While summer sun shines on Paris, the weather is rather gloomy on the side of the Avenue de Breteuil. And for good reason: the number of priestly ordinations for the year 2023 is down sharply compared to the previous year which saw 122 men receive the sacrament of Holy Orders.
Suffice to say that the barometer is not looking good at the headquarters of the French Conference of Bishops (CEF) which had not seen such a low figure for 10 years. Even adding together “religious” and “diocesan” priests, the numbers are still weak.
This is a worrying shortage, which must lead to difficult choices. Moreover, a statement of the French prelates does not try hide it:
“The question of priestly ministry, and in particular of the role and mission of the priest in the face of the challenges facing the Church in France today [depopulation of rural territories, new channels of evangelization – digital in particular, secularization of French society…] will be on the agenda of the French seminarians meeting, which will be held from December 1 to 3 in Paris.”
Thus – and this is perhaps the most striking example – there were only five deacons, prostrate in the choir of the Saint-Sulpice church, the Parisian pro-cathedral, before becoming priests for eternity. It is all a symbol of decline. Speaking only of the new diocesan priests, between 2000 and 2010, there were about a hundred a year being ordained; and the next decade, about 80; and then 81 in 2020, 79 in 2021, 77 in 2022, and 52 in 2023.
However, it is not a question of giving in to the easy way: “The abolition of celibacy would not solve the question, on the contrary, this choice is carefully considered. There are few vocations but each example is extraordinary, what a testimony! It is therefore not only a question of numbers,” insists Fr. Thomas Poussier, rector of the Aix-en-Provence seminary in which 23 seminarians from six dioceses are being formed.
Nevertheless, an easy option would consist in being resigned to the secularization which has already largely remodeled French society, without recognizing that the Church has not figured out how to oppose this disastrous movement. It has not vigorously defended Christian values from being undermined by modern ideologies.
As the essayist Patrick Buisson writes in La fin d’un monde: “The confidence one gives to a religion is the permanence of steadfastness. When we detach ourselves from it, it experiences a decline.” And this is what happened in France and elsewhere, in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. It is not a question of flagellating oneself by looking at the past, but of identifying the errors committed so as to finally apply the real remedies, which are not those currently proposed by the cantors of synodality.
In 2023 in France, about 10% of French priests will be ordained in the traditional rite, a proportion which is growing slowly, but which is still too low to show any triumphalism.
The Church in France has taken to ordaining its priests on the Sunday preceding the feast of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul. Thus, on June 25, 2023, 88 priests received the sacrament of Holy Orders, a sharp decline compared to last year. French priests ordained in the traditional rite – taken as a whole and over the whole year – will represent around 10% of the new priests.