Guillaume Cuchet is a professor of contemporary history at the University of Paris-I Panthéon-Sorbonne. His book "How our world has ceased to be Christian" (Seuil, coll. "The color of ideas", 2018) has been a great critical success. Last book published: “Does Catholicism still have a future in France?” (Threshold, 2021).
LE FIGARO.
- One hundred and twenty-two priests were ordained this year in France, compared to 130 in 2021 and 126 in 2020. We can see a certain stability there.
Does the Church succeed in renewing itself?
Guillaume CUCHET
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- We have been around 100 to 150 ordinations per year (diocesan priests and religious alike) since the mid-1970s. The real breakthrough in this area took place before, in the years 1950-1975.
From this point of view, there is a relative stability.
The “vocations crisis” of the years 1950-1970 proceeded from the addition of two different phenomena: that of the minor seminaries, which ended in their disappearance, and that of the major seminaries hit hard by May 68
But it is a bit of a trompe-l'oeil, because in the meantime, France has nevertheless gone from 54 to 67 million inhabitants.
It is true that the latter no longer declare themselves to be more than 50% Catholic...
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