Priest Shortages and Beer

According to the BBC, a diocese in England has decided to use beer mats and posters as part of a campaign to recruit more priests: "The Church is launching a recruitment campaign that will use beermats in pubs and posters on the London Underground to promote the priesthood." Link.

The article also discusses the same old story: there's a priest shortage.

The reality, however, is that there's probably a poor priest distribution. Consider this statistic from the June 2005 issue of Touchstone: "There were nearly 50,000 more seminarians in 2001 than in 1978, when John Paul II became pope, and the attrition rate for seminarians declined during that time from 9% to 6.9%."

Thing is, the vocations are coming outside the West: in Africa, Asia, and Central America. Hence, we don't see them and, indeed, experience a shortage.