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.

Today’s New York Times features a profile piece on Msgr. Gerald Ryan, the oldest working priest in the archdiocese of New York. The article portrays Msgr. Ryan as fully satisfied in his vocation, yet overworked and saddened by certain aspects of the state of the Catholic Church in America today, most notably the sexual abuse crisis. Still, the reader is likely to sense a deep spirit of joy that prevails in Msgr. Ryan and his work as a Catholic priest.

While the institution of the priesthood has been under constant attack from dissenters within the Catholic Church and outsiders opposed to her teachings—primarily the Church’s sexual ethics—the priesthood in the United States has experienced a profound renewal over the past ten years. As I have previously written on this blog, ordination rates are at a ten year high and the upward trend is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

Moreover, survey data demonstrate that  most priests, like Msgr. Ryan, are happier than ever with their vocation—even happier than most lay persons are in their careers. Two surveys completed by Fr.Rossetti—the first in 2004, and a follow-up in 2009—provides compelling evidence that not only demonstrates that priests are happy with their vocation, but that they are engaging in greater spiritual discipline, and have strongly embraced the celibate life as one of the essential elements of the priesthood. In 2004, only two years after the Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize winning  coverage of the clergy sexual abuse scandal, 90% of priests agreed with the statement:  “Overall, I am happy as a priest.”

In 2009, the number of priests who agreed with that same statement had increased to 92.4%. In addition, when asked if they would choose the priesthood if they could go back and do it all over again, over 80% said yes. While many Americans suffer from depression and serious work related stress, on the whole, priests are one of the happiest and most fulfilled working classes in the country.  These positive data on priestly satisfaction compare favorably with job satisfaction for other Americans.  In 1987, The Conference Board completed a survey of 5,000 households in America and found that 61.1% of Americans were satisfied with their jobs. The same survey, in 2009, found that the number of Americans who were satisfied with their jobs had decreased to 45% of households.

And, while the New York Times was quick to declare “the priesthood is graying” and cite a study by CARA (the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown) noting that in 2009 the average age of priests in the United States was at 63, compared to age 35 in 1970, they failed to mention another CARA report which found that “the average age of ordinands for the Class of 2012 is 34.6. The median age (midpoint of the distribution) is 31. Two-thirds (66 percent) are between the ages of 25 and 34. This distribution is slightly younger than in 2011, but follows the pattern in recent years of average age at ordination in the mid-thirties.”

Msgr. Ryan, at age 92, may soon be facing the end of his priestly ministry on this earth, but Catholics should welcome the news that there are new, young men eager to follow in his same calling—even if the New York Times is unwilling to report such data.

Christopher White is the coauthor of the forthcoming Beyond the Catholic Culture Wars (Encounter Books).

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 for priests, the latest data from the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) reveals that ordination rates to the priesthood are at a 20 year high. Last month, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “Traditional Catholicism is Winning,” Anne Hendershott and I argued that there are real signs of renewal within the priesthood. Moreover, these priests are attracted to the priesthood because they are fully committed to the teachings of the Church and desire a lifestyle that demands them to be counter-cultural.

In our forthcoming book, Beyond the Catholic Culture Wars (Encounter Books), my coauthor and I survey a number of dioceses across the United States that are experiencing an upward trend in their vocation rates. The two common characteristics of these dioceses is that they are led by bishops that are committed to a bold and courageous defense of orthodox Catholicism, and they are making vocations a number one priority within their dioceses through building strong vocation teams that are actively recruiting new priests. This is certainly the case in New York, where Cardinal Dolan’s enthusiastic defense of Church teachings has been showcased to the entire nation as a result of his battle with the Obama administration over the recent HHS mandate. But, it is also evident in the great work that Fr. Luke Sweeney is doing as vocations director of New York that I can personally attest to, as I have witnessed his efforts over the past few years. While seminary structural changes limited the ordinations this year, here’s what critics of the New York archdiocese have failed to mention: New York will likely ordain eight men to the priesthood next year, five men in 2014, and ten or more new priests in 2015.

New Yorkers–and the rest of the nation–should expect to see much more of this type of growth under the leadership of Cardinal Dolan and Fr. Sweeney in the years to come.