STUDENT numbers entering the national seminary at Maynooth to study for the priesthood have fallen for the third year running. The numbers entering most diocesan seminaries have remained at a very low level.
Just 18 students will enter the Maynooth seminary this autumn, compared to 26 last year, 37 in 1994 and 40 in 1993. That year saw a slight rise on 1992, but the long term trend has been steadily downwards. In 1991, there were 51 entrants, 61 in 1988 and 76 in 1986.
The senior dean, Father Francis Duhig, said yesterday the gradual drop in numbers in the past seven or eight years had accelerated in the past three, partly due to the scandals and other problems the Church had been facing. However, the longer term downward trend was a western European phenomenon, in which Ireland was belatedly following other countries.
In a recent article in the Furrow, Father Eamonn Conway, a theology lecturer at All Hallows College in Dublin, listed the factors in the decline in the numbers entering western European seminaries as "secularisation" the Church's more positive view of marriage as a vocation and also its openness to lay ministries the crisis regarding the credibility of Christian faith the Church's structures and the breakdown of influential role models."
The pattern of long term decline is repeated in the diocesan seminaries, although less dramatically, largely because their student numbers are already very low. Three new students will enter the Dublin diocesan seminary at Clonliffe this year, compared to two last year, bringing the total number of seminarians in training there to 17. In the 1950s, the Clonliffe student body was over 100. The number of entrants to Clonliffe in 1991 was eight, although it rose briefly to 14 two years later. In 1986, it had also been 14, while 20 years earlier it was 19.
In the Cashel diocesan seminary in Thurles, Co Tipperary, there are five new entrants this year, compared to four last year, bringing total student numbers to 28. Only three students are being interviewed for places in St Peter's College, Wexford.
The only diocesan seminary to have seen a significant increase in its entry class is St John's College in Waterford, which expects nine or 10 new seminarians this year, to bring its student body up to 22 or 23.
Its president, Rev Michael Mullins, said yesterday they had been praying every week for a dozen vocations, and they had got 10 new students in the college and two new Waterford students at Maynooth. He said the college was also strongly supported by the neighbouring Cloyne diocese, from where five of this year's entrants come, and Atlanta, Georgia, for which St John's trains Irish priests.