Tea at Trianon: Increase in Ordinations

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, January 15, 2016

Increase in Ordinations

Holy Mother Church always rises from the ashes. From The Catholic World Report:

Although last year’s Pew Research Center's study “America's Changing Religious Landscape” was used by some pundits as evidence for a steady decline in Catholicism, the evidence points to differing trends. As I noted last May, “the Northeast losses for the Catholic Church are attenuated by gains in the southern part of the country where Catholics have increased from 25% of those living in the South in 2007 to 27% of the population today, and in the West where the percentage of Catholics has increased from 23% in 2007 to 26% in 2014.”

Even more significantly, in 2015 there was a 25% increase in ordinations to the priesthood as 595 men were ordained last year, up from 477 the previous year. According to Mary Gautier and Thomas Gaunt, authors of The Class of 2015: Survey of Ordinands to the Priesthood, commissioned by the Secretariat of Clergy, Consecrated Life and Vocations of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the average age of those ordained in 2015 to the priesthood is 34—continuing a pattern of younger men entering the priesthood earlier than in previous decades.

More than half (60%) of those ordained in 2015 have completed college before entering the seminar, and one in seven (15%) entered the seminary with a graduate degree. One in three entered the seminary while in college. Most respondents to the USCCB survey reported that there were about 17 years old when they first considered a vocation to the priesthood and were encouraged to consider their vocation by an average of four people. Seven in 10 of them said they were encouraged by a parish priest, while 46% were encouraged by friends, 45% were encouraged by parishioners, and 40% were encouraged by their mothers. (Read more.)