Thursday, May 8, 2008

New priests in USA - including a Twin!

This month, our parish will see two seminarians ordained to the deaconate! I read with interest on Zenit about "The Class of 2008: Survey of Ordinands to the Priesthood" performed by the Georgetown University. Their annual survey shows one of the 401 is a twin!! "Brandon Jones, 37, of the Diocese of Charlotte, North Carolina, has an identical twin brother, Chandler, who is an Anglican minister. Both were raised as Southern Baptists." Two are from Notre Dame: Kevin Bauman, 47, is a former vice chairman of the Romance Language Department at the University of Notre Dame. David Link, 72, is a former dean of the University of Notre Dame Law School and a widow."
Other interesting tidbits: The response rate from 335 ordinands included 242 for the diocesan priesthood and 77 for the religious priesthood. Another 16 ordinands did not specify whether they were being ordained to diocesan or religious priesthood. Most ordinands have been Catholic since birth, and half of them attended a Catholic elementary school. They are somewhat more likely than other U.S. Catholic adults to have attended a Catholic high school ,and they are much more likely to have attended a Catholic college. The youngest ordinand is 25 and the oldest is 76. Five ordinands are being ordained to the priesthood at age 65 or older.

1 comment:

Ana Braga-Henebry said...

Fascinating Stats! Any count on homeschool background yet?