Sincerely, Dr Rosemary Eileen McHugh, Chicago, Illinois, USA

Well, they could instantly double the potential pool by recognizing that the other half of humanity exists. But then double of zero is still ....