There’s an old saying I’ve heard on several occasions from friends in Europe that goes something like this: “Why is there so much faith to be found in Rome? Because everyone that goes to work there loses it.” Such a remark sums up a great fear that was doubtlessly on the minds of Church faithful everywhere during the conclave. Is the Roman Curia essentially a faithless place, driven solely by Vatican bureaucrats whose lives are no longer driven by a passion for the gospel and the work of the Church?

While Catholics and non-Catholics around the world spent countless hours staring at the chimney of the Sistine Chapel and then watching subsequent footage of our new Pope, I punctuated these actions by reading The Vatican Diaries, a recently released memoir by John Thavis, a longtime Vatican journalist for Catholic News Service. Thavis’ book isn’t so much a tell-all, as it is a series of personal reflections of his travels with John Paul II and Benedict XVI around the world and the characters he encountered along the way. The book, however, does provide some texture to the various scandals that have lingered in the media in recent years: the arrest of the Pope’s butler, the gay subculture that exists within the Vatican, the follies of Secretary of State Bertone, and a host of other very real problems that very need to be addressed.

There’s one name that is noticeably absent from the 300+ pages of Thavis’ book: Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now Pope Francis. We should be grateful that he’s absent from these accounts, as it confirms what we already know. He’s an outside man, not tied to the inner working of the Curia or any of its major players who at times seem more interested in sustaining an old boys network than in creating an environment of apostolic fraternity.

Francis offers us the hope of Church focused on the transformative power of the gospel message, as evidenced in his opening homily yesterday. In speaking to his brother bishops, he warned that “we can walk as much we want, we can build many things, but if we do not confess Jesus Christ, nothing will avail. We will become a pitiful NGO, but not the Church, the Bride of Christ.” While these words serve as an indictment of the current state of affairs, it’s also a path forward for what ails the Curia and the Church, at large.

In today’s New York Times, authors Patrick McCloskey and Joseph Harris took to the editorial page to announce that “Catholic parochial education is in a crisis.” In many regards, this is quite true. Any observer of the state of the Catholic education over the past few years will likely recall the difficulty in which Archbishop Chaput weighed the closing of the Philadelphia schools and in which Cardinal Dolan has considered the New York closings. A school closing is never made easily or lightly.

As the article mentions, at the heart of the Catholic school crisis is the increased reliance on lay people. With a decline in vocations, the Church has had to hire more lay people to staff these schools. This is a huge financial undertaking. In addition to salaries, there are other costs, such as health insurance, retirement packages, and other benefits that require the investment of significant resources—resources that were not expended during an era in which priests and nuns filled the bulk of these positions.

The authors of the Times op-ed call for the Church to shift its spending and increase their per-student contribution to Catholic schools. In addition they go on to accuse “Bishops [who] preach social justice but fail to practice it within the church.” While a conversation about spending may be appropriate (there should also be one about state legislation on school choice, which Archbiship Chaput rightly noted almost a year ago), I’d like to offer another solution: a renewed call for religious vocations which can serve these schools and dramatically reduce costs.

Last year marked a twenty year high in vocations to the priesthood, a resurgence of women—young women—accepting the call to religious religious life, and a major report in October found that there are an abundance of (over six-hundred thousand) Catholic men and women who are potential priests and sisters. Catholics should pray for and encourage these vocations, which would be a major part of the solution. Moreover, leadership matters—in any organization. As my research indicates, where the leadership of the diocese is theologically orthodox, there are more vocations that could fill the role of educators in these schools, the altars of the Churches, and a wide array of needs, both practical and spiritual, of the Church, at large.

The Church is being refined on many levels—including parochial education. A conversation about a return to orthodoxy—in our seminaries, in our churches, and in our schools—is a conversation that needs to be had prior to any about spending. Though I fear it will be a much harder one to have.

The Archdiocese of New York (where I consider it a privilege to be counted a member) has recently received some criticism for its low number of priestly ordinations this year. This past Saturday, Cardinal Dolan ordained two new priests at St. Patrick’s Cathedral–one a diocesan priest and the other a priest for the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal. While this number is small and unsustainable for a diocese that serves over 2 million Catholics, there is good explanation for this year’s low number, and even greater reason for optimism for the years to come. In a January 2012 interview with Catholic New York, New York’s vocations director, Fr. Luke Sweeney, explained the low number for this year noting that “the seminary formerly had a five-year program: one year of philosophy and four of theology. In 2006 the U.S. bishops asked for two years of philosophy; inserting the extra year caused a “gap year” in which there were no candidates.”

While dissidents within the Church may try to use this year’s low numbers in New York to bolster their calls for women’s ordination and a removal of the celibacy requirement (more…)