AN EMPIRICAL-ANALYSIS OF OPTIONS FOR DEALING WITH THE UNITED-STATES CATHOLIC PRIEST SHORTAGE

The U.S. Catholic Church has been experiencing two recent trends: an increasing number of parishioners and a decreasing population of priests. This study directly considers three strategies, and indirectly considers a fourth, that have been proposed to deal with these twin trends. They are: obtain more priests from religious orders, expand the permanent diaconate, make greater use of priestless parishes, and redistribute existing priests. With the diocese as the unit of analysis, an empirical model is tested to examine the effect of each of the strategies on one measure - the number of sacraments performed. The results show that religious order priests are no more nor less effective than diocesan priests, but the use of both permanent deacons and priestless parishes increases the diocesan provision of sacraments. These latter two are judged to be effective in dealing with the priest shortage. These results are also consistent with the argument that the priest shortage can be alleviated by a better distribution of priests.