Catholics of a certain age may have an image of the young priest, maybe a Jesuit, who introduced himself not as Father O’Reilly but as “Kevin.” Father Kevin — “please, just Kevin” — is the one who introduced the guitar mass when he got his own parish.
That young priest is now old, and the traits of the boomer priest — politically active, politically liberal, unconstrained by strict ideas about liturgy and tradition — are steadily disappearing from the priesthood.
The National Study of Catholic Priests, a survey of more than 1,000 American priests, looked into the clergy’s well-being, relationship with the hierarchy, politics, and priorities. The researchers, from The Catholic Project at the Catholic University of America, separated the responses by cohort: Those ordained before 1980, for instance, and those ordained after 2000.
POPE LEO BROUGHT UP FIVE CONCERNS, THE BABY BUST WAS THE CENTRAL ONE
One pattern: The older priests, mostly baby boomers, were more liberal than the younger ones, and they also placed relatively more emphasis on political issues compared to spiritual matters.
Start with the political ideology: Most priests ordained before 1980 call themselves liberal, with 1 in 6 calling themselves “very liberal.” Approximately zero priests ordained since 2000 are “very liberal,” and only about 12% are liberal at all. In the very newest batch of priests, those ordained since 2010, a majority call themselves conservatives.
Most Boomer priests (78%) said climate change and the environment should be a priority for the American Church, while only one-third of younger priests said the same thing. The numbers were similar on the importance of tending to the LGBT community — 66% of boomer priests compared to 37% of younger priests.
When it came to poverty and immigration, the difference was much smaller — a majority of all cohorts called it a priority — but again, the older priests were more interested.
On which matters were the younger priests more interested? The matters of worship, rather than politics.
A full 88% of younger priests said eucharistic devotion should be a priority, compared to 57% of older priests. Also, 39% of younger priests named access to the traditional Latin Mass as a priority, while only 11% of boomer priests did.
THE FAMILY HOUSING BOOM WE NEED
And if you’ve followed the actual research on religion in America, rather than the legacy media’s hallucinations about Christian nationalism, you know that the most politically aggressive Christians are on the Left.
So as the Catholic clergy gets more conservative, it seems to care less about the city of man and more about the city of God.
