How Things Used To Be

The photograph below was taken in the 1950s, and shows ordination day at the Seminary of Saint Sulpice in Paris.  You can count 66 ordinands in the picture, and there are clearly more outside the view of the camera.

This seminary might have served about five dioceses in the Paris area, which suggests an average of 13 or more ordinations per diocese.  Nowadays, an average French diocese has about two ordinations each year.  A more alarming statistic is that 60% of French Dioceses will have no ordinations this year.