U.S. Catholic Bishops to Set Guidelines for More Than 30,000 Lay Workers

WASHINGTON -- Faced with a serious and continuing decline in the number of Roman Catholic priests, the nation's bishops are acting on new guidelines for more than 30,000 lay employees who help fill the gap.

These workers are known as "lay ecclesial ministers," though some bishops worry that this undercuts the ministry of ordained priests. The guidelines distinguish lay workers from the bishops and priests who supervise church work.

In a last-minute change before Tuesday's action, the drafting committee dropped a statement that the shrinking ranks of U.S. priests make "lay ministers even more needed today."

Actually, the shrinking ranks of priests in the US is probably due a denial of the faith by a significant number of professed Catholics - the embracing of contraception, abortion, homosexuality, and radical whacked-out ideologies completely incompatible with the faith. Combined with the observation that parishes or dioceses which water down the faith seem to generate few, if any, vocations to the priesthood, I can only conclude that much more work needs to be done to teach and affirm the Faith as handed on to us from the Church at the direction of our Lord.

People deperately need to understand that to be Catholic, one needs to "believe" what the Church "believes".

Link.