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That 65 deacons number is a bit inflated because they include their subdeacons in that number. The number of deacons is actually around 15, I believe.

I never thought of a web page soliciting donations.

To pay for seminary, I'm taking a bit of a different approach--I'm selling just about everything I own. I'm only keeping what will fit in my car.

I'm just selling just about everything I own to pay off my pressing debts like credit cards and such, then praying that I can put my student loan into deferment. Those loans are beasts that never really go away. I pray I'll find a way to make a hundred or two bucks a month to pay for car insurance and a cell phone -- I guess I don't really NEED the phone as such, but it helps one keep in touch. But maybe I should start a web page asking for donations to help me pay off loans so I can go to seminary...

http://www.kaldu.org/2008/03/Mar10_08E7.html

As it turns out, there appears to be more than one seminarian for the Chaldeans, at least going by this recent photo.

God bless the Holy Chaldean Catholic Church with a wave of new conversions through the intercession of the new and glorious martyrs. May a new era of missions to the muslims begin and may they find faith, salvation and liberation through Jesus Chirst our Great High Priest!
Stephanos I

Expanding the comparison, please refer to the numbers for the Latin Church in the U.S. (subtracting the numbers for the Eastern Catholic Churches where appropriate):

http://www.usccb.org/comm/statisti.shtml

Of the 5,180 seminarians (from a population base of approximately 67+ million faithful), about 10% of them are ordained annually. Or, about 3 new priests for each of the 178 Latin archdioceses/dioceses but only about .02 each for the 19,000+ Latin parishes nationwide although, for now, the Latin Church has 42,307 priests (28,462 diocesan priests and 13,845 religious-order priests). There IS a vocations crisis in the Latin Church!

We have an abundance of deacons (15,868) but all are permanent, i.e., ineligible to be ordained to the priesthood.

Amado

AMADO:

I appreciate Father Serge's comment on this. What makes it so necessary that some deacons are "permanent" while others are "transitional"? When you think about it in the context of the traditon of the Eastern Churches, it doesn't make any sense. This is an entirely new discipline and what purpose it serves I, for one, am at a loss to understand. While I fully accept the hierarchy's right to determine the criteria for all orders, I also must respectfully question if marriage is such an impediment why allow any married man to have any share in orders at all? I also wonder what the deep reason was to determine that second career married men would not be acceptable for ordination to the priesthood. While this seems to be a common thing in every other field at this time in history, I have to wonder why a mature man with his family raised and who feels the call to serve cannot be accepted into orders. Surely it cannot be that a matured faith experience that is often the case in some men is less valuable than the experience of a much younger man with less life experience.

In Christ,

BOB

Good question. My parish priest is married with two children, and has a full time secular day job. The parish, however, does not suffer because of this.

I think I can count on one hand how many times Father has not been able to hold services. One time was for his Fathers funeral. I realize situations are different from one person to another, but our priest does a great job juggling a family a job and a vocation.