A French priest’s proposal to ordain older married men reveals a functional vision of ministry that fundamentally misunderstands priesthood as divine calling.
Newsroom (06/01/2026 Gaudium Press ) The proposal reads like pastoral pragmatism: ordain older married men who have finished raising their children, require them to live celibately with their wives, and deploy them to parishes lacking priests. Father Marc Cholin of the Diocese of Grenoble presented this solution in La Croix as a realistic response to France’s shrinking priesthood, particularly in rural areas where Mass has become increasingly rare.
Yet beneath this apparent realism lies a theological fault line that Father Clément Barré identified with striking clarity in his social media response. His intervention, far from being reactionary, cuts to the heart of what priesthood means in Catholic theology. The debate that followed reveals competing visions not merely of ordination requirements, but of the Church’s fundamental nature and mission.
The Managerial Fallacy
The phrase “the Church needs priests” appears throughout discussions of vocations decline. It sounds self-evident, even urgent. But Barré identifies this formulation as theologically dangerous, revealing what he calls a “managerial mentality” that treats the Church as a religious services provider rather than the Body of Christ.
Catholic theology has never conceived priesthood as fulfilling institutional need. The priest is not instituted to meet territorial demand or maintain organizational continuity. Rather, priesthood represents a free divine call to sacramental configuration with Christ as Head and Shepherd. The priest offers the Eucharistic sacrifice in persona Christi, acting in the person of Christ himself. This ontological reality cannot be reduced to functional necessity.
When the Church speaks of “needing” priests as one might need administrators or service providers, it reverses the supernatural logic of vocation. The priest is neither a versatile pastoral agent nor a community organizer, but the sacramental sign of divine initiative. God calls; the Church discerns and ordains. The movement flows from grace, not from organizational charts mapping coverage gaps.
Historical Witness Against Substitution
The proposal’s concrete aim—ensuring stable priestly presence in every village—exposes another theological problem. While the Eucharist stands as the summit of Christian life, it has never been guaranteed as an entitlement. Church history demonstrates that periods of priest shortages have functioned as times of trial calling communities to purification, penance, and conversion rather than technical problems requiring intermediate solutions.
Barré poses a radical question: when has the Church ever produced priests from shortage? The biblical tradition offers a clear pattern. When Israel lacked sacred mediators, prophets called the people to humble themselves before God with broken hearts and contrite spirits. The appropriate response was not inventing substitutes or lowering standards, but deepening prayer and examining what failures of faith had led to the crisis.
This spiritual attitude appears largely absent from contemporary vocations discussions. The temptation is to treat declining numbers as a resource allocation problem rather than a call to communal conversion. But the Church’s identity is not secured through territorial occupation or structural maintenance. It flourishes through spiritual fruitfulness.
The Endogamous Trap
The “viri liberati” proposal reveals what Barré identifies as a profoundly self-contained logic. It clericalizes established Christians to artificially sustain aging parish structures. Rather than fostering genuine spiritual renewal capable of attracting young vocations, it organizes survival by withdrawing into existing communities.
This approach denies the missionary and prophetic dimensions of ecclesial life. It sanctifies communities incapable of self-reflection or openness to missionary conversion. The priesthood becomes conceived as final service rather than sign of hope for the future. Under the guise of pastoral realism, the proposal establishes what amounts to ecclesiastical gerontocracy.
Calling on fathers or grandfathers to occupy places their children have not taken represents an acknowledgment of transmission failure. It simultaneously absolves Christian families of their primary mission: fostering through coherent and demanding faith lives the calls to priesthood and consecrated life. If families capable of raising faithful children cannot inspire even one son to consider priesthood, the vocations crisis points to deeper problems no structural adjustment can address.
Grace, Not Numbers
The impulse toward substitute solutions reveals less pastoral realism than weakened faith in the Gospel’s inherent power. Christ did not begin by gathering organized crowds but by calling twelve poor and vulnerable men with no guarantee beyond his word. When the Gospel reached the heart of the Roman Empire, neither structures nor institutional mechanisms converted Rome. The witness of two apostles, Peter and Paul, who gave themselves unto martyrdom, accomplished what no organizational strategy could achieve.
Catholic tradition teaches that the Church maintains itself not through territorial occupation but through spiritual fruitfulness. The prophet Zechariah proclaimed: “Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit.” When God reduces numbers, it is not to be replaced by human ingenuity but to purify his people’s faith. Great spiritual rebirths have always emerged from fervent, radical, fully committed minorities, never from institutional compromises.
Saint Thomas Aquinas taught that grace does not destroy nature but leads it to fulfillment. Priesthood is not a late function added to an already accomplished life. It is a total, exclusive vocation received as a free and often unsettling call. The Second Vatican Council’s Presbyterorum Ordinis emphasizes the priest’s ontological configuration to Christ, far beyond immediate pastoral utility.
The Courage of Humility
Rather than preserving at all costs structures that may be destined to disappear, the Church is invited to rediscover evangelical humility, penance, clear and demanding vocational calls, and visible holiness. A Church poor in numbers but rich in faith proves more missionary than one reassured by administrative solutions.
The Church has never conquered the world by multiplying priests but by raising up saints. History demonstrates this pattern repeatedly. The monastic movements that revitalized medieval Christianity, the mendicant orders that renewed urban faith, the missionary congregations that evangelized continents—none emerged from managing decline through compromise. They arose from radical commitment to the Gospel.
Beyond Disciplinary Questions
The debate sparked by Cholin’s proposal extends far beyond the disciplinary question of priestly celibacy. It engages the fundamental understanding of divine calling, the Church’s faith in grace’s power, and its capacity to confront current trials through means other than workarounds.
Barré’s public response makes clear that the Church renews itself not through compromises but through holiness, conversion, and fidelity to the Gospel. The “viri liberati” proposal, however well-intentioned, represents what he identifies as “managing renunciation”—organizing retreat rather than calling forward.
The vocations crisis demands something more than structural adjustment. It requires communities willing to examine why families no longer produce priests, why young men find other calls more compelling, why the radical gift of self implicit in priestly vocation appears increasingly foreign to contemporary Catholic culture. These questions admit no easy answers and certainly no quick institutional fixes.
The shortage of priests may indeed represent divine pedagogy, calling the Church to purification rather than preservation. In that light, the temptation of the “viri liberati” is not merely theological error but spiritual evasion—the attempt to solve through human ingenuity what God may intend as an invitation to deeper faith.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Tribune Chretienne
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