The first five years

[...]my own professional experience and my research, which was compiled in Why Priests are Happy: A Study of the Psychological and Spiritual Health of Priests (Ave Maria Press), suggests that young priests today are happier, more optimistic about the priesthood, accepting of Catholic teaching and personally committed to priesdy celibacy than the cohort before them. [...]the first question we might ask ourselves is not "What we are doing wrong in forming and supporting our new priests today?" but "What are we doing right?" Why are most young priests happy and prospering in the priesthood? The happy images of priesthood, though certainly idealized in movies like "The Bells of St. Marys" and "Going My Way" in the 1940s, have been supplanted by images of priests as deviant, unhappy and members of an anachronistic era of faith-a perception fueled by the crisis of sexual abuse of children by clerics. The newly ordained are now not only adjusting to priesthood, celibacy and ministry; they are also adjusting to becoming leaders of parishes, with all the attendant administrative, leadership and management challenges.