Earlier this year, the Irish bishops launched a Year of Vocations to the Diocesan Priesthood, a hopeful endeavour given the collapse in vocations in the last couple of decades. As Fr Michael Collins points out in this issue, the national seminary at Maynooth, once home to 500 seminarians, now has 20: men whose vocations have something heroic about them. The Irish church, once the most self-confidently buoyant in Christendom, is demoralised. The bid to attract vocations is being made in an environment in which indifference to the Faith in much of society jostles with outright anti-clericalism in the opinion-forming classes.