Saturday, January 8, 2022

Clergy Mortality in Ireland

More than 20% of priests and brothers have died in past three years? I was interested to read this in the Irish Examiner. My first reaction was to doubt the headline figure as being implausible - or at the very least giving a misleading picture of the situation in Ireland. That being said - and I have been saying this for years - most people both inside and outside the Church don't have a good grasp of how quickly the cohort of clergy in Ireland is aging and how quickly the numbers of serving priests in our dioceses will decline over the next 5 to 10 years. 

However, it seems to me that the article is playing fast and loose with the numbers. It speaks about a total number of deaths from amongst priests and brothers of 556 over the calendar years 2019-2021 inclusive. It says this represents "more than 21%" of "priests and brothers". If 556 represents 21%, then the total number of "priests and brothers" is 2,648. If it represents 22% of "priests and brothers", then the total number is 2,527. The figures given in the article say that between "working priests" and "retired priests", the total number of priests in Ireland in Ireland at the end of 2018 was a little over 2,500. The article is very vague about the details, but this seems to be a count of diocesan priests, whereas the count of deaths seems to include not just diocesan priests, but also religious priests and religious brothers. It's a basic rule of statistics that the numerator and the denominator for a percentage must be counting the same thing. You can't take the number of deaths from a larger population and then express it as a percentage of a smaller population, and then claim to be making a meaningful statement. Granted, the article suggests that the 556 is an undercount of the total deaths between priests and brothers, but without a good argument, you can't just assume that the undercount of deaths justifies using the wrong denomnator.

I decided to try and come up with a more accurate picture of what might be going on. Online I found what purport to be the latest statistics reported by Irish dioceses to the Vatican regarding clergy numbers. Most of the statistics are from 2019, with some dioceses reporting figures from 2018 or 2020. Anyway, according to THOSE figures the number of diocesan priests (with no distinction between active and retired) is just shy of 2,400, and the number of religious priests is just over 1,200. I wasn't able to find good figures for religious brothers, but they are relatively few in number. Consequently, the total number of priests in the country should be in or around 3,600. That would make a death toll of about 550 represent 15.5% of priests over the past 3 years. However, that figure is unsatisfactory. I'm not totally sure how reliable the figures reported to the Vatican are. I know that the numbers listed online for my own diocese seem to undercount the number of religious priests in the diocese. Plus, the number of deaths does have a question mark over it. 

I'll add one more data point in terms of national figures - I had a look at the list of authorised solemnisers of marriage in the Republic of Ireland as of this month. I counted those nominated by the Catholic Church. The number is over 4,000. Given that the number of permanent deacons in the country is numbered in the dozens, and given that many clergy whose ministry is primarily in Northern Ireland won't be included in this list, unless there are a huge number of deceased clergy on the list of solemnisers, it could well be that the 'official' 3,600 priests is an undercount. 

I might add that it is profoundly disappointing that basic statistics about the number of clergy and clergy mortality doesn't seem to be readily availible from official sources. 

I will add one other observation - the number of clergy deaths in Ireland expressed as a percentage of total clergy will probably give a misleadingly pessimistic picture of what is happening. It is not uncommon for Irish priests serving abroad - either for foreign dioceses or with missionary orders - to return to Ireland due to age or ill-health. Their deaths will therefore make skew the figures as they will be included in Irish clergy deaths even though they might not have ministered in Ireland. 

Finally, over lunch, my colleagues and I decided to see what the numbers for the past 3 years look like in our own diocese. By our count, 7 of our diocesan priests died over the past 3 calendar years. This is from out of a population of just under 80 priests, counting both active and retired. This gives a mortality rate of just under 10%. Neither the sample size nor the length of time is enough to produce statisitically significant results, but the loss of those priests - some of them unexpected - has been a challenge for us as a diocese & is indicative of what the future has in store for us. Even though I take issue with the numbers produced by the ACP and the Irish Examiner, and argue that any numbers we come up with must come with a 'health warning', the challenge for the Irish Church is very real.