Spring 1960
My second year in high seminary ends. My plan to go in to the Dominican Order, born in October 1959, is unchanged.
However, only my director of conscience is officially aware. And he stays favorable. Dominican France is divided into three horizontal strips called Provinces. Poitiers is in the "Province of Lyon" which has its noviciate building in Angers. My director of conscience knows well Angers novices' master and contacted him about me.
Normally, by the end of the second year of studies, the seminarists leave for the military service. This is what my condisciples are going to do — and for a long time; France is doing its War of Algeria. But me, if I had not had my dominican plan, I should have gone before the call under the flags; I have not yet the age. Even with the coming of the promotion 1959, I am the youngest of seminarists. With my 182 cms, it is not visible.
It is thus a new life that I consider. On the one hand, what I hope to find is communal life. I always imagined myself badly alone in a parsonage.
Intellectual work is in the center of Dominican Order. And on the other hand, I hope to find intellectual deepening of my religious commitments. I have, of course, the deep feeling to have been raised in the unique good religion; but this feeling comes up against a multitude of questioning. For example, without thinking about that precisely, I would like to be able to put on the clearcut what opposes catholic and protestants and be able to tell exactly why catholics are the ones who are in the good way.
P. M.
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