text: From my perspective, what you present is correct and the prevailing issue in our shortage of priests.  Yet there are other, lesser, issues involved as well, no?   The current crop of bishops that are the powers-that-be in the Vatican are all products of the monarchal Church and of the specific European type (no matter where they are originally from).  The Vatican is Roman and so are all who is takes in.  And, unfortunately, so are the "successors in waiting."  The culture of the Vatican is the major impediment to the retention of and attraction of new Catholics because it stuck in previous centuries.