Positive trends

Richard A. Sokerka

Much was made by the secular media late last year of a Pew Research Center study that on the surface showed a downward decline in people of faith. Specifically cited in the study was Catholicism, and that’s all the secular news media outlets and TV stations needed to make it one of their top stories of the day.

Not so fast, is the word from was Anne Hendershott, a professor of sociology at Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio. One of the nation’s leading Catholic sociologists, Hendershott is known for her research and writings that fuse Catholic social teachings with contemporary cultural issues.

Hendershott says empirical evidence points in the other direction of the Pew Research Center’s study. She notes the 25-percent increase in ordinations to the priesthood in 2015 (595 men ordained, up from 477 the previous year). And she cites figures that show how losses for the Catholic Church in the Northeast are being offset by increases in practicing Catholics in the South and Western states.

Digging deeper, Hendershott says that two visions of Catholicism are emerging: “One orthodox and growing, the other dissenting and declining.” The clash comes, she says, when progressives bring “a culture of negativity within the Church” that rejects the positive trends.

“For decades, progressives and dissenting Catholics have undermined the ministerial priesthood — and then demanded changes based on the dwindling numbers of vocations to the priesthood. Now that those numbers are climbing, many are attacking the ‘masculine spirituality’ contributing to the increase as too ‘authoritarian and intransigent,’” she said.

Add Hendershott’s article on this topic, “Increase in Ordinations the Result of Faithfulness and Orthodoxy,” in Catholic World Report to your reading list. And don’t believe everything you hear on the nightly newscast.