Reason 9

9. Because in less than seven years after [the] introduction of the New Mass, priests in the world decreased from 413,438 to 243,307 — almost 50% (Holy See Statistics).


I’d like to see these statistics. The numbers I’ve found suggest the drop in priests moved from just under 420,000 to about 410,000 in the seven years after the revision of the liturgy, than continued to drop until it reached it’s all time low of just over 400,000 in 1990. That’s a whopping 5%. In order to get the statistics they use, one would further need to use the total number of diocesan and religious priests for the first number, they only use the diocesan priests for the second. Even then there low is only 253,000 or so, a full 10,000 more than the number given here.

Simple put, this reason is not in the least valid as it is presenting absolutely and completely false statistics.

However, it is true that priest numbers dropped about 5%. Why? It probably has less to do with the revision of the liturgy and more to do with the way the most learned Catholics presented the teachings of the Second Vatican Council. Many seminaries taught that the Western Church would allow married priests soon and did not bother to instruct their seminaries on how to live a celibate life. And these men preceded to leave the priesthood when they found themselves incapable of leading the life no one prepared them for.

It is also interesting to note that at the present, diocesan numbers are up by 2,000 while religious priest numbers are down by over 10,000 (religious brothers are down by almost 25,000, sisters by a quarter million). The issue is not the Mass, but rather the entire way of living the Catholic life which was almost wholesale tossed out by people who pretended to understand the meaning of the Second Vatican Council.