From Sacramentum Vitæ
Why mainstream RCs have few vocations to the priesthood

Dioceses run by frankly orthodox, old-fashioned bishops... are having no trouble attracting a good and healthy pool of seminarians. Traditionalist movements... have no trouble with that either. But dioceses not run by such bishops are having such trouble. Why?

Los Angeles is a good example of what I'm talking about. Cardinal Roger Mahony is counter-cultural about immigration and health care, but not about birth control, homosexuality, liturgy, and ascesis. ... He urges Catholics to bring their faith to public life, but opposes disciplining Catholic "pro-choice" politicians. Even as he's engaged in a running battle with government to keep the Archdiocese's sex-abuse files confidential, he refuses to acknowledge that homosexuality in the priesthood was the major contributing factor to the original scandal. Most of the altar servers in his and many other dioceses are girls. He welcomes Rainbow Sashers to communion but won't allow easy access in his diocese to the indult Tridentine Mass. Even his $194-million new cathedral has won good reviews mostly from those who haven't outgrown Bauhaus. Accordingly, the vision of Catholicism and of serving Christ presented by Mahony is doctrinally selective, sexually ambiguous, aesthetically impoverished, and not entirely honest. In other words, it well exemplifies the culture of 'progressive' Catholicism. As a result and regardless of intent, the message about priesthood conveyed by Mahony and like-minded bishops is that of an underpaid, sex-starved profession for effeminates, one that affords little opportunity to accomplish something valuable that couldn't just as well be accomplished in other, more gratifying ways. How could that be on young men's radar screens?

That agrees with what I remember from the 1980s and early 1990s.

But ‘putative’ (to use one of a former friend’s favourite words) ‘conservatives’ act like that as well except the ‘doctrinally selective’ part.

From The Sarabite
The Wal-Mart approach to church doesn’t work

From The Remnant
I’d like to disagree with this cartoon
But, based on experience many years ago with these people, can’t