(LifeSiteNews) – A recent survey of Catholic priests has found that younger clergy are increasingly more conservative, holding more strongly to the Church’s moral teachings and disapproving of the present pontificate.
According to an article of the Wall Street Journal titled, “U.S. Catholic Priests Are Increasingly Conservative as Faithful Grow More Liberal: Almost half of young clergy in a survey disapprove of the liberalizing Pope Francis,” the Austin Institute conducted research among Catholic clergy on controversial issues ranging from politics to theology and the Church’s teachings on sexual morality.
The study revealed that “younger Catholic priests and priests ordained in more recent years tend to be noticeably more conservative than older priests on a host of issues, including politics, theology and moral teaching. The Survey of American Catholic Priests has found that since the 1980s, successive cohorts of priests have grown more conservative, according to a 2021 summary report,” the Institute stated.
Raising questions on topics of well-defined Catholic doctrine that have taken center-stage in the German Catholic bishops’ infamous “Synodal Way” — with the German Bishops’ Conference officially advocating for a wholesale overturning of these fundamental Catholic teachings — the study found that “regarding the church’s prohibitions of contraception, masturbation, homosexual behavior and suicide, the impossibility of women’s ordination to the priesthood, and the necessity for salvation of faith in Jesus, each successive 10-year cohort of priests supports church teaching more strongly than the one before it.”
The study discovered that “those ordained in 2010 or later are the most conservative of all—and the least happy with Pope Francis, with roughly half disapproving of him, according to the Austin Institute survey.”
“The Vatican didn’t respond to a request for comment,” the Austin Institute stated.
The WSJ reported that according to Fr. Ezra Sullivan, an American Dominican ordained in 2011, who teaches at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome, “the youngest U.S. priests are a postmodern generation disillusioned with the ideas of progress and religious pluralism that found favor at Vatican II. Instead of focusing on interfaith dialogue for the sake of social justice, these priests are more likely to stress the reinforcement of Catholic identity and the winning of converts, said Father Sullivan, author of Alter Christus, “a new book about the priesthood.”
The article reported that priests’ views of Pope Francis “vary sharply by age,” detailing that “almost 80% of priests ordained before 1980 ‘approve strongly’ of the current pontiff, compared with 20% of those ordained in 2010 or later, according to the 2021 survey,” while “nearly half of the younger priests disapprove of the pope, either ‘strongly’ or ‘somewhat.’”
In comments to LifeSiteNews, a young American priest who was ordained within the last two years and who wished to remain anonymous said that “the findings of the Austin Institute do not surprise me in the least. There was a time in our country when society held the priesthood in high regard, and it was possible to live quite comfortably as a priest. This is no longer true. For a young man to enter the seminary today, he is swimming against the current. He’s pursuing a vocation that doesn’t make any sense to modern man. Why would he give up so much only to pat people on the back and continue business as usual?”
Reflecting on the social and moral destruction due to the sexual revolution that we are witnessing today the priest told LifeSiteNews that the young men who are deciding to enter the priesthood are not content with the status quo, because “the lie of relativism has been unmasked.”
“The young men entering the priesthood today have seen first hand the destruction caused by the sexual revolution and moral relativism. They are not becoming priests to live a life of comfort, or to continue business as usual. The lie of relativism has been unmasked.”
“What happens when you experience the healing power of Jesus Christ? You want to share it with others! The men who are entering the priesthood today have, very often, suffered firsthand the effects of relativism and the sexual revolution.”
However, the priest explained that “the rediscovery of the Church’s rich tradition—both in liturgy as well as doctrine—is a phenomena which goes far beyond young men who are being ordained to the priesthood.”
“Sadly, as the culture becomes more and more secular, young people are leaving the Church, and yet, those who do remain are looking for something different. They want purpose and meaning. They want beauty and truth. Young people today are searching for meaning, and the Holy Spirit is leading them to rediscover the truth and beauty of the Faith. Some may call this ‘conservative,’ but I prefer the name ‘Catholic,’” he said, affirming that “God is still with His Church.”