Synod on family opens in Rome - Time to strike a better balance?

ORDINATIONS to the Catholic priesthood are at such an historic low that it seems a struggle to keep a priest in every parish. Some parishes share a priest, while others are served by men who might have retired decades ago had the opportunity presented itself.

Those photographs from the last century showing endless ranks of of enthusiastic young men in soutanes — for all the world a burka without the headress — leaving seminaries to go out into the world to do God’s work are a thing of the past.

Today an ordination is as rare as defiant, public atheism was in the days when Archbishop John Charles McQuaid demanded — and got — extraordinary fealty.