Young Poles Leave the Church | ARTE.tv Documentary

Oct 11, 2023 | The Catholic church in Poland is losing ground. Although over 80% of Poles identify as Catholics, young people are increasingly turning away from the institution. Only 23% of 18-24 year olds still claim to be regular churchgoers, whereas 30 years ago there were three times as many. This trend is also visible in seminaries with a significant fall in Poles training to be priests.

Prospective Catholic Priests Face Sexuality Hurdles
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Every job interview has its awkward moments, but in recent years, the standard interview for men seeking a life in the Roman Catholic priesthood has made the awkward moment a requirement.

“When was the last time you had sex?” all candidates for the seminary are asked. (The preferred answer: not for three years or more.)

“What kind of sexual experiences have you had?” is another common question. “Do you like pornography?”

Depending on the replies, and the results of standardized psychological tests, the interview may proceed into deeper waters: “Do you like children?” and “Do you like children more than you like people your own age?”

It is part of a soul-baring obstacle course prospective seminarians are forced to run in the aftermath of a sexual abuse crisis that church leaders have decided to confront, in part, by scrubbing their academies of potential molesters, according to church officials and psychologists who screen candidates in New York and the rest of the country.

But many of the questions are also aimed at another, equally sensitive mission: deciding whether gay applicants should be denied admission under complex recent guidelines from the Vatican that do not explicitly bar all gay candidates but would exclude most of them, even some who are celibate.

Scientific studies have found no link between sexual orientation and abuse, and the church is careful to describe its two initiatives as more or less separate. One top adviser to American seminaries characterized them as “two circles that might overlap here and there.” >>> Paul Vitello | Sunday, May 30, 2010

Pope Put Off Punishing Abusive Priest
THE NEW YORK TIMES: The priest, convicted of tying up and abusing two young boys in a California church rectory, wanted to leave the ministry.

But in 1985, four years after the priest and his bishop first asked that he be defrocked, the future Pope Benedict XVI, then a top Vatican official, signed a letter saying that the case needed more time and that “the good of the Universal Church” had to be considered in the final decision, according to church documents released through lawsuits.

That decision did not come for two more years, the sort of delay that is fueling a renewed sexual abuse scandal in the church that has focused on whether the future pope moved quickly enough to remove known pedophiles from the priesthood, despite pleas from American bishops.

As the scandal has deepened, the pope’s defenders have said that, well before he was elected pope in 2005, he grew ever more concerned about sexual abuse and weeding out pedophile priests. But the case of the California priest, the Rev. Stephen Kiesle, and the trail of documents first reported on Friday by The Associated Press, shows, in this period at least, little urgency.

The letter that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later pope, wrote in Latin in 1985, mentions Father Kiesle’s young age — 38 at the time — as one consideration in whether he should be forced from the priesthood. The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said it was wrong to draw conclusions based on one letter, without carefully understanding the context in which it was written.

“It’s evident that it’s not an in-depth and serious use of documents,” he said. Earlier Friday, Father Lombardi suggested that the pope would be willing to meet with sexual abuse victims.

But John S. Cummins, the former bishop of Oakland who repeatedly wrote his superiors in Rome urging that the priest be defrocked, said the Vatican in that era, after the Second Vatican Council, was especially reluctant to dismiss priests because so many were abandoning the priesthood. >>> Laurie Goodstein and Michael Luo | Friday, April 09, 2010

LE TEMPS: Pédophilie – Le pape a traîné des pieds pour défroquer un prêtre californien : Benoît XVI est accusé d’avoir couvert de nouveaux abus alors qu’il était encore cardinal. Le père Kiesle, qui a reconnu avoir des penchants pédophiles, avait lui-même demandé à être défroqué. Il a dû attendre plusieurs années >>> ATS/AFP | Samedi 10 Avril 2010

WELT ONLINE: Missbrauch – Papst wehrt sich gegen neue Vorwürfe aus USA: Als Präfekt der Glaubenskongregation soll der damalige Kardinal Joseph Ratzinger die rasche Entlassung eines pädophilen US-Geistlichen aus dem Priesteramt um Jahre verzögert haben. Das behauptet ein Opfer-Anwalt. Der Vatikan widerspricht. Ratzinger habe lediglich um mehr Zeit zur Aufklärung gebeten. >>> dpa/lac | Samstag, 10. April 2010

Receiving a Personal Call from God
BBC: With the number of seminary entrants rising yearly, has the problem of the Roman Catholic Church's ageing priest population been solved?

This weekend is a significant one in the Catholic calendar. It marks Vocation Sunday, an annual day of prayer for vocations into the priesthood and other forms of religious life.

This year, the church has distributed 4,000 posters and other publicity materials to parishes, schools and university chaplaincies across the UK.

Such determination to raise awareness of the possibility of a religious life may seem surprising given recent increases in the number of young men entering the priesthood.

Over the past five years, the number of would-be priests beginning formation, or training, has almost doubled - from an all-time low of 24 in 2003 to 44 in 2007.

"The death of Pope John Paul II and ascension of Benedict XVI were an important time for us", says Father Paul Embery, director of the National Office for Vocation.

"People became more encouraged to make an enquiry into joining the priesthood.

"We're also beginning to recognise a lot of people who have become priests, monks or nuns because they have been asked to do so. Sometimes, just being asked can be a crystallising moment.

"We're regaining the confidence to be able to ask young men to enter the priesthood." Receiving a Personal Call from God >>> By Amy Blackburn, BBC News | April 12, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback - UK)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardback - UK)