Vocation Shortage? No, Vocation Boom.... or rather, Vocation Boom-Boom

An article about identical twins about to be ordained.

The Koenigsknecht family through the years has certainly done their part for Mother Church, uncles and cousins, and....

But even more astounding is their parish, in fact, their area of Michigan, where two tiny farm towns have given the People of God 44, yes, that's right, 44 priests over the years, (this is stretching back to the 1830s.) These 2 towns have a combined population of fewer than 2000 people.)

As a point of reference, my former town was considered a vocations hotbed,  remarkable for, since it's founding around 1900, for having had 14 or so "sons of the parish[es]" ordained, and this a town of around 5000.


The Lansing Journal covers the story too, and tells us that the Diocese of Lansing has five new priests this year, well done, I think, for one of its size.

We spent four months or so in that diocese once year, and as I recall, parish hopping f a Sunday morn, (which I love to do when traveling,) was not quite the crap shoot it was in many places.
We seldom, if ever that I recall, found ourselves in the middle of a bizarre Mass, as was so often the case in many parts of the country; no puppet sermons, no self-hypnosis, no skull-splitter "liturgical" music, no "progressive" ceremonies, ("progressive" in the sense of "progressive dinner" where one moves from one place to another for each course, and it wasn't Palm Sunday or the Paschal Vigil...) -- and yes, I encountered all of these.

The NY Times has an article on this as well.

I am certain the large families are an important factor in this presbyteral bounty, but I must wonder if smaller parishes aren't a major part of helping young men discern a calling, by each member of the church having a closer connection with the pastor.
In which case, the trend to mega-churchdom because of a vocations shortage becomes a vicious cycle.