The decline in sponsoring oversight, the report says, has come about because “membership in religious life in the United States has dropped by nearly three-quarters in the past 50 years.”
“This trend continues unabated, largely due to the death of current members and unsuccessful recruiting of new members,” the ACCU posited.
Data from the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, a Georgetown-affiliated research group that provides social science analysis for the Catholic Church, shows the total number of Catholic religious — identified as monks, nuns, and priests — dropping from over 194,000 in 1970 to just above 50,000 last year.
The remaining members of religious orders have also grown older as their numbers have dwindled, with 70% of the remaining religious currently 70 years of age or older. (The report notes that “roughly 25 years ago, only 7% were age 70 or more.”)
Religious life, the ACCU states, is “a fraction of what it once was” during the decades when Catholic religious orders were building major educational and civil institutions around the country.
Sponsoring bodies are thus “finding ways to deploy their few remaining religious in effective board roles,” including “appointing surrogates, creating entire substitute organizations, or simply alerting their universities that they will cease sponsorship at a certain date.”