Is Your Local Catholic Seminary Under Closure Threat?

Whispers had this in his opening paragraph of his post At Louvain, Lights Out: Nation's First Foreign Sem to Close

Two days after the US bishops were briefed in executive session on an in-house push to consolidate the nation's seminaries -- a project the Holy See has long called for, seeing the current number of institutes as excessive, their resources "spread too thinly" -- the oldest American formation house overseas has announced that it'll close its doors come June.

Well I was not aware of that. It does seem that even as start to see the start of a rebound in vocations to the Priesthood and indeed some Seminaries expanding that this has to be considered. There is also the fact of demographic changes in the Catholic population as we see migration from very Catholic areas to the Southwest and South.

For us in Louisiana my first thought goes to if Notre Dame of New Orleans could be on a future under threat. I believe Notre Dame is in pretty good health. Further it's history and the fact that is in an important Archdiocese should help.

Further excluding Florida and Texas the rest of the major Catholic Seminaries in the South are rather fringe South or border states. Someone supplied these names to me excluding Texas and Florida:

St. Mary's Baltimore, Mt St. Mary's Emmitsburg. Mt. St. Mary's of the West in Cincinnati, and Kenrick-Glennon in St. Louis seem to be the biggies.

So hopefully Notre Dame of New Orleans will be in good shape.

Beside there is the Jesuit Seminary at Grand Coteau .