SEMINARIES, MONASTERIES AND CONVENTS

In addition to the thousands of churches and chapels abandoned throughout France, scores of other religious buildings are closing their doors or being sold and used for other purposes.

Even in such Catholic strongholds as Brittany, the seminary or training college for future priests in Quimper has had to close down. In Normandy, three big seminaries are being shut in Bayeux, Coutances and Sées. They will be replaced in October 1970 by a single training college in Caen. The huge Bayeux seminary has been training future priests since 1675, and the one in Sées was founded in 1653.

In the north of France, the seminaries in Cambrai and Arras are being closed down and, from October 1970 onward, candidates for the priesthood in these two dioceses will have to go to Lille. These examples, taken from the west and north of France, are typical of what is happening throughout the country. As one regional newspaper stated: “The North and West were the only regions which had not yet regrouped [their seminaries].”​—La Voix du Nord, March 14, 1970.

WHY ARE THE SEMINARIES CLOSING?

Church authorities endeavor to explain away these shutdowns by saying that they reflect a necessary reorganization. Trying to justify the closing down of three big, long-established seminaries in Normandy, the Roman Catholic bishop of Bayeux and Lisieux stated: “A formula was sought which would make it easier to welcome young men who feel they have a calling for the priesthood.”​—Ouest-France, February 27, 1970.

But how can depriving two entire dioceses of their training schools for priests be said, by any stretch of the imagination, to facilitate things for young men there who wish to become priests? They will now have to travel to a third diocese whose spacious seminary is also being closed and transferred to another town, where the single seminary for the three dioceses will have to share a building with another Catholic institution. Would it not be more realistic to admit that dozens of seminaries are closing because there simply are not enough candidates for the priesthood?

Commenting on the regrouping of French seminaries, the provincial daily La Voix du Nord admitted that this had become necessary “mainly because of lack of candidates.” A parish magazine in Brittany quotes the local bishop as saying: “One of the bishop’s principal worries for the present, and even more for the future, is the drop in the number of candidates for the priesthood and holy orders. This is something general, not limited to France. All our institutions are affected and all vocations: contemplative, teaching, hospital and missionary.” Illustrating the bishop’s remarks, the magazine printed the following figures for the Quimper seminary:

Year Seminarists

1961 150

1964 103

1968 67

No wonder the article was headed “Quimper Seminary Is Closing Down”!​—Kemper, June-July 1969.

Showing just how serious the situation is, one of France’s most widely read news magazines stated recently:

“Every year since 1961, it [the Catholic Church in France] has been losing the total number of priests required in such average dioceses as Bordeaux, Nice or Clermont-Ferrand, because losses due to deaths [about 900 a year] or desertions from the ministry are far from being made up. . . .

“The French clergy, one of the most numerous in the world, with over 40,000 priests, is an aged clergy. . . . In 1975, one third of its members will be over 60 years of age. . . .

“In a confidential report to his counselors, Cardinal Alexandre Renard, archbishop of Lyons, revealed earlier this month the gravity of this crisis. Last October, only 475 young men entered the [French] seminaries, which is 41 percent less than the year before. For lack of students, the few remaining seminaries are now regional. The big gray barracks-like seminary in Issy-les-Moulineaux groups all the seminarists in the Paris area. . . .

“The way things are going, in less than a century, the clergy will have disappeared.”​—L’Express, January 5-11, 1970.