Hawai'i Catholic Church facing priest shortage

By Christie Wilson
Neighbor Island Editor

The Catholic Church in Hawai'i and across the country is experiencing a priest shortage at a time when church membership is growing substantially.

The Rev. Gary Secor said making a lifelong commitment is tough today. Advertiser librlary photo

Hawai'i has approximately 160 retired and active priests serving 215,000 Catholics in 66 parishes. The average age of the priests, including those in religious orders and military chaplains, is in the late 50s, said the Rev. Gary Secor, vicar for clergy and director of vocations for the Honolulu Diocese.

The last ordination of a new priest in the Honolulu Diocese was in January. With only one seminarian now in training, the next ordination won't be for another four or five years.

"We have been very lucky here in Hawai'i that we have gotten priests in the diocese from elsewhere and that's been a blessing. Without the priests from the Philippines helping out, we would be strapped," Secor said. "But it's a concern when the local church is not raising up our own vocation in numbers."

Seminarian John Souza, 32, of Pearl City, worries that he will find few peers in his age group when he is ordained after finishing graduate studies on the Mainland.

"In the priesthood, friendship is important because even though diocesan priests work alone, having friends prevents you from becoming lonely," Souza said.

Clergy burnout also has become a cause for concern as fewer priests are called on to serve growing ministries.

"In general, all parishes have access to a priest on a regular basis," Secor said. "Where the concern is in some situations where you have a priest taking care of two small parishes, and in some of the larger parishes where there used to be three or four priests, there are only one or two. There are very few parishes that have three priests."

Catholic priests are either diocesan priests or priests that belong to a religious order such as the Jesuits, Franciscans or Dominicans. Diocesan priests generally work in parishes, schools or other church institutions.

Religious orders recruit and train their own clergy, who receive duty assignments from their order and may serve as educators, missionaries, or as part of a monastery.

In addition to the vows of celibacy and obedience taken by diocesan priests, priests in religious orders also take vows of poverty.

Finding interested men

In general, preparation for the priesthood requires a four-year college degree followed by four or more years of theology study at a seminary that may include work in the field. Because graduate-level theological studies are not available in Hawai'i, local seminarians must complete their training on the Mainland.

Both the Honolulu Diocese and the Congregation of Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary operated high-school seminaries on O'ahu that were phased out in the late 1960s and early 1970s. With those institutions gone, the target recruiting group now is college-age men.

"The reality is that those people are not making this sort of commitment until they are in college or later," Secor said. "Very rarely do I get someone calling me who's 18."

Secor said that most recruiting occurs through personal contact or talks at parishes or Catholic schools. On occasion, the diocese will set up a booth alongside hotels, store chains and the military at college and career fairs.

As a young child growing up in Pearl City, the Very Rev. Clyde Guerreiro knew he wanted to be a priest, or maybe a pilot or a fireman. By the time he was 13 or 14, his choice was clear, and after attending St. Joseph's School in Waipahu, he enrolled in the old Sacred Hearts seminary in Hau'ula.

Now a priest for 26 years, a large part of his job as Congregation of Sacred Hearts provincial is recruiting.

Members of the Sacred Hearts order, which is celebrating its 175th year in the Islands, were the first Catholic missionaries to Hawai'i. The order's most well-known member is Father Damien de Veuster, who served Hansen's disease patients in the Kalaupapa settlement on Moloka'i and was beatified in 1995.

From the beginning, the Sacred Hearts priests, many of them from Belgium, were successful recruiters in Hawai'i, Guerreiro said. Even today, half the order's 39 local members are from the Islands. However, at age 53, Guerreiro is one of the order's youngest members.

The number of young people entering the priesthood through the Sacred Hearts order has declined since the 1970s, Guerreiro said, and "before 1996, we were getting no one."

The order, which has more than 3,000 members worldwide, stepped up its recruiting efforts and the numbers have been slowly rising.

"We're hoping it's not just a blip," he said.

The order has a full-time recruiter in Washington, D.C., who is being assigned to Hawai'i this summer.

Guerreiro said he tries to engage young people in parishes and schools to consider a vocation.

"You have to articulate and invite them, even if they think what you're asking them is crazy," he said. "You really have to be proactive. You can't sit and wait for them to come to you." He believes the biggest attraction is the community life that a religious order can offer "and being in a group that is clear about its mission."

The local Sacred Hearts contingent has one seminarian, a 36-year-old man from Tonga who will take his final vows in July. He likely will be ordained as a priest in another year or so. The order also has four novices, two each from Hawai'i and the Mainland, who are about to take temporary vows.

Respect slipping

Guerreiro agrees that religious vocations have slipped a notch or two on the list of respected professions, even among Catholics.

"When I hear different conversations or attend commencements, they will bring out a successful lawyer or a doctor, or a professional engineer or someone like that," he said. "You never see them bring out a professional priest or brother or sister."

Societal changes have had the greatest impact on bringing new members into the clergy, Secor said. With wider educational and employment opportunities, the priesthood is no longer seen as a way for young men to get ahead.

Having a child in the clergy no longer is seen by many families as a great honor, and religious vocations have become more at odds with the American mainstream.

"The priesthood asks for a permanent, lifetime commitment to a public ministry and a church, and in general, people in society today have a tough time making a lifetime commitment," Secor said. "We see that in marriages and in the number of times people change jobs. When you have to say we want you to do this forever, it's very difficult.

"Also today, we tend to be somewhat materialistic. Lots of people want to help and serve. There's a lot of generosity in young people, but there's always the lure of money. In our profession, money's not the thing."

Salaries for diocesan priests that in 1999 ranged from $13,000 to $15,500 reinforce that point.

Celibacy vow problematic

The vow of celibacy also is a deterrent. "We live in a very sexualized culture and sex sells everything," he said. "When you talk about not having sex, sometimes people look at you like you're nuts."

Even the idea of never being able to marry is difficult for many to accept, Secor said, and one that society doesn't support. It's why Souza's family strongly objected when he announced his vocation.

"Like many parents, they resisted it as first. They weren't too pleased about it," Souza said. "All parents in Hawai'i want to be grandparents, and there's only one way that happens. It was very clear they weren't too thrilled about it at first.

"One of things that make a vocation difficult in Hawai'i is that you're fighting the culture of 'ohana, the culture of family that is so ingrained in the cultural norm. A life of celibacy is completely antithetical to that."

Now that they have accepted his commitment to the church, his parents are his biggest supporters, said Souza, a graduate of Pearl City High who is attending St. Francis Seminary in San Diego.

Secor, a 1969 graduate of Maryknoll High School who has been a priest for 25 years, attended the diocese's St. Stephen's Seminary in Kane'ohe while doing undergraduate work at Chaminade. He finished his studies at St. Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park, Calif.

He was 13 when he started hanging around St. John Vianney Church in Kailua and found a mentor in the church's founding pastor, the Rev. John Read.

Secor said the call to a vocation does not arrive in a bolt of lightning or a heavenly chorus, but through a gradual process of self-realization.

"Some people may have something dramatic happen to them, but in general a calling is something more gradual that you discover about yourself," he said. "There's no one moment you can point to."

Secor said it's too early to determine whether the widening sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church will affect recruitment. While the news has saddened and demoralized many priests, he said the crisis may actually spur more Catholics to support the church by joining the clergy.

Souza said the scandal has strengthened his resolve.

"Although it's sad and heartbreaking, it's a dose of reality that the church is both human and divine," he said. "And when the human side comes under scrutiny, it's important to cling closer to the divine of the church."

To address the priest shortage, the Honolulu Diocese has been considering "clustering," where several churches in the same geographic area share pastors, resources and programs.

Another response to the priest shortage in Hawai'i and across the nation is the use of permanent deacons and teams of clergy and laity to perform certain traditional functions. Permanent deacons — who number 13,348 in the American church — can preach, perform marriages, funerals and other liturgical functions but are not allowed to ordain other priests, perform last rites, hear confessions or consecrate the host during communion.

Secor also said the church must work harder at reaching out to the twentysomething crowd. There are well-established programs for married couples and teenagers, for example, but nothing similar for the group of young adults most likely to make a commitment to a vocation, he said.