I have been asked to speak to you about your spiritual responsibilities. Better than anyone you know the weight of them, and very specially at a time when the religious life is suSering from some disrepute, from reproaches, attacks, even from a recruiting crisis. The misunderstandings, the calumnies even, which circulate among people of the world, whether practising or not, are hardly worth considering. On the other hand, what does deserve attention is the opinion of those Christians, priasts or layfolk, who seem to be the active elements of what His Eminence Cardinal Suhard calls ‘the springtime of the Church'.

Increasingly nowadays priests, and holy priests of good judgment and experience, hesitate to recommend the religious life to their penitents. On their side, many young girls, apparently called to evangelical perfection, seek something other than the religious state, in so ‘far at least as they are able to know it.