Audio only:
Today Joe looks at the phenomenon of newer priests being more conservative and theologically orthodox, and progressive Catholicism’s failure to replicate itself…
Transcript:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer and if you follow politics at all, chances are you’ve heard people opining on this idea that we’re in the midst of a great political upheaval. And the question is a good one. Anytime you see the voting populace change its preferences and vote for a different party, we should be asking what that means for the future of the country for voters’ preferences and whether that change is going to last. And we’ve seen that in several of the back and forth moves from Bush to Obama, from Obama to Trump, from Trump to Biden, and from Biden. Now back to Trump, the question gets asked in one way, shape, or form.
CLIP:
It is yet one more powerful signal that our politics are in the midst of a great upheaval as economic issues give way to cultural ones.
Joe:
But today I want to look at political and theological shifts, not within the American voting popula as a whole, but particularly within the Catholic church. Now, you may have observed this trend many of us have. Among the young Catholics who bother to go to mass, a growing number of them seem to prefer more reverent traditional liturgies, whether that’s the traditional Latin mass or Byzantine right liturgies or whether it’s just irreverent Novato. I don’t know of good data showing this trend, but I think many of us have seen it with our eyes and that includes those who may not view it as a positive change. For instance, the Archdiocese of New York sent out a letter to its priests in 2023 telling them not to install altar rails in historic churches and lamenting that no one is sure where the impetus for this is originating, but it seems to be picking up steam.
So whether you view that shift towards tradition as good or bad that a shift is happening does seem kind of undeniable. And while we don’t have good data for Catholics as a whole, we do have good polling data for Catholic priests, and if you think about it, what our priests believe about theology, liturgy, and even politics is likely to have a major impact on what the church looks like for the decades to come. If you’ve got the impression that younger Catholic priests are more conservative than their older peers, you’re right, but probably don’t know just how right you are. The numbers on this are impressive. They’re staggering, almost as staggering we might say as the numbers of you supporting this channel over on Patreon. Let’s see how subtly I worked that in there. But for real, if you want to help this channel to grow, a great concrete way to do that is to go to shameless joe.com and sign up.
You’ll have access to members only videos, to ad free episodes and also to a weekly livestream q and a where I answer your questions. Even as a Catholic who grew up in the 1980s and has seen this shift, and as a former Catholic seminarian who saw a lot of this stuff up close, I don’t think even I appreciated just how big the shift is or really shifts plural, because when we look at the priesthood in the US, two trends emerge. Number one, when you compare all priests today to all priests 20 years ago, what we find is that priests today are more likely to consider themselves both theologically, orthodox and politically conservative than they did 20 years ago. But again, that’s all priests if you delve into that within the priesthood, we find that the younger a priest is, and the more recently he was ordained, the more likely he is both to be politically conservative and theologically orthodox.
Those two trends way have described them do not do justice to the radical nature of this shift. What’s more surprising isn’t the rise of more conservative and traditional types within the priesthood. What’s most surprising is the absolute death of progressive Catholic priests, the simple disappearance of such men from the priesthood entirely. Let’s break these numbers down bit by bit. So first, let’s look at the big picture. How has the Catholic priesthood in the United States changed in the past two decades or so? Back in 2002, the LA Times polled Catholic priests on a wide variety of topics, and one of the things that they found is that younger priests tended to be both more conservative politically and less likely to pick and choose which things they agreed with the church on or what they believed in among Catholic doctrine that shows there was already this trend in the priesthood even 20 years ago that within the ranks of priests that we already could see something was shifting.
But now flash forward 20 years in 2021 and in 2022, the sociologist Mark Brad, ver Mullen and Steven cranny decided to ask the exact same questions from the poll to thousands of priests today, and the results were startling. Looking just at these statistically significant findings, we find that priests today are more likely to say that number one, younger priests are more conservative. So that trend that they were seeing back then, they see it even more today. Number two, they’re more likely to say that Jesus Christ is the sole path to salvation. Number three, they’re more likely to say that birth control, even for married couples is sinful. Number four, they’re more likely to say that masturbation is sinful, and number five, they’re more likely to self-identify as politically conservative. So those are the things that have gone up. What about the things that have gone down?
Priests today are less likely to say that the church in the US is getting better. Number two, they’re less likely to say that the laity follow the teachings of the church. Number three, they’re less likely to support women’s ordination to the priesthood or even to the diaconate. Number four, they’re less likely to support the ordination of married men to the priesthood. And number five, they’re less likely to say that they struggle with celibacy or with the church’s teaching on celibacy. And while I hate using political terms like left and right or conservative and liberal for what are really theological categories like orthodoxy and descent, there is nevertheless clearly some kind of link between political affiliation and theological leanings that we find here in the data so we can collectively call this theological and political shift a strong shift to the right. You can think about it this way.
If you were to ring the door of a rectory, the priest who greets you at the door is much more likely today to believe in all the teachings of the church, much more likely today to describe himself as theologically conservative, but he’s also much more likely to have a MAGA hat or to have Fox news on. He’s also aware that the teachings he believes in, including the controversial ones, like on the church’s sexual ethic, are teachings in which he and the laity are not totally in lockstep, but the next shift is even more salient than the first because it tells me that not only has there been a right word shift among priests as a whole, but that within the priesthood there’s been the absolute annihilation and destruction of progressive Catholic theology. Here’s what I mean. Researchers at the Catholic Project at CUA, the Catholic University of America in Washington DC in 2022 pulled thousands of Catholic priests.
In the last two years, they’ve released two different reports summarizing some of their findings. I want to focus on this second of those reports, which looks at how priests relate to one another and how similar or different they are from one another theologically and politically, and the results are kind of shocking. The study authors themselves summarize this by saying that in terms of political and theological self-identification, we see the collapse of liberal or progressive self-identification. Most older priests when asked will identify themselves as either somewhat liberal or very liberal politically. For instance, about 15% of priests ordained in the early 1960s characterize themselves today as very liberal. In comparison, no one the pollsters found who was ordained during that time period described themselves as very conservative. Now I’m just eyeballing the charts here. They didn’t release the exact numbers, but there looks to be about a three to one ratio among all liberals to all conservative priests from the 1960s. This after all, is an era in which Paul Simon could sing about going to jail and how the radical priest comes to get me released and we’re all on the cover of Newsweek in apparent reference to the left-wing priest, activist Father Daniel Barrigan and his brother.
Now contrast that with the group of priests ordained from 2010 forwards. In this group, conservatives make up an actual majority of the priests ordained. Now if you’re looking at the numbers, you might notice the light blue is actually moderate, which makes it look like there’s more liberals than there are. But politically we find that liberals go from being a majority of priests in the 1960s generation to making up only single digits Today as the study authors point out, while roughly half 52% of the recently ordained cohort described themselves as conservative or very conservative, a full 44%, the highest percentage of any cohort self-described as moderate. Now, notice that math, it means that liberal Catholic priests went from being a majority in the 1960s to roughly 4%. You got 52% conservative, 44% moderate, that gets you to 96%. So only about 4% of the more newly ordained men from the last 15 years are going to politically identify as liberal, even somewhat liberal.
That’s just political orientation and it is important to stress that we don’t know exactly what anyone means when they’re responding to a questionnaire about whether they’re conservative or liberal. Are they thinking of their views on abortion, on immigration, on something else? It’s a little bit vibey, but the vibe suggests a very clear shift in terms of how priests think about themselves, about politics and about the world. Much more important for our purposes, and I think much more striking in terms of the sheer size of the shift is the shift not on politics, but on theology. Priests were asked to rank themselves whether they considered themselves anywhere from very conservative slash orthodox to very progressive theologically, and the results that we find are quite striking. When you talk to a priest from the early sixties, the men ordained during that period overwhelmingly were self-described, progressives and liberals, conservatism, and an adherence to theological orthodoxy is more of an exception than the rule, and even a small exception, only 20% of the priests from that early 1960s cohort self-describe as conservative slash orthodox, and none of them describe themselves as very conservative slash orthodox.
Comparing that to today, we see a massive sea change in the theological views of our priests. As the study authors point out, a full 85% of the youngest cohorts describes itself as conservative slash orthodox or very conservative slash orthodox theologically with only 14%, the smallest percentage of any cohort describing themselves as middle of the road theologically, progressive and very progressive priests once made up 68% of new ordinances. Today, that number has dwindled almost to zero. Okay, so again, they’ve given us the tools to do the math. 85% of the newer priests are conservative, another 14% are middle of the road theologically, whatever that means. And that leaves what maybe 1% if that of the young priests who self-describe as progressive, this from 68% down to a rounding error. And this isn’t a fluke. It isn’t like there was one really orthodox really conservative year for priests.
It wasn’t that at all. This is rather a several decades long trend. Going back to the end of the 1960s, the sixties generation, not only were they very politically liberal, they were overwhelmingly theologically progressive. And in every subsequent cohort we have found fewer theological progressives, more people striving for orthodoxy. By the mid 1970s, the liberals were no longer making up a majority of new priests. By the end of the 1980s, the orthodox or conservative priests, their number had started to creep up noticeably. By the mid two thousands, the Orthodox, the conservative priests are now a majority of new ordinations, and now this trend has gone to such an extent that theological liberalism is all but extinct. Looking at all of this extensive data, two questions emerged from me. Number one, is there a Pope Francis effect? And number two, what does this mean for the future of the church in the United States?
Let’s consider the Pope Francis effect. One of the priests who responded to that second survey gave his thoughts on it, which mirror both my own thoughts and to the best of my reading the survey data priests in their seventies and sixties now would be one cohort, and then you have the JP two generation that would be very orthodox but still have some free flowing liturgy stuff. Then you get in the Benedict stuff, which is like the heart on everything kind of guys and the young guys. Now I’d say you have a lot in common with those last few cohorts, but the super progressive wing really didn’t replicate themselves. What I like is that this priest has keyed into things that the conservative or liberal kind of framing of the survey questions maybe haven’t done such a good job of, because the truth is within the priesthood, there really are two fault lines, not one.
One is a fight on theological orthodoxy, and another is a fight on how we celebrate the liturgy. The so-called JP two priest. These were young men who were inspired to the priesthood by the example of St. John Paul ii, and during his pontificate, they tend to be very theologically orthodox, but maybe a little looser liturgically. In contrast, Benedict the 16th really shone a spotlight on the value of a beautiful and well celebrated Reverend Mass. And so the man inspired by him, the so-called Benedict guys tend to share his enthusiasm, not just for solid and precise theology, but also solid and precise by the book’s liturgy. But while it’s common to hear Catholics refer to JP two priests or Benedict the 16th priest, the question that’s been left unanswered is what a Francis priest looks and sounds like. And this has been a question since the very beginning of Pope Francis’ pontificate.
One of the earliest questions being asked was, would there be a Francis effect? And there’s two forms of that question. One is, will it change how ordinary maybe lukewarm Catholics practice their faith in survey data? Catholics in America overwhelmingly report liking Pope Francis and changes they view him as making. But within a year, pew Research Center had already realized this didn’t convert to any change in actual practice that could be documented in the data in the words of pew. There has been no measurable rise in the percentage of Americans who identify as Catholic, nor has there been a statistically significant change in how often Catholics say they go to mass and the survey finds no evidence that large numbers of Catholics are going to confession or volunteering in their churches or communities. More often. Since then, mass attendance numbers have actually gone down and not up in fairness to Pope Francis.
Much of that seems to be related to unrelated factors, things like Covid, but we don’t find a Francis effect in a measurable way on the laity. What about on priests? One of the questions early on was, would Pope Francis spark a generation of young men to discern the priesthood who maybe aren’t as interested in traditional liturgy who maybe are a little more politically liberal, who maybe are even more theologically progressive? To the extent we have answers to that, the answers seem very strongly to be no, no, and no. Not only are the young men being ordained during Pope Francis’ Pontificate actually more conservative than the priests who were ordained under Benedict the 16th. They also have a more complicated relationship to Pope Francis himself. When polled priests who were ordained before 1980 overwhelmingly love the job that Pope Francis is doing, about 80% of them say they strongly approve the job he’s doing compared to 1% who strongly disapprove.
In contrast, among priests ordained since 2010, the numbers are much more split, 20% strongly approve and 21% strongly disapprove. What went from an 80 to one split between strong approval to strong disapproval is now a one-to-one split with slightly more strongly disapproving. Now, it’s arguably unseemly even asked the question, Hey, how do you think the vicar of Christ is doing? But I think questions like this can help to shed light on the reality of the situation of the relationship that can be kind of complex or tense at times between these young priests and their pope. Now, it’s important to caveat that by saying, while many of them clearly struggle with Pope Francis’ governance style, they’re nevertheless overwhelmingly supportive of the fact that they report to a Pope. 67% of priests in the cohort of priests ordained since 2000 agree that they value their accountability to the Pope versus 82% of those ordained before 1980.
Similarly, 64% of priests under the age of 45 agreed that they value accountability to Pope Francis compared to 82% of priests over the age of 75. So while younger priests have some qualms with Pope Francis, the numbers do show filial respect in obedience to the Pope, even if they don’t always agree about everything that he says and does. So what does this mean for the future? Thinking about the data, I’m struck by at least four things. Number one, liberal Catholicism, at least in terms of the priesthood is spiritually barren. In fact, debt it simply has not reproduced. I’ve said that several times, but I think it’s worth stressing the question why? Because you can’t just explain the bishops. It isn’t as if the bishops are the radical conservatives, rather they’re ordaining men who in many cases are more conservative and more traditional than they are.
So what’s driving this and more specifically, what’s driving the failure of liberal Catholicism to produce priests? I would suggest two things. Number one, if you accept liberal Catholic, these like Gary Willis’s claim that the priesthood is not of apostolic or Christ’s origins, but is rather an innovation in addition to Christianity. Why become a priest? If you don’t believe in the priesthood, don’t be a priest. But even more broadly, we could say if your view of the priesthood is essentially that he’s a community organizer and a social justice activist, you don’t need to go to seminary for years to do that. You don’t need to get ordained, you don’t need to be accountable to a bishop or a religious superior, and you certainly don’t need to be celibate. Second, what I’ve been calling this right word shift has been both in theology, which we’ve been focusing on mostly here, but also in politics.
So what is that going to mean for the future of the church in America? What are we going to hear from the U-S-C-C-B and from the pulpit on topics like abortion, on immigration, on just war? I’m struck by this question, what will we have gained and what, if anything, will we have lost? I’m actually very interested in your thoughts on that. I’d love to hear how you foresee this playing out with this shift politically and theologically among priests. Third, we’re actually only beginning to feel the impacts of this shift because we’re seeing a shift right now among priests, but eventually this is a pool of people from which the next generation of bishops will be drawn already. If you include auxiliary bishops, there are six bishops who are in their forties. That number is only going to go up, and so pretty soon it won’t be.
Look at all of these conservative young priests. It’ll be look at the sheer number of conservative American bishops. If you think that’s already the case. We’re only just getting started. So the fourth and final point is simply that things change. In the 1960s, if you were a traditional new priest who loved all the teachings of the church, loved to say the mass reverently considered yourself politically conservative, you were in many ways a minority and quite a minority among your classmates, among your peers, among your brother priests who were overwhelmingly politically progressive and theologically progressive. And it might’ve seemed for a long time that that was just how things were going to be. That priest who was once a small minority of his classmates in the sixties now finds himself with a bunch of younger peers who are overwhelmingly like him, who are traditional, who are conservative, who are in favor of all of the things that were once very much minority views among American priests.
But the takeaway from that is because things have changed, things can change, and so whether you consider yourself conservative or liberal or something in between, whether you consider yourself theologically progressive or conservative or orthodox, we should all be praying for our priests for good and holy priests who love Jesus Christ and love the people of God and will serve him well. I would love to hear your thoughts. What do you see as the impact of this huge shift in the priesthood? Where have you seen it and what do you think it bodes for the future? Looking forward to reading that maybe seeing all the stuff that I missed. For Shameless Popery, I’m Joe Heschmeyer, God bless.