CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune
April 10, 2019
By Kate Thayer
Just a year after becoming a Catholic priest, Doug Langner said the loneliness started to creep in.
“You would go through times of (thinking), wouldn’t it be nice to just share your day with someone else?” said Langner, who was ordained in 2008 after graduating from Mundelein Seminary, and started to work in a Kansas City, Mo.-area parish. Soon he was the only priest assigned to his church, living alone in the rectory, which isn’t uncommon as the Catholic Church faces a priest shortage that has forced many churches to shut down or merge.
Then, Langner met someone.
She worked at the church and was going through a divorce. The two had a connection, Langner said, though they didn’t act on it.
But it helped him address doubts that had been there all along. It made him ask himself, “Are you really going to spend the next 50 years … of your life without someone to share it with?”
It turns out, he wasn’t. Langner left the priesthood about two years after his ordination. He said the vow of celibacy and the isolation it breeds weren’t for him, but his resolve as a Catholic remains intact.
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“I think there is a place in the church for people who are called to celibacy. They live it out in a beautiful way,” he said. “But I also don’t think they’re the only people called. Is God really only calling single, celibate men to the priesthood?”
Young priests leaving the pastorate is another blow to the struggling Catholic Church, which faces widespread sex abuse allegations, a less devout population and a priest shortage that’s forcing church closures and consolidation.
“In the midst of this storm, (prospective priests are thinking), do I get in the boat? Do I stay in the boat? That has to be a discernment. I think that’s one of the causes,” said Bishop Ronald Hicks, vicar general at the Archdiocese of Chicago.
Due in part to the priest shortage, the archdiocese has closed schools and churches as part of an ongoing restructuring plan. Since 1975, the Chicago Archdiocese has shuttered more than 100 parishes and more than 250 schools, according to its annual report. During that time, the number of total priests shrank from 1,261 in 1975 to 746 in 2018, according to the diocese.
“Here in Chicago, what we’re looking at is, with less priests, how do we continue to make sure our people are served and our parishes are thriving?” Hicks said. In addition to relying on deacons and involved parishioners to do the work of the church, Hicks said, “we’re actively promoting priesthood.”
Part of that includes a visible presence of seminary students working in local churches, said the Rev. John Kartje, rector of Mundelein Seminary — the largest seminary in the country, located at the University of Saint Mary of the Lake. This allows parishioners to see firsthand that young men are still entering the clergy, he said.
Though nationwide seminary enrollment has sliced nearly in half since 1970, to about 3,400 students in 2017, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, Kartje points out that Mundelein’s enrollment has remained steady in the past several years, hovering at around 200 students.
Once a man enters the seminary — a graduate degree program that takes between four and six years to complete — leaders at Mundelein try to address student concerns about church life, which can be isolating, Kartje said. Each student is offered professional counseling and a spiritual adviser, a priest who can offer guidance.
“The whole idea behind seminary is that it’s a discernment process. There’s no presumption on day one he’ll be ordained a priest,” he said, adding that 10 to 20 percent of students leave each year before reaching ordination. “It’s a complete altering of who you are.”
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