Talk:Priest shortage in the Catholic Church

message: A further cause, which is frequently seen by analysts in surveys, is the fact that studied homosexual men have rarely chosen this occupation in the last 20-25 years in Western/Central Europe, electing instead to choose a different career path and find a life partner, and no longer using priesthood as a "hiding place."GLGerman 14:50, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: what analysts, which surveys? Freder1ck 15:17, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: Homosexual students in western european states go today a different way in life. They do not study any longer catholic theology. They are not afraid to live open gay/lesbian in Europe and they marry in their lifes. This was different before Stonewall and the liberalization in modern western european states. Many gay students became priests, so that no one asked them, why they don' t have a woman. GLGermann (talk) 10:27, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Homosexual people 

message: I suggest that either this article be merged with the article about the Catholic priesthood, or it be completely rewritten.  Not to criticize any non-native speakers, but the English is a little hard to understand (run on sentences, etc.), and needs to be cleaned up significantly. Inquisitive89 (talk) 05:38, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that this article should should be deleted. It's completely worthless and non-encyclopedic drivel, and dripping with POV. I've deleted the section titled "background" as it was horribly POV and amounted to little more than a commercial plug for the two books mentioned, both of which were fringe and not RS. The BBC article is also not a RS for this type of article, and it was misinterpreted to boot. I'm not convinced an article on this topic belongs in Wikipedia anyway. The material can be covered in another, already existing article, as you suggested Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 11:30, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: 2014 now and this article is still terrible.  I've tried to improve what I see as the most objective problems but I'd be in favour of deleting or merging it as well. --145.226.30.45 (talk) 17:07, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merger 

message: The statistics from the Vatican source really do not have anything to do with the topic of this article, and placing them here invites SYNTH. The figures cover very broad geographical areas (North and South America are considered together, for example), whereas priest shortages are a more local phenomenon. The Vatican figures also do not specify which percentage of the priests listed are active. In the US, for example, a very high percentage of priests are beyond retirement age. Furthermore, there is no link between the number of active priests and the number of faithful they are supposed to serve, nor between the rate of increase/decrease of the former with that of the latter.
In short, the figures simply shed no light whatsoever on the phenomenon of priest shortages. Statistics that would be useful would 1) cover individual countries, not continents; 2) take into account the percentage of active priests; and 3) relate the number of active priests with the number of faithful. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 18:19, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deleting Vatican figures 

message: The consequences section is almost entirely original research. The paragraph about lay people becoming involved is totally irrelevant and reflects neither the intent nor practice of Church. In fact the article itself states: "this is not a matter of deacons or lay ecclesial ministers taking over priestly roles, but of priests no longer taking over diaconal or lay roles." The shifting of these roles has nothing to do with a priest shortage and simply reflects a common misperception. Similarly, the section about celibacy is clearly not a consequence but the opposite--a cause. The rest has some valid points but is completely unsourced. As far as I can see, this section must be rewritten or taken out entirely. 8bitW (talk) 04:22, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: yes, it does look like the section needs to be rewritten the sources did not support the content from the time they were added, e.g. . –BoBoMisiu (talk) 16:08, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
replies: text:  If you feel it is not supported by the sources, feel free to delete it. 8bitW (talk) 16:53, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'm still reading the sources. Nevertheless, other sources seem to be cherry picked from also, e.g. the 2005 Hoge lecture was the bases of his 2005 essay that is far more nuanced than the quote would suggest. –BoBoMisiu (talk) 16:58, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I did some cleanup - that last paragraph just had to go. The rest will just take some wikignoming to make acceptable. Argyriou (talk) 19:59, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

text: Should there be a "causes" section? Hoge's paper and speech seem to be a useful starting point, but is there much more on why there are fewer men entering seminary? Also, I'm not sure the sections as they exist are useful - perhaps some other arrangement would be better? Argyriou (talk) 20:17, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Original research 

message: I read the captions. If you do it for one published year then do it for the rest but be consistent. I think the figures should be by date of publication since that is the latest date. Also, the world data and US data do not have the same collation date but do have the same publication year. In other words, I think the article should include based on the column headings in CARA tables. –BoBoMisiu (talk) 20:09, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  CARA figures are 2014