In 1965, there were an estimated 60,000 Catholic priests living in the United States. By 2022, that number had dropped to around 35,000, even as the country’s population had grown by 100 million.

In a new documentary, Discerning the Call: Change in the American Priesthood, two Fordham students seek to explain why.

“Today, there are not as many men joining [the priesthood], and they join later,” said rising junior Jay Doherty, the film’s co-director.

“There are all sorts of different changes that have impacted the church and vocational discernment, and we wanted to tell the story of those changes through the lens of American history,” Doherty said.

Doherty, who majors in digital technologies and emerging media and philosophy, directed the film along with Patrick Cullihan, FCRH ’24, a fellow Duffy Fellow at Fordham’s Center on Religion and Culture. They conducted 30 hours of interviews with 27 priests, many of them residents of Fordham’s Jesuit communities. The film debuted in April at a Fordham Center on Religion and Culture event at the Howard Gilman Theater in Manhattan and is now available online. 

High-profile Catholic leaders such as Cardinal Timothy Dolan and James Martin, S.J., editor at large at America magazine, make appearances, as does Fordham faculty member Bryan Massingale, S.T.D.

A Culture Long Gone

Cardinal Dolan spoke about how, in the years leading up to and during World War II, a strong “Catholic culture” made the vocation much more common than it is now. Catholics were born in their own hospitals, lived in predominantly Catholic neighborhoods, attended their own schools, and married other Catholics.

“With the collapse of the Catholic culture, that kind of external prop and encouragement to priestly vocations would have gone,” he said.

Dolan, who himself entered the seminary right out of high school, said that means fewer men are taking that path as teenagers. 

“Now, the decision to become a priest would not be something imposed from the outside. It would not be something that would just be expected. It’s something that is a radical choice,” he said.

The priesthood has also been attracting more men who identify as theologically orthodox; the filmmakers note that a recent survey found the percentage of priests who identify as such increased from 20% in 1970 to 85% in 2020.

Stricter Requirements

Father Martin noted that one of the changes that affected recruitment into the Society of Jesus was stricter entrance requirements implemented in the 1960s. That resulted in fewer men joining, which some church leaders have welcomed, as it means those who do are more committed. 

For the church to grow, though, Martin said leadership might have to also come from those in the pews.

“I think that the Holy Spirit might be calling lay people to a more active participation in the church,” he said in the film.

A Complex Issue

Father Massingale noted that many incorrectly assume the decline can be pinned on the church’s requirement that priests remain celibate.

“That’s certainly the case for a given segment, but it’s never been a complete explanation for all groups in the church,” he said, noting that racism also played a role.

“For many Black young men, another reason why they never entered the priesthood was because they were never asked.”

Doherty said the filmmakers wanted to include men spanning a wide range of ages, from 20-somethings to retired priests. 

Each one had an intensely personal reason for joining, he said, noting that he hopes to create a second film from unused footage focusing on these stories. He’s also interested in stories from women religious. 

In the meantime, the young directors are receiving recognition for their first film. It has been featured on SiriusXM’s Catholic Channel and WFUV, and in June, it was named the 2024 recipient of Fordham’s William F. DiPietra Award in Film.

Rediscovering Faith

For Doherty, the project has enabled him to explore his own faith.

“When I came to Fordham, I think I really rediscovered the faith and what it means to be Catholic,” he said. 

“I had many interactions with Jesuits, and they were all so brilliant and interesting,” he said. 

“I found myself wondering, ‘How did they come to this life?’”

In the hand-written note to James Martin, S.J., editor of the Outreach website, the pope mentions Fordham by name and sends his prayers and best wishes for presenters and attendees.

“I send my best regards to the members of the meeting at Fordham University,” reads the translation of the letter, which Pope Francis wrote in Spanish and dated May 6, 2023.  “Thank you for delivering it to them. In my prayers and good wishes are you and all who are working at the Outreach Conference.”

It’s the third letter that Pope Francis has written in support of an Outreach conference.

“I’m grateful for the Holy Father’s warm letter, which is a wonderful blessing for everyone joining us this weekend at the conference,” said Father Martin. “And it’s a special grace for LGBTQ Catholics to know that the pope is praying for them.”

Fordham President Tania Tetlow will be a keynote speaker at this year’s event, which will also feature a representative from the Vatican.

Read more on the Outreach website. 

“When I look at Edwards Parade, I see it very differently than the way that you do,” he said, speaking from the Terrace of the Presidents during the videocast 175th Commencement ceremony. “As I gaze out on it, it is packed to overflowing, with you, the members of the Class of 2020, and the throngs of fans who gathered to hail and to toast you. So my dear friends, welcome home.”

Though the coronavirus pandemic made it necessary to postpone the traditional pomp and circumstance, Fordham’s video webcast of the 175th Commencement recognized more than 5,500 graduates, many of whom celebrated in their own homes while tuning in. The University plans to hold an in-person Commencement on campus when public health officials and the governor deem it safe to do so.

During the ceremony, the deans of each of Fordham’s schools and colleges, dressed in their traditional academic robes and participating from their own homes, presented their candidates for graduation to Father McShane, who officially conferred their degrees. Each school also set up a recognition page with audio slides for all of the graduates—some of which contained photos and personal messages. Fordham Law held a virtual diploma ceremony on Monday; the graduate division of the Gabelli School of Business will hold one on Tuesday.

A Longing to Be Together

The Class of 2020 was always a unique class, Father McShane said, but what they’ve had to face in the last three months truly sets them apart.

“You are a class that has been tried and tested as no other class in our history has been,” he said. “Three months ago, your final semester Fordham, a semester that should have been a joyous and carefree victory lap, was disrupted. Your world was turned completely upside down. Innocent pleasures vanished overnight. You experienced the loss of sacred memories with your friends, and understandably, you mourned.”

At the Baccalaureate Mass on Friday night—also presented via videocast—James Martin, S.J., editor-at-large of America magazine, said that these feelings of mourning were natural. Participating from his home, Martin received an honorary doctorate of humane letters and served as homilist at the Mass, which was celebrated in the University Church and featured a Zoom choir performance with students singing from their respective locations.

In thinking about the Class of 2020, Father Martin said, he was reminded of the Gospel passage about the Road to Emmaus. Two disciples were walking along the road, and before the resurrected Jesus joined them, they uttered what Martin called the saddest words in the New Testament—“we had hoped.”

“And I bet I know that you may have been thinking some version of those words in the last few weeks—we had hoped,” Martin said. “We had hoped that we’d be able to say a real goodbye to some of our classmates. We had hoped that we would have an amazing and fun last semester. We had hoped that things would have been different for graduation. And it’s okay to feel those feelings—they’re natural, human, and real.”

Still, Martin urged the graduates to remember that they were not on this journey alone.

“Even amidst the sadness, confusion, and fear, God is on your side,” Martin said. “When you think about your future right now—figuring out what to do, looking for a job, mapping out your life, remembering that it’s not just you struggling on your own, know God is with you.”

Fordham College at Rose Hill valedictorian Rosemarie McCormack, FCRH ’20, said that the day was full of ironies for her, particularly since she had worked at previous commencement ceremonies as a student.

“But the bittersweet ceremonies today are a testament to something special about Fordham,” said McCormack, speaking from her home in Missoula, Montana. “We are a community. We only miss each other because there is something to miss.”

The Resilient Class

It’s that ability to try and find the bright side that gives the Class of 2020, dubbed both the dodransbicentennial class and the visionary class by Father McShane, another attribute to their names, according to Kaylee Wong, GABELLI ’20.

“When we arrived on campus back in 2016, Father McShane called us, the Class of 2020, ‘the visionary class,’ but in the past few months we have learned we are more than that,” she said in a video to her classmates. “We are the resilient class.”

Father McShane echoed that sentiment and said the class, which had to move back home and finish their semester online, had learned a new set of lessons.

“In the process, you learned to see things in entirely new ways,” he said. “You learned to see things with the eyes of the heart. You became men and women of wisdom and character. You became women and men who became, as your class here calls you to be, truly visionary.”

Michele Kalt, a new graduate of the Graduate School of Social Service, said that the Class of 2020 was uniquely prepared to handle this challenge.

“I find great comfort knowing that you, my fellow classmates, will be dispatched as torchbearers of hope and beacons of light in a world that needs us now more than ever,” she said in a video speech to her classmates.

Hayley Williams, FCLC ’20, said in a video message just after the Baccalaureate Mass that she had been trying over the last few weeks in quarantine to handle feeling helpless and apathetic.

“My actions seem to impact little outside of my own home,” she said.

This left her thinking, “after four years at Fordham, what did I gain? Where is my purpose in this?”

Williams said that a sentence from Father McShane kept coming back to her—“Fordham students will leave being bothered.”

“Simple, yes, but this is the most valuable lesson I learned in college,” she said. “Fordham asked me to be a woman for others. I could not be a Fordham student and be numb to the needs of my city, my community … With all the hurt and disappointment and loss plaguing our world, I cannot let myself be unbothered by it. We cannot let ourselves be unbothered.”

‘Bold and Infectious Love’

It’s these lessons learned by graduates, both over the course of their time at Fordham, but in particular, over the last three months, that can help shape them into men and women for others, Father McShane said.

“Never forget the hard, necessary, and saving lessons that you have learned in the course of the past three difficult months,” he said. “Shape the world’s future with and through them. Teach these lessons to others, not by preaching about them, but by living by them and living them. Live heroically. Live with bold and infectious love. For this, my dear friends, this is your special burden, your mission, and your pride.”

In their reflections before the Baccalaureate Mass, students Joseph Papeo, FCRH ’20, and Emma Quinn, FCLC ’20, said that although the Class of 2020 is separated right now, they will always be connected by their Fordham roots.

“This celebration reminds us that no matter where life may find us, we are united by our memories and our experiences as Fordham students,” Papeo said.

Most of all, Papeo urged his classmates to be prepared to embrace the values Fordham taught them as they approach the next phase of their journey.

“As we’ve heard so many times before, but need to hear now more than ever, let us all go out, when it’s safe, and set the world on fire,” he said.

To view the full commencement ceremony and class videos, visit fordham.edu/commencement.

In a wide-ranging, occasionally raucous interview, Sister Johnson, a distinguished professor of theology who joined the Fordham faculty in 1991 and is retiring this year, talked with James Martin, S.J., editor at large of America magazine.

Father Martin credited Johnson’s scholarship with changing his life.

“On behalf of all of us nonprofessional theologians, and non-academics like myself, thank you for doing so much for making contemporary theology, feminist theology, and especially Christology so accessible to the general reader,” he said.

Their conversation revolved primarily around Creation and the Cross, (Orbis, 2018), Sister Johnson’s 11th book, which she recently discussed for a Fordham News podcast.

Bidding Adieu to Satisfaction Theory

Sister Johnson explained how the goal of the book is to help ease the satisfaction theory of atonement into retirement. The idea, which was promoted by St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, in the 11th century, in a tome titled Cur Deus Homo, was an attempt to answer a fundamental question for Christians: Why did God take the form of a human being, in Jesus Christ, and then die?

“The answer was, in order to pay back to God a certain satisfaction for the dishonor that human sin has caused,” she said.

“[According to Anselm], sin dishonors God, and we owe a debt. We human beings can’t repay that debt because the person we have offended is infinite, and therefore God became a human being and took on the debt and paid it back through death.”

Over time, however, others used this theory to explain how God is angry and vengeful, and “needed the bloody death of an innocent person in order to forgive us,” Sister Johnson said.

“That sounds very bold and bald, but that is what it has come down to over the centuries,” she said, noting that contrary to traditional ministry, Jesus was not born to die. His death, she said, was a result of his dogged, uncompromising preaching and the difficulties he created for the Roman Empire.

A Powerful Alternative

The solution, she said, is accompaniment theory.

“In Jesus, we have God with us, who has gone into the worst kind of death, in order to be with every single creature that dies, with the hope for something more. With that, we open up into the rest of creation,” she said.

Father Martin offered his own view of St. Anselm’s text. “Having read Cur Deus Homo way back in philosophy, [satisfaction theory]really bothered me, he said. “To have a professional theologian put it in its place and as you say, ‘give it a well-deserved retirement,’ was a relief for me, because I think it’s a burden for a lot of people.”

Sister Johnson noted that the idea has been questioned before. St. Thomas Aquinas first pointed out the absurdity of human kind’s salvation being contingent upon the death of an innocent man, and even Pope Benedict wrote disapprovingly of it when he was a Cardinal.

She said the key to “accompaniment theory” is the idea of deep incarnation, and a closer examination of the word “flesh,” as featured in the Gospel of John 1:14: “The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us,” the scripture says.

According to Sister Johnson’s research, she said, the word flesh refers not to human beings, but to “what is vulnerable, finite, transient, and subject to death and pain.” She noted that the first appearance of the word goes all the way back the book of Genesis, in the story of Noah and the Great Flood.

“If you track this through the Bible, it become a very powerful tradition that we’ve missed,” she said.

Love the Cockroach

Sister Johnson said that embracing accompaniment theory means one should look to all creatures as kin, and not consider yourself as yourself as the pinnacle of a pyramid of life. This led to the most humorous moment of the evening, as an audience member wondered in the Q&A session, how could they possibly look at cockroaches as kin?

“Truthfully, you have to admire the cockroach. It has tremendous staying power, and it has the power to adapt to all kinds of place, including your kitchen,” she said, adding that loving them does not mean letting you run roughshod over you.

“Pope Francis writes at the end of Laudato si that ‘Every creature will be resplendently transfigured and with us, enjoying the beauty of God.’ So I think the cockroaches will be there too.”

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, called Sister Johnson a source of great inspiration, challenge, and a great love of God. And like God, he said, she is hard to categorize.

“It is for the benefit of the church that you’re hard to nail down, hard to categorize. You dance with the questions, and therefore you play with God, and God plays with your heart, and that allows you to do all you have done to become the iconic feminist theologian of American theological history,” he said. “for which we are deeply grateful.”

Proceeds from a reception earlier in the evening reception supported the Elizabeth Johnson endowed scholarship, which supports female Ph.D. candidates on the verge of finishing their dissertations.

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