Does it make any sense to be a priest at the dawn of the 21st century? The crisis in vocations has deepened since May ‘68, the clergy is aging, and the Catholic Church has been hard hit by the changes in modern society. Yet some young men do still heed the call.
Monique Hébrard wanted to know who these priests are. She met 50 of them, of all ages and all styles. She spoke about everything with them. About the first stirrings of their vocation, the tasks of being a parish priest, the solitude, society’s gaze, their relationships with their hierarchy, with lay people, with celibacy and sexuality. Be prepared for some surprises.
Behind the words are lives, passions, tremendous hope, a taste for proximity with men and women of today, and the desire to bear witness that Jesus Christ can satisfy their search for happiness and a sense of accomplishment. The portrait of the Church that is drawn here is neither as sad nor as pessimistic as one might think.
There are some 23,000 priests in France. For the Catholic Church, the 20th century was a veritable wringer – between the wars, the desertification of the countryside, May ‘68, the decline in established institutions, the surge in consumerism, the irruption of new technologies. What role can priests hold in today’s world? How do they live? How do they cope with the liberalization of mores? How do they envision the future?