c. 2008 Religion News Service

Average age of new Catholic priests is 37

(RNS) The average Roman Catholic priest being ordained in 2008 is 37 years old, white and born in the U.S. He was raised by two Catholic parents, attended Catholic elementary school, worked a full-time job before entering the seminary, and a friend or classmate has tried to talk him out of joining the priesthood.

Since 1998, the U.S. bishops’ conference has been keeping tabs on men entering the priesthood through yearly surveys. This year’s class, which includes 401 potential ordinands (335 responded to the survey), largely continues recent trends. Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate conducted the survey for the bishops.

Though the survey did not mention it, the 2008 class _ particularly its size _ also exhibits the church’s steep decline in vocations. In 2000 the church ordained 442 priests.

Men, especially those joining religious orders, are entering the priesthood later in life. Half of the ordinands are 34 or older; the average age is 37; among men joining religious orders it’s 39; priests ordained for dioceses on average are 36.

Nearly 70 percent of the ordinands are white and were born in the U.S. Mexico and Vietnam follow, with 7 percent and 6 percent of ordinands, respectively, born in those countries. On average, the foreign-born ordinands have lived in the U.S. for 13 years.

While Asians and Pacific Islanders are over-represented among ordinands based on the U.S. Catholic population at large, Latinos are under-represented. Thirty-five percent of U.S. adult Catholics are Latino, compared to 16 percent of this year’s graduating seminarians.

Nine in 10 ordinands have been Catholic since birth, with 84 percent raised by two Catholic parents. Slightly more than half attended Catholic elementary school, 41 percent a Catholic high school and 45 percent a Catholic college. By comparison, only 8 percent of all U.S. Catholic adults attended a Catholic college.

Almost 40 percent of the ordinands don’t have a college degree, a slight increase from previous years. Most worked a full-time job before entering the priesthood, most often as educators.

Eight in 10 said a priest encouraged them to join the priesthood. Half said a friend did the same, and 40 percent said their mother offered encouragement as well. But 60 percent also said that a friend or classmate tried to talk them out of it.

_ Daniel Burke

Beverly Hills rabbi named to top Orthodox post

(RNS) Rabbi Steven Weil of Beverly Hills, Calif., has been tapped as the next top leader of the nation’s Orthodox Jews.

Weil, 42, has been the spiritual leader of Beth Jacob Congregation, the largest Orthodox congregation in the U.S. outside greater New York, for eight years. He will become executive vice president of the Orthodox Union on July 1, 2009.

Weil succeeds Rabbi Tsvi Hersh Weinreb, who has held the job since 2002. Weinreb said he plans to continue working for the OU as the “public face” of the movement at conferences, speeches and in the media.

As executive vice president, Weil will handle the day-to-day leadership of the movement, while the OU presidency is a rotating position among senior rabbis.

Weil “brings energy, vision and an incredible work ethic to this position,” said Rabbi Stephen J. Savitsky, the OU’s current president. “We look forward to his leadership and building on the great foundation that has been established by Rabbi Weinreb.”

Weil was ordained at Yeshiva University in New York and also holds an MBA in finance from the Stern School of Business at New York University. He and his wife have seven children.

“There are untold numbers of Jews across the country who are missing out on a real connection to the richness and beauty of Jewish life because they don’t have the resources, critical numbers nor tools for growth,” Weil said in a statement.

“It is my dream that this position will afford me the opportunity to help them build the kinds of programs and experience the opportunities that they richly deserve.”

_ Kevin Eckstrom

Ed Dobson to help make school `spiritually contagious’

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (RNS) The Rev. Ed Dobson is living like Jesus these days _ growing his beard, eating kosher and avoiding work on the Sabbath _ and the new president of Cornerstone University says that’s just what his campus needs.

Cornerstone President Joe Stowell has named Dobson, a retired pastor and onetime acolyte of the religious right, to the new position of vice president for spiritual formation. Dobson will tend to the spiritual needs of students, faculty and staff as part of Stowell’s plan to make the Christian school “spiritually contagious.”

“I want him to bring his creative and innovative concepts to the task of stimulating the spiritual vitality of this campus,” Stowell said.

The appointment seems fitting for Dobson, 58, who has devoted this year to emulating Jesus _ literally _ as he battles Lou Gehrig’s disease.

“I have a deep interest in promoting the Jesus lifestyle,” said Dobson, who helped co-found the Moral Majority and later became a critic of the religious right. “If we can get students deeply committed to following Jesus’ teaching, we can probably change the world.”

Dobson is a former dean and vice president at the late Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. He was pastor at Calvary Church in Grand Rapids for 18 years before he retired in 2005.

Though slowed by his degenerative disease, Dobson said he will cut back on other activities to do as much as he can.

“I thought, `I can do six other things or I can do this one thing,”’ Dobson said. “Long term, I think the greater impact is in doing this one thing.”

_ Charles Honey

Quote of the Day: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

(RNS) “The only part of my faith that has any play in my judicial enterprise is whatever commandment it is _ the sixth _ thou shalt not lie.”

_ Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, when asked how Catholicism influences his judicial decisions. He was quoted on MSNBC’s “The Tim Russert Show.”

KRE/PH END RNS