Posted on 11/16/2001 1:08:04 PM PST by Zviadist
French bishops, meeting in Lourdes this week for their annual conference, have not even put it on the agenda. But it is the most pressing problem for the once-mighty Roman Catholic church in France: it is running out of priests.
"It's the church's biggest unspoken post-war scandal," said Rémy Chauvin, who published a vitriolic attack this week on the church hierarchy, unambiguously titled The Devil is in the Font. "They are just burying their heads in the sand."
Fewer than 100 novices will be ordained this year, according to Mr Chauvin, compared with more than 1,000 a year 40 years ago.
Because of the shortage mass is no longer celebrated regularly in thousands of rural parishes, and many bishops have had to import priests from abroad.
During the summer 15 young priests from Senegal, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Madagascar and the Democratic Republic of Congo arrived in the southern city of Perpignan to reinforce a hard-pressed ecclesiastical team which already included three Swiss fathers, two Dutch, four Belgians, three Algerians and a Mexican.
The strain is felt hardest in rural areas, Mr Chauvin said, citing the case of the Lot-et-Garonne department. Ten years ago it had 201 priests; now it has 122. Just 40 of these are available to meet the spiritual needs of 439 country parishes harbouring 305,000 souls in an area of 5,400sq km.
The hierarchy has so far played down the problem, insisting that rural depopulation is the main cause, and that if the French countryside has no priests, it has few public services, fewer shops and a dwindling number of inhabitants.
Mr Chauvin has calculated that the average age of France's 20,400 Catholic priests is over 65 and that within 10 years fewer than half of them will be active. Either that, or more will have to follow the example of Father Casimir Maury of Arignac in the Ariège, still occupying the village presbytery at the age of 101 because no one can be found to replace him.
"These days we have to do two or even three weddings on the same day, which was inconceivable a decade ago," the doughty Fr Maury said.
"And we've had to hand over many of our traditional tasks, even teaching the catechism, to lay workers. But we do our best."
Isn't it wonderful how successful the Vatican II turned out to be?
But the dying leftist hierarchy in France was the most stubborn opponent of reconciliation. Shows where their priorities are.
Reconciliation between the SSPX and the Church would take care of France's problem in short order.
Hear hear! Fat chance of that, though, because the corrupt leftist heirarchy would have to implicitly accept that they have been wrong all along, and that VatII did not produce the renewal they had promised. Think of all the souls that have been lost due to the destruction of the Church. Methinks some folks will eventually have to pay -- perhaps not in this life, but...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/570788/posts
Yessir. It's..ah,.....it's a bit runny...
This is what liberals want by the way in the US of A. ie. a liberal theocracy.
Furthermore, Catholics in Poland don't hew to a doctrine any different than that of Catholics in France, yet Poland has a surplus of priestly vocations.
(It's at this point that I will learn what an ignorant Catholic I truly am.)
No problem, France has lots of mullah's now to replace priests.
(It's at this point that I will learn what an ignorant Catholic I truly am.)
Tugger, you forgot the smiley face. Now if you were serious we would have to remind you that the Church has no authority to ordain women. They might as well try to ordain a house cat for all effect it would have.
Christ chose men to be His Apostles. If He intended to call women to His priesthood He would have called a woman or two to be Apostles. He didn't. We consider Christ's example as what we follow. We don't consider Christ a "pretty good God, but kind of backwards about feminism."
SD
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