Saturday, February 3, 2007
Church Status
The recent edition of Crisis Magazine has an article on the Status of the Church in America, Diocese by Diocese. It is an interesting read to see what the authors consider to be a healthy diocese, as they focus on ordinations, growth or decline in numbers of priests, and the number of converts. They ran the numbers for 1995 and 2005, as based out of the Kennedy Directory. I am glad to see that Cincinnati made a sizable jump, but we are still below the halfway mark at 117 out of 176 dioceses. We are in line with where Columbus and Cleveland are, but Steubenville really jumped up to #20 (way to go, Bishop Conlon, a Cincinnati priest).
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Fr. Kyle,
I read this article with interest and, unlike other similar articles, it approaches this from a more statistical basis - 'use the numbers and data' approach. As an engineer - I like numbers - they are. Having a poly sci major - I know that numbers never tell the whole story. So - I think this is a good startto look at the data. While there are many different aspects of a diocese that could be looked at as a measure of health - I think the three the authors picked aren't bad. (Change in active priests, change in ordinations and change in adult conversions). It's not perfect - but then again, few things are.
I wish Cincinnati was higher. I was happy to see the overall improvement as well as the ranking of the new ordinations. We have a ways to go but I also think it provides a starting point for finding which dioceses (and fellow vocation directors) are heading in the right direction - at least numerically.
All in all - an interesting read.
Good Luck.
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