The Problem With "Married Catholic Priests" Newspaper Articles

Tip of the hat to the Deacon Bench for this.

The Tennessean has a article on a former Episcopal Priest that will be becoming a Priest for the Diocese of Nashville. See Married Catholic priest will be Nashville diocese's first.

It is a good article on the whole. I actually find the Episcopal angle here to be more interesting and I suspect would be interesting to the local Episcopal readership.

However the main theme of the article is "Should Catholic Priests be married" which is of course a story line we have seen a million times.

The Priest shortage angle is of course mentioned.

A few things as to that.

Why is not mentioned that other Liturgical bodies are starting to see vocational problems. In fact talking to a local evangelical recently she mentioned that they were seeing signs of it there.

However the biggest fault is the people that write these articles seem unaware that in many places vocations are going good. It is a critical part of the story that is often missing and thus makes a important story incomplete. We see this all the time.

Why for instance is the secular University of Texas A and M producing vocations galore(not just to the Priesthood) and some major Catholic colleges are not. Why are there many Dioceses from rural to urban in the United States that have had major upswings in Vocations over this decade. They are all over the country but rarely get mentioned in these stories.

What is happening there and why is there no Priest shortage compared to other places. Of course for the "we need married Priests crew" it is against their interest to mention this.
However it needs to be talked about. I think Catholics would be very interested to know there are Dioceses in the United States where vocations are going very good. They might starting asking questions in their own Diocese about Why that is not happening there.