Vatican's New Outreach Office

"On Oct. 7, [2016,] Bishop Farrell will lead a new Vatican office focusing on ordinary Catholics throughout the world. It is part of the Vatican’s effort to reach out to more people in the pews." [1]  "[He] has been promoted to a new position at the Vatican where he will be the highest-ranking American working directly with Pope Francis." [2]  "The bishop of the Diocese of Dallas is still taken aback by the news. How did he get the attention of the pope?  'I don't know. I would love to know why,' Farrell said during [his] last interview in his Dallas office."

"Bishop Farrell says he has always promoted lay people. When he arrived in 2007 to a diocese with increasing tension after years of turmoil, he replaced most of the clergy in the administration with ordinary citizens." [3]  Running a diocese with 1.3 million Catholics [4] is very different from running all the dioceses in the world with 1.27 billion Catholics [5] under approximately 5,133 bishops [6] but one needs to start somewhere.

That somewhere is probably not hiring and paying ordinary citizens a salary to perform administrative work for a diocese, but to have more members of the clergy spending time with people in the pews.  Sadly, in the United States, "the number of priests (as well as nuns) has declined steadily over the past 50 years [see chart below]." [7]



This trend is not uniform globally.  "The number of Catholics in the world and the number of deacons, priests and bishops all increased in 2010, while the number of women in religious orders continued to decline, according to Vatican statistics." [8]

Statistics is an informative tool.  Sometimes what is being revealed by statistics which tracks the past is no longer relevant in the present.  Finding a way to change the trajectory of statistical graphs is ineffective at best, and too little, too late at worst.  In the case of the Catholic church, it has been in decline for quite some time, plagued with financial mismanagement and sex scandals.  As an institution, it has lost its compass which ought to be pointed in one direction only, which is toward God.  Instead, the strong magnetic attraction of Sin in all of its splendor has the church's compass pointed toward Satan.  No statistical study, however unbiased and accurate, can change that.

In its weakened state, the Catholic church cannot hope to reverse the course of its destiny toward defeat by the relentless advancement of secularism and the pervasiveness of Sin and its variations, not even with a new outreach office, regardless of who is being appointed to it.


[1] http://www.wfaa.com/news/local/dallas-county/dallas-catholic-bishop-prepares-for-move-to-vatican/327894646
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] https://www.ncronline.org/news/vatican/vatican-statistics-report-increase-baptized-catholics-worldwide
[6] http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2014/05/05/vatican-statistics-church-growth-remains-steady-worldwide/
[7] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/11/06/the-number-of-u-s-catholics-has-grown-so-why-are-there-fewer-parishes/
[8] http://www.catholicnews.com/services/englishnews/2012/vatican-says-number-of-catholics-priests-bishops-worldwide-increased.cfm