On Saturday two men prostrated themselves on the cool flagstones of St George’s Cathedral during their priestly ordination for the Archdiocese of Southwark. A few weeks earlier, Cardinal Vincent Nichols ordained six new priests for the Archdiocese of Westminster. On the same day, the ordinariate welcomed eight new men (including its 100th priest, Fr Michael Ward, who describes the experience in this week's Diary).
For the past 50 years at least, ordination season has been accompanied by an anxious discussion of the “vocations crisis” – an ill-defined term that we tend to accept uncritically. Why, for example, do we speak of a crisis when, thanks to the ordinariate, we have 100 more priests than we did when the group was founded in 2011?
