I saw a stat recently that said there are 35,000 Roman Catholic priests in America. I am quite astounded by how small that number is. I’m not astounded that the number has declined over the decades; that fact I’m well aware of. But I am astounded at how small that number is.
For comparison, there are some 180,000 Baptist ministers in America. There are 25,000 Presbyterian ministers in the USA. And these are only two of the protestant traditions. Lutherans are another 30,000. There are more Methodists pastors (36,000) than Catholic priests. And there dozens of other protestant traditions.
The small number of Catholic priests shows that there are a large number of parishioners per priest. If there are 65 million Roman Catholics in America, there is one priest per every 1857 parishioners. That is an extreme number compared to the Protestant world. Protestant churches, in my world, likely have only 100 members per minister. I think this matches with my understanding that average Roman Catholic is far less involved in their church than the average Protestant. A priest with 1800 parishioners might have time to baptize, marry, and bury them, but could scarcely be a regular “shepherd” of their lives.
Something else that this 35,000 number tells me, is that there are vastly more Bible scholars among the Protestant ranks than the Catholic ranks in America. Now, there might be more Catholics at the very top of scholarship—the Jesuits for example—but the number of serious evangelists, apologists, pastors, etc. could be 10 to 1 in favor of Protestant traditions over Catholic. I’m not one to think that the majority is always right, but it does make you wonder … why is it that so few Catholics become priests? Or so few Scholars become priests? Is it just because of the celibacy requirement? Or perhaps, those who study the Bible are just more likely to come to Protestant conclusions.