The Church ordained women and married men in Czechoslovakia

[hedgehog]

during the 70's and 80's to ensure an underground church would survive. Those ordinations have now benn revoked somehow. Does anyone have any idea if there is a priest shortage in the Czech republic? The point is, Communists are a threat requiring the rules to bend but parishes without priests aren't?

[DemBones DemBones]

1. I can't imagine that

Rome would have approved such "ordinations" even to keep an underground church alive. The policy may change some day but I don't see it happening soon.

[hedgehog]

2. I don't know the details, but at least 1 bishop was involved.

I did some checking around, and there is a severe shortage of priests in the Czech Republic now. The solution? Import priests from Poland.

[DemBones DemBones]

3. Sounds like a rogue bishop, maybe like

Bishop Lefebreve (sp.) or that bishop who ordained several women priests a few years ago.

No doubt there is a surplus of Polish priests, since the Polish are very strong Catholics. We can hope that the Czechs are able to increase their own vocations to the priesthood in the future.

Some American dioceses are doing very well at recruiting American seminarians despite all we hear about the priest shortage. Our archdiocese has some South American and Asian priests, Irish priests, etc., but we also get a lot of American vocations. Several new parishes open every year so you know we're not too short of priests. I think it's great that we have priests from other countries since we have parishioners from all over in this area. Diversity is a great strength of our Church